Moorestown Mall takes high-dive into high-end boutique retail

Stroll Moorestown Mall between the food court and Boscov's department store, and that new clothing store, Erdon, might not catch your eye.

Its walls are off-white. Some dresses hang from pipe racks. A few black boots and shoes line the shelves. Just another mall store for teenagers, right?

Hardly.

Go ahead. Step through Erdon's black-framed glass doors and pluck at a sleeve.

This black leather jacket by Ivan Grundahl is $1,228. That black cocktail dress is $690. The tailored denim jeans, by Closed, start at $190.

"I came for a nebulizer" at the new Rizzieri spa next door, said a woman trying on a stylish, gray-plaid pullover. "I'm going to spend $3,000. And I haven't even had lunch."

This is not your mother's - or your daughter's - Moorestown Mall.

Four years ago, its owners decided it was time to sink, swim, or take a high dive with the drab and low-performing shopping center on Route 38. The Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT) opted for the high dive.

The Philadelphia firm embarked on a radical makeover that would, it predicted, turn a stretch of Moorestown Mall into a destination for the rich that would make it the place to "dine, shop, and be seen" in South Jersey.

The result is its high-end "boutique row," which PREIT's vice president for marketing, Heather Crowell, predicted last week would be "a model that can be replicated in other parts of the country."

"We're very pleased with the progress so far," said Crowell, adding that PREIT had no intention of selling off the mall, as one of its major stockholders has urged.

PREIT projects that at year's end, Moorestown Mall's total occupancy rate will be 95 percent, and its non-anchor occupancy will be 89 percent. September sales were up 2 percent over last year, according to Crowell.

PREIT has acquired all five liquor licenses Moorestown Township has issued since voters in 2011 lifted a 96-year ban against the sale of alcohol. It used the licenses to woo renowned chefs such as Philadelphia's Marc Vetri and Jose Garces to open restaurants in the mall.

"Restaurants are the new anchor" for malls, PREIT's president, Joe Coradino, told The Inquirer last year. "And not just new. In many respects, they're a better anchor: They drive traffic but don't compete with the stores."

The former seven-screen United Artists movie theater got a makeover, too, reopening in December as a 12-screen Regal Premium Experience with surround-sound, stadium seating, and digital and 3D projectors.

PREIT also wooed the upscale Rizzieri Spa & Salon from its longtime home in Marlton to "boutique row." Rizzieri's 14,000 square feet of gleaming white counters, bright lights, and light-gray walls is diagonally opposite Vetri's Italian bistro-style Osteria and Garces' Mexican-style Distrito.

"It's been a very positive move," said Frank Rizzieri, co-owner of the spa with his father, Sal, as he walked the floor last week, greeting clients and employees. In operation since August, its grand opening was Wednesday.

He credits PREIT with creating "the right co-tenancy" - meaning shops and restaurants whose prosperous clients patronize one another - but also for investing heavily in the makeover it promised new tenants.

"They put a lot of money into this. They even gave me my own outside entrance," Rizzieri said. "The move wouldn't have worked without it."

Rizzieri's presence next door has been very positive for Erdon, said its owner and founder, Donna Sandoz. "The overflow is amazing."

Sandoz, who started the shop in 1992, was previously located above Rizzieri's flagship salon in Marlton. She travels five times a year to Europe to buy "progressive but not couture" women's apparel, shoes, bags, and jewelry.

"You would have to go to Paris or New York to find most of this," she said, showing off a pair of black, thick-soled clogs by the French designer Clergerie for $650.

"They're very sophisticated," said Sharon Rosenthal, an Erdon shopper from Philadelphia. "They have a big following."

Nevertheless, Sandoz this year had to sit through an "intimidating" interview with a "roomful of [PREIT] vice presidents" before she was invited to set up shop in the mall.

"I guess they liked me," she said. "But I was a nervous wreck."

Zeyzani Yurderi, co-owner with her husband of the woman's boutique Zeyzani, said she, too, was rigorously vetted before PREIT invited her relocate last month from Haddonfield, where her store had been for five years.

"To be honest, it was the restaurants and Rizzieri, that brought me here," said Yurderi, who designs many of the high, embroidered boots - some silk with copper threads - that sell for between $279 and $700.

"We try to be affordable," she said. "Somewhat."

Jeff Benjamin, Marc Vetri's business partner at Vetri Family Restaurants, called his firm's first venture outside Philadelphia a really good move.

"Some publicly traded [mall management companies] get a bad rap about being faceless," said Benjamin, "but PREIT's been great to work with. They said they'd bring in boutiques and restaurants and the spa, and they did what they promised.

"It's still a work in progress. It probably won't hit its stride for four or five years," Benjamin said. But its success with Osteria in Moorestown has Vetri looking to set up its next restaurant in the Washington suburbs.

Vetri and Garces' decisions last year to take a chance on Moorestown helped drive Dave Magrogan's recent decision to site his next Harvest Seasonal Grill & Wine Bar chain there.

"Their presence was absolutely a factor," the Glen Mills restaurateur said last week. He called the new mall a fantastic location because of the area's wealth and dense population. Moorestown's median household income was $94,000 in a recent census.

PREIT also announced last week that its fifth restaurant with a liquor license would be Yardhouse, a chain specializing in craft beers and bar food. Like Harvest, it expects to open next year.

The chophouse chain Firebirds also has a restaurant at the mall.

The cluster of high-end stores and restaurants is not intended to intimidate the shoppers who come for midrange stores such as Boscov's and American Eagle, Crowell said. It also has Macy's, Sears, and Lord & Taylor.

"The mall will still be a place where people can buy school clothes, shop for the holidays, go to a movie, and get a pizza," she said.

But "boutique row," she said, will remain "a distinct presence within."