Re-purposing Commerical Big Boxes

The Geneva School

Full Sail University

In Central Florida it looks like various educational institutions are the new primary users of vacant big boxes.  Here are a few specific conversions:

The Geneva School: A non-profit Christian Classical School, grades pre-K through 12, occupies a 40,000 s.f., former sporting goods store. 

Herzing University: A for-profit post secondary school offering bachelor's and associate degrees in a  33,600 s.f. former Bally fitness center.

Aviation School of Maintenance:  First located at the Orlando Executive Airport in 2006, AIM moved to its new location on U.S. 17-92 in Casselberry in 2011.  The company acquire and re-purposed a foreclosed Saturn Dealership.  The showrooms were converted in to new administrative offices and classrooms while the car maintenance bays were demolished and a new larger hanger added for hands-on lab experience.   Total space in the new school is 42,000 s.f..  Classrooms and administrative space approximates 24,000 s.f. and the hanger is 18,000 s.f.

Full Sail University: This for profit, premier art music and film school wins the award for corridor retrofits.  They arrived in the Orlando market in 1998, beginning modestly in two office buildings on University Boulevard constituting almost 250,000 s.f. of building space.  Today, the Full Sail Campus has grown to over 212 acres and has consumed two additional major shopping centers, adding 266,500 s.f. and a sea of surface parking to accommodate this 24-hour school.

Prior to the take over by Full Sail, both commercial centers were struggling to maintain occupancy.  One had as its major tenants, Waccamaw Pottery and Stein Mart.  The other was anchored by Albertson's grocery and Books-a-Million.  While appearing strong during the period 1998-2002, most of these anchors were in serious trouble.  Albertson's has since pulled out of Florida.  Book-a-Million, while not technically out of business, continues to struggle like its dead brother Borders Books.

Full Sail University has been a major economic boom for Orange County, maintaining a strong tax base on these properties while providing significant base employment to the area.  This school has been such a success, I intend to allocate a full future blog posting to its story.

Lessons Learned
Conversion of big boxes and entire shopping centers using the existing buildings is an cost effective solution for the right institutional uses.  After all, of the infrastructure is in place and the vertical construction is completed.   Be proactive and revise the zoning code to allow for schools in you general commercial zoning categories.  From a tax-base position, the for-profit schools are ideal, while the non profits will remove the property from the tax base.  And finally, as large big boxes retailers continue to downsize there store sizes (See "The Dying Commercial Corridor"), they are going to need to establish stock warehouses for quick deliveries to their smaller retail outlets.  Conversion of the existing vacant retail big box to a stock warehouse may be an easy conversion. Though again from a tax base position, they will not return as much in taxes to the local government as the original tenanted use.  An occupied warehouse is certainly better than the vacant space or conversion to non-profit schools. 

Have You Seen Other Successful Conversions of Big Box Retail?  Post it here and let us all know.

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