LINDA CROWLEY, Shopping center consultant

Linda Crowley’s mission: fill empty spaces in troubled shopping centers. It’s no easy task. Orange County is already saturated with retail space, and the recession has made competition even worse. Whether it means making a supermarket more visible or adding a funky restaurant, Crowley has filled the gaps so centers become vibrant again. Crowley, the owner of an Irvine consulting firm, even sees strip centers as town squares, where neighbors gather to chat, shop and dine. She spoke to Times correspondent Ted Johnson.

* Does Orange County have any more room for shopping centers?

There’s hardly anywhere that’s under-built. There is only so many square feet that each person needs for all their retail needs. The number I heard last was 45 square feet per person. We’re at about 57 square feet in Orange County. (In the 1980s) a lot of centers that were built didn’t need to be built. There wasn’t a demand for them. It was just: “There’s money; It looks good on paper.” And the result of that is the consumer is going to win.

* With the recession, and so many shopping centers out there already, how do you find a tenant to fill a space?

You have to approach it scientifically. You have to identify the problems. Why aren’t they 100% leased? My client was the Irvine Co. on the majority of these deals. They hired me as a consultant to oversee and merchandise their 22 shopping centers. They all relate to each other because they are all going for the same customers, the same trade area. So what I did was look at the whole picture and saw who we had for tenants and looked for holes as to what we didn’t have. You look at what the competition is, you study that vacancy factor in the trade area, and then, for each vacancy, we identify a hit list. We go after the best operators in that category. That’s why a plan is so important.

* What were some of the problems you faced in Irvine?

When Irvine was a brand new city, the whole philosophy in those days was “hide the retail.” You couldn’t see a supermarket from the street. For a long time, they had the only game in town, so it worked just because of that. It would be the only shopping center in the trade area.

* What would you do when there were two shopping centers built right next to one another?

You have to position the center you are trying to fix. For example, Woodbridge Center, which is right in the heart of Irvine. It was anchored by a major grocery chain, Vons. It was in a center that you could hardly see. It had no visibility. So what happened is the Irvine Co., in the ‘80s, built a shopping center (nearby) anchored by a Lucky and a Payless, and two years later they built another shopping center with a Ralphs. So at the Vons, the sales just went down. All of a sudden, that center suffered greatly. So what I had to do was think of ways to bring in new tenants into the center to draw the customers back. The one thing this center had which the others didn’t was a theater. So I played off that. What works pretty well with a theater is a restaurant. I did a deal with Chevy’s, it was their second unit in Southern California. And then I also did a deal with Ruby’s. And we wanted to bring in something that the community was lacking, instead of just another typical chain--the Coco’s, the Bob’s Big Boy, the McDonald’s, the Carl’s Jr. We were trying to create that tenant mix where there was something to do once they got there.

* You place an emphasis on getting entertainment-oriented businesses into neighborhood centers. Is this the future direction for these centers?

In Orange County, entertainment is pretty much being taken care of in shopping centers. That’s where it draws people together. We don’t have a true town center, a place where you go, you see people, you sit in the cafe and watch everyone go by. Everything is so planned and rigid as to what you can and can’t do, that we have to create it within shopping centers. . . . Southern California grew pretty much into the planned community. But what they didn’t plan into it was charm. So one of my biggest goals was to bring street people and street life to where they would allow it.

* It sounds like trying to re-create the town square in the shopping center?

I don’t see anywhere else it can be done, with the absence of a Main Street.

A lot of developers are putting community rooms in their shopping centers in space that is difficult to lease. We’ve done this in two Irvine Co. shopping centers, that the Girl Scouts can use or the Boy Scouts can use. Any special interest that is non-profit can book time in the room. It’s for the community’s use.

* What about a center that has lost an anchor tenant?

In the Walnut Village Center (in Irvine), we lost both anchors. It’s across the street from the Heritage Center, a center not owned by the Irvine Co. That has a Ralphs, a Sav-On. It’s really successful. So we studied the whole trade area to see what was missing. What it didn’t have we went after. We ended up with Trader Joe’s and Super Crown Books. Trader Joe’s took the old Irvine Ranch Market space; Crown Books took an old Liquor Barn space. We got Crown Books there because we said: “Hey, you need to position yourself with the competition.” Bookstar was doing deals where the minimum size was 10,000 square feet; a typical Crown Books was in a neighborhood center at 2,500 square feet. Then Bookstar opened up in Tustin Market Place, a power center about a mile away. So now Crown Books is opening its biggest store in the nation in this center. And they decided that, almost all of their new deals were going to be for big spaces.

* What types of businesses are moving into these spaces?

Very specialized services. Right now, we represent a client that makes bread, but only whole-wheat bread and with no fat. In one center the uses are almost all services. They have Pasta Bravo, which is pasta to go; it was a men’s ready-to-wear store. A video store is now Mail Boxes Etc. A jewelry store is now a hair salon.

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On making centers more of a meeting place. . .

“You see people, people attract people. They gravitate to where other people are. That’s what you want to show.”

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On the trendy business to have in a center. . .

“Coffee, coffee, everywhere coffee. Just like when yogurt was--boom! --every center had yogurt. Now it is coffee. They’re oversaturated with coffee.”

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On mom-and-pop businesses. . .

“A lot of them will survive, a lot of them won’t. People still want to deal one on one. There’s so much competition now, unless they have something really special, they’re not going to make it.”

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On creating a sense of place at a shopping center. . .

“You want to create as much choice as possible to not only get them there, but you want to keep them there as long as possible. That way all of the center’s tenants would benefit.”