MXD Has Evolved Into its Next Generation

Moore: “You keep things flexible enough to grow and adapt in the future so that you’re never really stuck in a place that you can’t come back from.”

IRVINE, CA—Mixed-use development has become more accepted even in suburban environments, featuring product types that include hotel, office, apartments, retail and more, Irvine Co.‘s president of retail properties Dave Moore tells GlobeSt.com. The company recently announced a major $150-million reinvestment in Irvine Spectrum Center—celebrating its 20^th anniversary—that will feature more than 20 new stores, new landscaping, outdoor seating and shade areas, state-of-the-art amenities and circulation and parking-garage improvements. The reinvestment will also entail more than 20 carefully curated stores located within two new buildings on the current site of Macy’s, which announced recently the closure of 40 stores nationwide, including the one at Irvine Spectrum Center.

We spoke exclusively with Moore about his firm’s approach to repositioning and reinventing vacant retail sites, the strategies that work and don’t work and trends in repositioning big-box space.