Mixed-Use Much More Than Office, Retail, Residential

The emerging post-pandemic economy has made mixed-used the CRE sector of choice for real estate developers, who are rushing to bring new combinations of office, retail and residential to market as office projects and indoor shopping malls are reimagined and housing is a priority just about everywhere.

The trinity at the core of traditional mixed-use projects—office, retail and residential—rapidly is evolving to bring a wide variety of project-specific uses to mixed-use development projects.

For Jamestown, the developer of iconic mixed-use projects including Ponce City Market in Atlanta, Brooklyn’s Industry City and Raleigh Iron Works, the new mixed-use mix involves a diverse group of offerings that are “layered” into the same development.

“In general, our approach to mixed-use is to layer a diversity of concepts within each property type, with design and programming serving as the connective tissue of place,” Michael Phillips, Jamestown’s president, told GlobeSt.com.

“The right mix varies by region, market and property, but it’s clear the mixed-use model has evolved beyond the standard office-retail-residential template,” Phillips said.

“The office component has diversified to include advanced manufacturing, life sciences, and film and TV. Retail has diversified to include more health and wellness and entertainment concepts,” Phillips told us. “Residential has diversified to include distinct, layered offerings like flex-living and hospitality living.”

Jamestown expects to deliver later this year the first building designed for its short-stay, flexible Scout Living concept, a 405-unit project under construction at Atlanta’s Ponce City Market.

Scout Living will feature fully furnished one- and two-bedroom units that will be available to rent for flexible lengths of stay that can be as short as a single night or up to a year. The units will average about 390 SF. The concept is aiming for young tech-savvy workers who are highly mobile, a pandemic-era phenomenon that Jamestown believes can thrive in the post-pandemic environment.

“This trend is deeper than the pandemic—the pandemic simply highlighted and accelerated societal changes that were already in motion,” Phillips said.

“Scout Living is designed to serve a new generation of consumers who crave more flexibility in their living situations. The focus on convenience, community connection, and flexibility makes it a suitable living option for people with dynamic and mobile lifestyles,” he said.

Jamestown specializes in “future-proofing” iconic historic properties by adapting these spaces to modern uses while preserving the aspects that make the properties timeless.

According to Phillips, Jamestown’s vertical integration of services, including architecture, design, construction and development, allows the company to address the challenges of adaptive reuse of historic properties—many of which are subject to preservation laws that limit modifications—in a “comprehensive and strategic manner.”

“Not all historic properties are candidates for value-add, but they can be if they’re underutilized in contemporary formats,” Phillips added. “This includes future-proofing measures such as implementing structural upgrades to support modern-day uses, investing in energy efficiency and other ESG enhancements, and establishing a strong narrative thread that connects location, community, and history.”

Phillips suggested that the key to reviving urban centers filled with older office buildings is to think outside the box in terms of reimagining them.

“The notion that converting office to residential is the key to reimagining urban centers is an unhelpful oversimplification that fails to capture the full opportunity of these neighborhoods and understates the challenges of office to residential conversions,” Phillips said.

“Converting office to academic use is one potential option that presents an opportunity for our university systems to reinvent the urban college campus and create higher education experiences that better integrate into our communities and industries,” he said.

“We believe the underlying value propositions of cities is multifold and will ultimately outlast the fluid and cyclical economic and workplace shifts currently disrupting urban centers,” Phillips added.