At Valley View Center in Dallas, potholes pepper the side streets, a gate blocks an entrance to the darkened parking garage and faded signs direct visitors to the mall’s remaining destinations.

Frisco City Council Member Scott Johnson said he grew up near Valley View and has seen its demise. So when a proposal came before the council April 5 for a Hyatt Regency hotel and conference center to be attached to Stonebriar Centre, Johnson said he was grateful for the chance to ensure the mall’s viability.

“Make no mistake, this is a huge day for Frisco,” he said. “This is a big project. It’s a game-changer for Frisco.”

Council approved the agreement April 5 to buy the 15-story, 295-room Hyatt Regency’s conference center for $10.5 million. Later in April, the Frisco Economic Development Corp. and the Frisco Community Development Corp. also approved an agreement to provide funding toward the cost of the hotel’s construction. The hotel is planned to be built between Nordstrom and Dillard’s and attach to the mall on the ground floor.

Stonebriar Centre opened in 2000 in what was still a mostly undeveloped area. Fifteen years later, the mall is surrounded by 1 million square feet of retail space, several entertainment venues and numerous hotels and offices.

Even though Stonebriar has continued to thrive, the hotel and conference center will help reinvigorate the mall and its surrounding area, Assistant City Manager Ron Patterson said.

Vitality of malls

John Lettelleir, Frisco director of development services, said the typical lifespan of a mall has historically been 20 to 25 years. The Dallas-Fort Worth area has multiple examples of malls that have exceeded that lifespan, including NorthPark Center, which celebrated 50 years in 2015.

Several factors play into whether a mall will remain successful, including the surrounding demographics, available disposable income and mall management, Lettelleir said. Plus, a mall has to stay in tune with its market area and adjust as needed, he said.

“Take NorthPark mall. I think they’ve done a phenomenal job as far as changing out the tenants to meet the market area needs,” he said.

The mall industry is extremely competitive, and malls must continually adapt to remain relevant, said Jesse Tron, International Council of Shopping Centers spokesperson.

“[Malls should] be dynamic, be eclectic in terms of how you create your tenant mix and be willing to evolve,” he said. “Probably the latter is the most important.”

ICSC, which promotes the shopping center industry’s role in commercial distribution, has noticed a trend of historically low new mall development, Tron said. Instead, malls are being redeveloped at a historically high rate, he said.

In general, malls should have their basic features, such as flooring and lighting, updated every 10 years, Tron said.

The size of a mall’s market area can also determine its success. Lettelleir, who worked for the city of Plano until the late 1990s, said Collin Creek Mall used to pull a large number of people from the north. When Stonebriar opened, shoppers from the north started going to Stonebriar instead of Collin Creek, which in part has led to Collin Creek’s decline, he said.

Frisco’s ‘economic engine’

Jim Gandy, Frisco Economic Development Corp. president, said city officials recognized that they could not afford to miss out on the opportunity to have a mall in Frisco when the city was negotiating to bring in Stonebriar in the mid-1990s.

“We knew that having a retail mall of that size in Frisco would serve as a magnet to bring additional businesses to Frisco,” he said.

Gandy said cities primarily have two major revenue streams: property taxes and sales taxes. Prior to Stonebriar’s opening, the city did not have much retail business to generate sales tax revenue, he said. In the 15 years since Stonebriar has been open, Frisco’s sales tax revenue has increased nearly 10-fold, from $7.5 million in 2000 to $72 million in 2015, he said.

“That really all began with the opening of Stonebriar mall,” Gandy said. “That meant primarily for the first time that people were coming to Frisco for shopping instead of everyone in Frisco for the most part shopping outside our city because it wasn’t available. It was a paradigm shift in the history of the community.”

Malls attract other businesses around them, including other retail and entertainment venues, because of the number of people visiting the area to go shopping, Lettelleir said.
Stonebriar and the area around it is recognized as one of the largest concentrations of retail business in the Southwest, Gandy said. Stonebriar is constantly attracting businesses to the city, especially its surrounding area, he said.

“It is still today a major, significant economic engine for the city of Frisco,” Gandy said.

Hotel and conference center plans

The Hyatt Regency hotel is one of several that will be built around the Stonebriar area. A Drury Hotel and a Curio Collection by Hilton hotel also are being built along Dallas Parkway.

The Hyatt hotel will feature a parking garage with at least 800 parking spaces. City Council approved a separate agreement during the April 5 meeting to fund up to $15 million of the cost of the parking garage.

Plans for the Hyatt also include a 3,000-square-foot space that the city will lease for $1 per year for 20 years for the development of a city library.

The hotel’s conference center is expected to be at least 50,000 square feet and will include a grand ballroom, a junior ballroom and additional breakout spaces.

The city plans to purchase the conference center upon the hotel’s completion. The agreement specifies that the hotel must be completed within 2 1/2 years from the start of construction.

“At the end of the day, our investment is with the hotel developer to be able to obtain additional conference room space,” Patterson said. “We have a huge demand in the community for it. I believe this investment, to be able to bring [more conference room space], is critical.”