In this age of Amazon and e-retail, what can be done with the aging, oversized retail buildings of the past that can no longer serve their original purpose? Hirsch MPG has been working on several projects addressing this issue. Oak Lawn Commons, located at 95th and Pulaski, was the home of a 172,000-sf former Kmart that sat vacant for many years. The redevelopment concept reduced that building to a more manageable 120,000 sf by removing the first two structural bays, allowing for more parking and the creation of valuable outlot buildings and giving the center a complete makeover. Three new tenants, an Amazon Fresh grocer, a Duly medical office building, and an LA Fitness, fill the building, each given its own architectural identity. By establishing a standardized palette of materials and scale, the design provided unique facades for each of the tenants while providing a unified design for the center. Two new outlot buildings, one for Panera Bread and one for Naf-Naf, share a landscaped plaza for outdoor dining, bringing retail presence and pedestrian scale closer to the 95th Street sidewalk. A third outlet for Shake Shack was located at the primary entrance. The existing outlot tenants that remained were incorporated into the overall upgraded parking, detention, and landscaping plan. We expect that this trend will continue to grow as more and more consumers choose the internet over bricks and mortar retailers.
