The Lab Developer Plans Organic Foods Center in Portland, Ore.
The Lab founder and niche-market developer Shaheen Sadeghi has set his sights on organic foods for his latest project.
The Costa Mesa, Calif.–based developer has a successful track record in building retail developments to serve burgeoning subcultures. In 1992, he opened The Lab, which offered fashions for the alternative rock scene. In 2002, he opened The Camp, which focused on eco- and active-inspired fashions and restaurants.
By 2012, Sadeghi’s development company, Lab Holding LLC, will build Seed at Centennial Mills in Portland, Ore. It’s a 150,000-square-foot retail center for organic-foods restaurants, groceries and markets in Portland’s stylish Pearl District, which sits on the banks of the Willamette River.
Lab Holding got a green light from Portland’s Board of Development Commissioners on March 26 to develop the area into a place that will feature park land, a public amphitheater and a farmer’s-market area reserved for produce and wines native to the Portland region. Also planned are yoga and Pilates centers.
The retail center’s 100-year-old mill buildings and wharfs will be renovated by Thomas Meyer, founding principal of Minneapolis-based architecture firm Meyer Scherer &Rockcastle Ltd. Meyer also will design new buildings for Seed at Centennial Mills.
No Seed at Centennial Mills tenants have been signed yet. Unlike The Lab and The Camp, which are dominated by fashion retailers, the Portland retail center might only have space for one fashion retailer.
Sadeghi said he thought he would try something new with his tenant mix at the new project. He also intended Seed at Centennial Mills as a retail space that would highlight the organic-foods scene of Portland. “Fashion is everywhere,” Sadeghi said. “But fashion is not over.”
Sadeghi’s tenant choice might have more to do with smart merchandising than utopian experiment, according to Brian Dyches, a vice president of strategy for Torontobased branding and architecture firm Watt International. Downtown Portland already enjoys a thriving community of fashion retailers who share many of Sadeghi’s aesthetic ideas, Dyches said.
“He’s being smart with his location dynamics,” Dyches said. “He realizes that he has got to bring a tenant mix and a story that is different from its surroundings.”
Sadeghi is also planning to build another retail center close to his Costa Mesa headquarters. By late 2010, construction is scheduled to begin on North Beach, a 56,000- square-foot retail center in the town of San Clemente, Calif., located in southern Orange County.
North Beach will overlook the Pacific Ocean from a perch on the corner of Avenida Pico and El Camino Real in San Clemente. Its buildings will be designed in downtown San Clemente’s dominant Spanish Colonial Revival style. North Beach’s architects will be Santa Barbara, Calif.–based Henry Lenny Design Studio Inc. and the Los Angeles office of architectural firm Gensler.
Like Centennial Mills, North Beach will not offer much fashion retail. Instead, it will offer cafeacute;s, restaurants and perhaps a bookstore. “It will blend into the local community,” Sadeghi said. “It will promote local culture.” —Andrew Asch
