Originally Posted by
esp1986
I know Gilbert doesn't own all of Merchant's Row, but it looks like he at least has the rights to the street level spaces in quite a few buildings between State St. and Grand Circus Park. So we could very well see somewhat of an 'open-air' mall [[same developer/builder). I believe I read somewhere that there hasn't been an enclosed mall built in the US in about 10 years, but there have been a lot of open-air malls. It sure seems like that's Gilbert's goal here. He wants to have walkable streets, an enclosed mall would defy that. My guess would be that the 'retail' spaces in any development would simply be ground floor spaces, or maybe a couple floors to lure a department store, even if it was a number of spaces. Even in the Water Tower in Chicago, you don't see very many people on the uppermost floors [[6,7).