Just two days after Westfield Montgomery Mall announced celebrity chef José Andrés was opening a restaurant there this summer, the retail center is further increasing its competitiveness with Tysons Corner and nearby Pike & Rose. A source tells me that upscale bowling, dining and entertainment brand Lucky Strike will open Lucky Strike Social: Gastropub and Bowling Suites in the mall this summer.
Sure to increase and retain customer traffic at the mall for longer periods, Lucky Strike will be located in the former movie theater space on Level 1.
Just as ArcLight Cinemas at the mall competes with iPic at Pike and Rose, Westfield will now have an upscale bowling experience to compete with Pinstripes, expected to open in 2017 at the nearby Federal Realty development.
Stay tuned for further details.
37 comments:
Now that is interesting if true. I love to bowl and can't get anyone to go out and roll a few. This could be the best addition to the mall in awhile anyway. Only possible cause for concern is the cost. These modern bowling alley's can be expensive as crap. I'll be watching to see if this gets confirmed cause potentially it could be very cool.
I'm not against it ... But ... The parking at the mall already sucks. This will make it worse. Plus, if you enter the mall via this 1st floor parking garage entrance, be prepared to hold your nose. It stinks like rotting garbage down there.
Interesting use of the space!
But that entrance is right by the dumpsters, thus the smell.
What a great add to the community, thanks Hans Reimer!
I love to bowl! I usually go to Bowl American in Gburg...and I come from Bethesda. I hate going to any of the Lucky Strike or Bowlmor alleys.
Oh, so this is going in where the old theater was? Got it. There are some areas or even corridors at the mall that are dingy and that's one of them. They'll improve that should a place like Lucky in fact open. A successful business like that wouldn't move in without the mall doing a facelift at that entrance.
@ Scott Orkin - the bowling alley on Shady Grove Road has been Bowlmor for some time now.
4:57: I think you are correct - you'll notice most new additions to the mall have an exterior presence, and one of the Westfield executives suggested that is a conscious strategy going forward.
3:48: Hans Riemer is trying to tear down malls, and replace them with town centers - he hardly gets any credit for Westfield's $90M+ investment in their property.
Scott, although I also appreciate the newer bowling concepts, I know exactly where you're coming from. I was a Bowl America person myself at the Westbard location until they left. Many a hot dog was eaten, many an arcade game was played on a family-friendly bowling night.
Which malls is Hans Riemer "trying to tear down"? And are any of the other Councilpersons who defeated you trying to do that?
This is a fantastic addition to the Montgomery county nighttime economy!
Yes please qualify your statement. Thank you.
"3:48: Hans Riemer is trying to tear down malls, and replace them with town centers - he hardly gets any credit for Westfield's $90M+ investment in their property."
Huh? First Dyer complains that the county council spent $4M to help revitalize Wheaton Mall by luring a Costco, then Dyer complains that the county council is trying to tear down malls? Clearly, you just like whining no matter what, Dyer. That, or you're truly a moron.
List of malls in MoCo:
-Wheaton Plaza
-Montgomery Mall
-Rockville Mall (demolished 1990s)
-White Flint Mall (demolished by owners 2014-15)
-Lakeforest Mall
-City Place Mall (former Hecht's department store)
Which of these is Hans Riemer "trying to tear down"?
8:58: All of them. He won't be successful, because Westfield is reinvesting big time in both Montgomery Mall and Wheaton Plaza. So are the new owners of Ellsworth Place. Malls are making a comeback, much like suburbs and SUVs. Riemer is out of touch with the times.
Can you provide some proof to your statement?
Dyer - those of us living on Planet Earth require more substantiation than just "this idea popped into my head yesterday afternoon". In mental health, this is called "delusion". In journalism and in academia, this is called "fabrication".
Yes.
Hopefully they spend some money and renovate that entrance to be more exciting. Maybe also a better connection down the escalator from the food court. This is cool. Hopefully it really boosts the mall numbers and makes it more vibrant.
Re: Anon @4:21 AM -- No, the Moribundly Sloth-Level-Energy Dyer cannot provide documentable proof to the statement since (a) this would put Dyer on record yet again as resorting to sloth-level-energy statements that are non-factual a/k/a lies and (b) prove also that the only reason Dyer has to rise from sloth-level-energy to low-level-energy is to spout empty non-provable rants about Riemer, much less any other member of the MoCo Council.
Either that or he's jealous that Hans has better hair.
Of course The Moribundly Sloth-Level-Energy Dyer has to resort to the "it's Riemer's fault" trope, especially if things like (a) the demolition/redevelopment of Rockville Mall happened decades before Riemer even got within 90 million miles of MoCo.; (b) White Flint was clearly a white elephant for 15 years before redevelopment even was talked about for that area; and (c) Westfield Corp definitely has pulled off a great job with repositioning and updated Wheaton Mall the past few years.
"Malls are making a comeback."
No, they're not. The last new enclosed suburban mall to be built in this area was Fair Oaks, in about 1980. As for existing malls, the very largest, best-located malls (e.g. Montgomery, Wheaton, Tysons Corner) are doing OK. All the rest are doing poorly or have already been demolished. Capital Plaza, Landover Mall, Laurel Mall, Rockville Mall, Skyline Center and White Flint Mall are already gone. Landmark Mall is mostly vacant, awaiting redevelopment. Ballston Common is being redeveloped in phases. Lakeforest and Manassas Mall are limping along.
And stores which are typically the anchors or junior anchors are doing poorly or even near bankruptcy - Sears, JCPenney, Macy's, A&F, and Aeropostale, to list just a few.
@7:45am I think Lakeforest will be next on the list. On the plus side, because it's not popular, there was no line to take my kid to see Santa in December.
I think some of these malls are failing due to the owners not wanting to spend money to innovate and keep up with the times. Most businesses will fail if you don't update things. Montgomery Mall and Tysons are an example of how innovation and frequent innovation can lead to a very successful mall.
White Flint didn't do any updating for 15 years.. no wonder they failed.
"Malls are making a comeback" ROTFLMAO. Stop smoking your mama's parsley it's effecting your remaining brain cells. Across America you couldn't name a new mall built in the last five years. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-dying-breed-the-american-shopping-mall/ No wonder you can't win an election, your concepts are antiquated and MORIBUND. Maybe you can bring back the mullet if you try hard enough.
Malls ARE making a comeback. Just not the malls of the past. Westfield is following the trend with Montgomery Mall. Adding more entertainment & eating venues, ending
"anchor" department stores, and having "events." Like an enclosed main street.
In affluent areas, of course, as the income gap gets larger.
Didn't Westfield close their mid-west malls to focus on the $$ coasts?
Peter,
A. At least you acknowledge Riemer is a Wall Street carpetbagger.
B. Lerner themselves stated within 2 years of the demolition starting that White Flint was, quote, "fully leased". Parking was full. You had to walk a long way from available parking to Cheesecake Factory. White Flint was no "white elephant".
8:21: Mike Miller has already brought the mullet back. In fact, Westbard developer Equity One just built an enclosed mall in the Bronx, to name just one. No residential component, less than a block from a subway station.
The mall in the Bronx is not a "new mall". It is one that is several decades old that was expanded in 2014. Plus, it's a couple hundred miles from here. It doesn't refute the overall trend away from malls. Not sure what haircuts of Maryland politicians have to do with this.
The Moribundly Sloth-Level Energy Dyer quoth assorted sloth-level-energy statements in response to my 7:24 high-energy posting.
In re: A. As you know I did not state anything about Riemer's actual or perceived Wall Street carpetbagger status. Maybe you need to actually read what I did actually say, again.
In re: B. I was in White Flint many a time in the past 15 years; given that maybe 70% of the floor space on the top floor had been given over to offices or unrented retail fronts, even as long as 10 years ago, to me is a significant piece of evidence that it was dying it's death for a LOOOOOONG time.
The problem with White Flint was that they were just too close to two other malls, and as a result it was much harder to get the bigger chains to open stores there. They got lucky with Bloomingdale's, because the mall was being built right at the time that Bloomingdale's was expanding into the DC metro area. If the I. Magnin store had become available two years earlier, White Flint might have been able to snag Nordstroms. Instead, it went in Momtgomery Mall after Garfinckel's and Raleigh closed there.
Also, White Flint was much more poorly located relative to the local road network, than Montgomery or Wheaton.
11:25: How quickly you forgot the clown who used to call Bob Ehrlich "Bobby Haircut". Turnabout is totally fair play.
Peter - so you are saying Lerner lied in its statement the mall was "fully leased?"
The Moribundly Sloth-Level-Energy Dyer quoth a sloth-level-energy statement somehow paraphrasing my 1:37 post (which is actually 4:37, thank you very much, since the Sloth-Level-Energy Dyer can't figure out what timezone he actually lives in, perhaps, even with the help of the Google-owned Blogger) to mean that I said that the Lerners are lying about their full-lease status.
Um no. If I want to say that I would say that. But perception is reality after all, and I perceived all those nice retail spaces as empty, therefore they must have been empty, therefore White Flint was dying it's death.
And yeah that's probably because any interested retailer saw better value setting up shop at Montgomery Mall than at White Flint. Seems pretty logical to me.
For all we know, all that empty space was leased out to other Lerner divisions and booked as accounting measures? Who knows, unless you want to break into their offices and case the files.
peter-
"booked as accounting measures" Um.No. What are these accounting measures of which you speak?
"Given over to offices" (rather than retail) still equals "leased", Dyer, you dunce.
6:21 - Peter said that, not Dyer. Who's the dunce?
Re: Anon @ 5:57 -- sorry. In some conglomerates that have many sub-entities that own real estate, instead of cutting actual checks and so on, if one entity is renting from another, it's easier to log said charges in the accounting system but no actual money is changing hands.
I believe this is how it works in the federal government sphere, where the GSA is the landlord for most federal civilian agency real estate; it's not like Commerce or the FBI or EPA for example are writing checks monthly to the GSA for their office buildings, it's all bookkeeping ultimately.
And IMHO I do not think that using space originally designed for retail but putting it in use for offices instead (corporate or otherwise) is not really the best, highest use of said space, especially if the company that owns the mall is using it itself or "renting" it out to one of their sister companies.
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