Ian Ritter is national online editor of GlobeSt.RETAIL.

ARLINGTON, VA-The Mills Corp. is spending $590.3 million on projects currently under construction, and the REIT's pipeline calls for more new developments across the country as well as in Canada and Europe. Including contributions by joint-venture partners, the total cost of the Mills centers being built is $834.8 million.

Mills broke ground this week on Meadowlands Xanadu, a mixed-use development with 2.2 million sf of retail-entertainment in East Rutherford, NJ. In July it is opening Pittsburgh Mills, a 1.1 million-sf retail-entertainment center in that city's suburbs. Mills is also expanding its 2.2 million-sf Sawgrass Mills by 110,000 sf, adding an upscale lifestyle component called the Colonnade.

The locally based company could start construction some time this year on 108 North State St., a mixed-use project in Downtown Chicago with 417,000 sf of retail-entertainment as well as 400,000 sf of office space. Mills could also start construction on Mercati Generali, an 830,000-sf retail entertainment center in Rome, Italy, some time this year, company officials said during their year-end, 2004 conference call yesterday.

Mills is working with officials in Prince William County, VA, to build an open-air, mixed-use center across Interstate-95 from its Potomac Mills retail-entertainment center. The development, called Potomac Center is tentatively planned for 650,000 sf of upscale retail, 200,000 sf of offices and 400 apartment units. No ground-breaking date has been set for Potomac Center, which Mills plans to develop with North Bethesda, MD-based Lerner Enterprises.

Further out in the pipeline are possible new centers in Boston, Portland, OR; and Vallejo, CA, in the Bay Area. Also in Northern California, Mills executives plan to add five additional anchor tenants to the 1.3 million-sf Great Mall of the Bay Area, in Milpitas, CA.

In Canada, Mills is working with joint venture partner Ivanhoe Cambridge, a Montreal-based mall owner, to build centers in Calgary and Vancouver. Mills opened its first Canadian retail-entertainment center, the 1.1 million-sf Vaughan Mills outside of Toronto with Ivanhoe last year. The company has the potential to open a total of four centers north of the border, said James Dausch, president of Mills' development division.

Overseas, other than the Rome project, Mills executives are in negotiations to build centers in Milan and Valencia, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; and the United Kingdom. Mills' two current centers in Europe are Madrid Xanadu, in Madrid, and St. Enoch Centre, in Glasgow, Scotland, which it plans to renovate.

During 2004, Mills' NOI increased 3.1%, to $349.8, while its gross tenant sales jumped 7.8%, to $8.7 billion. Its FFO rose 9.1%, to $3.96 per diluted share. Mills owns 41 retail and retail-entertainment centers totaling 49.3 million sf.

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