Maybe the city ought to consider changing its motto, "Provo: The Right Move," to "Provo: Shop Until You Drop."
Developers broke ground Monday for The Shops of Riverwoods, an upscale village of stores and restaurants at 4800 N. University Ave. The $30 million centerpiece of Riverwoods Business and Research Park will offer 193,000 square feet of retail space."Sometimes it felt as if this day would never come," said Daniel W. Campbell, managing general partner of EsNet Group. The Provo-based investment firm and TRS Partners LC of San Francisco put the project together.
EsNet initially announced construction of the shopping center two years ago, anticipating an August 1996 opening. But plans to jointly develop with Boston-based Carpenter Development Co. fell through. EsNet hooked up with TRS, and the two are aiming to open the shops in a year.
The Shops at Riverwoods in north Provo bookend an even bigger retail development on the city's south end, Provo Town Centre. The 950,000-square-foot regional mall is expected to open next fall.
DeLance Squire, former director of Community and Economic Development for Orem, doesn't think Utah County has the population to support even two malls. University Mall has long stood alone at the center of the county's shopping universe.
But if successful, the two new centers could reshape Utah Valley's shopping habits, even while going head to head themselves.
"I think there is room for both of those," Campbell said.
Although generally competing for the same customers, the much smaller Shops will cater to a more highbrow clientele than will the massive mall.
Ralph Epstein, manager member of TRS, said developer have secured letters of intent from such notable stores as Banana Republic, Williams-Sonoma, Eddie Bauer, The Polo Store and Borders Books and Music. He described it as a "dynamite offering of upscale retailers."
The Provo Towne Centre's main anchors will be J.C. Penney, Sears and Dillard's.
The Shops will be built among some of Provo's highest-priced homes in the neighboring Riverbottoms and Oak Hills areas. Duff Thompson, EsNet managing partner, noted that the prime piece of real estate was originally zoned for a ShopKo. "That just didn't add what we hoped for this community," he said.
The stores project will tie into the new 12-screen Carmike theaters and future office buildings in the 150-acre business park. Thompson said 4,000 to 6,000 people will eventually work at Riverwoods, which is already home to Franklin Covey, Ameritech, Folio Corp. and Universal Campus Credit Union.
Mayor George Stewart believes the valley is big enough for all three shopping centers and predicts it will be University Mall that suffers because of its proximity to the Shops.
Campbell and Stewart believe the Provo projects are coming at precisely the right time, while I-15 is under reconstruction.
"People are going to be tired of the traffic," Campbell said.
The new stores have four years while the highway is rebuilt to win over a share of the valley's 300,000 residents who currently prefer to shop up north.
"Why would someone want to go to Salt Lake? Everything you would want, except for Nordstrom, is here. And we're still working on that. Literally," Stewart said.