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Village of Lansing Planning Board members got a unique look at the future of the Shops at Ithaca Mall Monday when Principal Partner Eric Goetzmann made a surprising presentation about the next phase of construction.  While the mall will continue to bring stores into the indoor shopping area, it will also offer an outdoor experience with a commons-like area that will include three new buildings containing boutique-style shops with outdoor walkways and parking. 

"When we redid the mall we were looking at the larger stores like Target," Goetzmann says.  "For the shops here we're looking at smaller stores down to 3,000 square feet or 5,000 square feet, boutiques to a certain degree.  It brings in that last mix that we're missing here today."

In recent years Goetzmann and his team have transformed the mall from a sleepy small town venue to a more attractive destination with a mix of big box stores and smaller ones.  After bringing in popular big box stores like Target, Best Buy, Dick's Sporting Goods, and Borders, a 14 screen stadium-seating cineplex was added last Spring, as well as retail space reclaimed from the old Ames store, and added parking. 

The space across from the new movie complex was originally conceived as a collection of smaller stores and restaurants, but mall officials recently announced that the entire space will be filled by a Steve & Barrys store, which features casual wear at low prices.

While the old movie theater space will become part of the traditional indoor mall, the new buildings will bring a mix of upscale boutique-style stores on the ground floor, and possibly as many as 40 apartments upstairs.  One long building will jut out from Best Buy toward Route 13, and two more buildings will face it across a landscaped area with parking and walkways made of pavers and planted with trees.


The two buildings not attached to the existing mall will be joined on the second floor, where mainly two-bedroom apartments are planned.  This would create a walking alley between the buildings on the ground floor.  The notion came from potential tenants who have stores with apartments above in other areas of the country.  "We've looked at the office side of it," Goetzmann  says.  "But for right now we're looking toward the apartment side."

"Over time the shopping center has changed," he  says.  "What we built 30 years ago is different from what you would build today.  It requires different tenants that have different demands.  There are some tenants with higher ticketed items where people like to drive up to the front door and walk in.  The goal here is to bring in shops to the Village of Lansing, where people are leaving to go elsewhere, and allow them to shop here."

Goetzmann has actively reimagined the mall since taking over its management.  Last spring he announced that he would be encouraging new tenants in new buildings on the property to build green, possibly using green roofs or other methods of saving energy.  He says that initiatives like that are not possible in the existing building because it was not designed to take the load a planted roof would create.  "We've had some good response, we've had some mediocre response," he says, but ads that the mall management will continue to encourage tenants to build along green lines.


The mall is a work in progress, certainly there to make money, but also to provide an attractive, convenient shopping experience that is unique to the village.  "The Planning Board has challenged us a few times not to build just another large building, to see if there's something we can do to modify it to make it more appealing, something that fits within the Village of Lansing," Goetzmann says.  "We do have some big boxes that we could place here.  But part of our goal is that we have the right mix.  It's easier to do a big box and fill that space up.  But I think it's the right thing if we can balance it.  "

Planning board members were intrigued with the mix of shops and apartments, likening it to the Ithaca Commons, but with better parking.  "Syracuse is doing the same thing," says Planning Board Chairman Ned Hickey.  "They're converting abandoned buildings that are in downtown Franklin Square and that area, and putting apartments on the second, third, and fourth floors, and shops on the bottom.  So the mixed use concept is not a stranger."

The board brought up concerns about added traffic the new shops would bring, but Goetzmann pointed out that an existing traffic study, based on a 750,000 square foot mall has already been done.  The study looks at the mall's access points and bases traffic projections on the amount of traffic for every thousand square feet of retail space. 

Goetzmann noted that even with the new buildings the mall will be about 700,000 square feet, less than the figure used in the study.  He also said that the study was completed before Triphammer Road improvements were made.  "The types of tenants we're bringing here have higher ticketed items, but are probably not high volume," he said.  "Since that (study was completed) you have all the improvements on Triphammer.  You now have a road that is the widest road in Tompkins county with seven lanes."

Work could begin on the new buildings soon.  Goetzmann says he would like to begin work on construction drawings in two months.  That could mean new stores of a kind that he says you haven't seen in the Village of Lansing could be moving into the mall next year.

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