Mills Goes Abroad

Mills Corp. (Arlington, Va.) is planning to break into the European market next month with the opening of a new shopping and leisure complex — Madrid Xanadu. The $440 million center, developed in conjunction with Spanish partners, will be the largest mall in Spain with 1.4 million square feet.

Bars, restaurants, discotheques, cinemas, indoor go-karting and children's playgrounds, as well as a 17-foot Snow Dome with 820-foot ski run, will complement a retail mix aimed at including 20 anchor stores and more than 220 specialty retailers.

“You're going to walk into this thing and you're going to feel like you're in a theme park — a consumer theme park,” says Laurence Siegel, chairman and chief executive of Mills Corp., as reported in The New York Times.

Among the larger retail tenants already signed up to lease space are El Corte Ingles, Spain's largest retailer; Inditex, creator of fashion name Zara; Nike; Benetton; and H&M.

Mills and its partners aim to attract 25 to 30 million visitors a year to Xanadu, which is 14 miles south of the capital. “If you can add leisure to a project like this, people come for long periods and they bring the whole family,” says Siegel. “The ability to do that is just going to make the retail stores unbelievably successful because when people stay longer, they spend more money.”

Xanadu is the first European project for Mills, which made its name developing retail and entertainment destinations called “shoppertainment” centers in the U.S. Already the company is researching sites in Valencia, Barcelona and Seville, and planning centers in Milan and Rome. “Europe just looked like a terrific place to invest,” adds Siegel.