Poag Rebrands as Development Group

Poag Shopping Centers pioneered outdoor lifestyle shopping centers in the 1980s. Today, as experiential lifestyle centers are in high demand, Poag is rebranding itself as Poag Development Group and putting its experience to work on mixed-use redevelopment projects.

The new name of the Memphis-based company, unveiled on the eve of ICSC, was intended to emphasize an expanded focus that is part of Poag’s mixed-use development partnership with JLL.

In August, the partners announced that Poag will provide development and redevelopment services to JLL-managed shopping centers across the US—JLL is the third-largest retail property management company in North America—while JLL provides management and operations services to Poag’s 10 high-end, open-air lifestyle centers.

“When we were plotting out our vision for the company and we started our conversation with JLL, so much of development today is the evolution of lifestyle centers—what we’ve done the last 40 years—and adding other uses,” CEO Josh Poag told GlobeSt.

“In many [projects], we’re looking at taking some retail down to add multifamily, to add hotels and restaurants,” Poag said. “So, when we looked at our name, it was just shopping centers. We’re beginning to look at projects that are outside of shopping centers and we didn’t want to be pigeon-holed and to have people say, they’re the shopping center developers.”

“We’re Poag Development Group because we focus on development and we’re expanding beyond shopping centers,” he added.

Actually, most of what Poag has focused on since forming its partnership with JLL has been redevelopment, in some cases taking obsolete mall properties and converting them to lifestyle-oriented experiential communities with residential and entertainment options in walkable proximity to each other.

“It’s not viable to do ground-up development right now,” Poag said, reference rising interest rates.

“If we’re going to buy a mall, it’s going to be for redevelopment, but it’s not going to be just to add a part where we have residential. We’re going to create a lifestyle experience that is severely lacking in the mall world,” Poag told us.

Poag’s vision is for lifestyle-oriented communities that weave a limited amount (about 75K) of small retail outlets into residential and experience-oriented neighborhoods filled with restaurants, coffee shops and entertainment-oriented venues.

The most successful of these re-use developments are in upscale, transit-oriented districts along rail lines, currently the focus of numerous regional economic development plans. Poag cited Princeton’s Nassau Street as a downtown retail corridor that has been transformed with an experiential mixed-use development.

“It’s a lifestyle where people can congregate and socialize in the morning and the afternoon,” he said. “If you’re not doing that and creating that experience, then you’re just sticking an apartment building next to a mall.”

Poag believes the trend toward experiential, lifestyle-oriented mixed-use developments will have staying power.

“With more people working from home, there’s a lot more [retail] traffic and sales where people live, and that’s where our lifestyle centers are,” Poag told us.

“Everyone is looking for experiences everywhere they go, and that’s what we bring to the table. The lifestyle centers bring that experience, and we’ve gotten a lot of inquiries to bring residential into that environment,” he said.