This morning's Denver Post details the relationship between our West Village and Denver's Larimer Square, its sister shopping center -- a love affair that began 12 years ago, turns out, when Denver developers came to Dallas and hired Urban Partners' David Levine (Director of Vision and Vibe, best title ever) to help revive the "ailing historic district" near downtown. (Before he went to UP, Levine was at Hillwood, where he was responsible for the initial retail leasing at Victory Park.) Which is how both strips came to house the Samba Room, Cru Wine Bar and the since-shuttered Octane.
Denver has a long history of borrowing Dallas-born restaurants and retailers, says the piece, which ends with a look at how much space Texas devotes to shopping centers -- and a shot at Texas, courtesy Mary Beth Jenkins, president of a Denver-based retail brokerage firm.
Nearly a quarter of the 257 million square feet of retail space in the nation's 525 major shopping centers is in Texas, according to Esri, a company that tracks the leasable area of major U.S. shopping centers bigger than 225,000 square feet.
"Texas is the heart and soul of U.S. retail," Jenkins said. "It's a sport down there, and people revere their shopping centers because there's not much else to do."
