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Last month, the first Whole Foods in North Orange County soft-opened at Regency Centers’ Village at La Floresta, an 87k SF shopping center along the Imperial Highway. The ground-up development not only features its landmark anchor, but restaurant, office and retail space as well. But what makes the Village most exciting is the holistic thought process behind its shops and layout. To get details on how the Village came together, we sat down with investment VP John Mehigan.
When John and his team started the design process, they knew the site's potential. Believing they could go farther with the design than normal, the team put everyone—architects, construction, leasing, property management, brokers—on the project at once to figure out what the Village was going to be. With this communication and coordination, the team was able to come up with a clear vision for the project: a high-end neighborhood center with unique approaches to tenants, architecture, site work, place-making and so on.
“We wanted to create a space that people would drive past three other grocery stories and sandwich places to get to ours, just because of how different and great it felt once you got there. Everything, from the landscaping to even the art piece, had to be totally different than anything else,” John says.
The art piece is home plate for the baseball field-sized plot, with three restaurant patios on the “bases.” From there, the team continued to construct outward.
This is an excerpt from an article posted on Bisnow.com. For complete article, click here.
