The Power Plant, an entertainment and office complex in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, has become a signature project for its developer, the Cordish Co. Now, the company wants to copy the name and success onto other retail-entertainment centers.
The Baltimore-based company is to break ground today on another Power Plant in Hampton, Va. The company planned to announce tenants including a Lowe's home improvement store, Brothers BrewPub and a Jocks & Jams, a sports paraphernalia retailer.
Other Power Plants are planned in Richmond, Va., and Jersey City, N.J.
The Cordish Co. has had success in developing other urban entertainment centers, including Bayou Place in Houston and Charleston Place in Charleston, S.C. But the new Power Plant project marks the first time Cordish has sought to establish a brand name from one of its developments.
Eventually, tourists arriving in a new town will associate the developments with others they've visited, said David Cordish, chairman of the Cordish Co. He said he was following the lead of the Mills Corp., developer of Potomac Mills and soon-to-open Arundel Mills.
"If you go to Florida and ask what's interesting and they say Sawgrass Mills, you know what that is," Cordish said. "We are hoping the same thing can happen with Power Plant. It denotes a certain type of product."
David Takesuye, senior associate at the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit real estate research organization, said the Cordish Co. has had success without establishing a brand name on its buildings. He pointed out the Power Plant and Bayou Place as luring visitors and helping to revitalize and expand urban cores.
The benefit of branding projects isn't entirely clear, said Lewis Goodkin, president of Goodkin Consulting in Miami. The most likely benefit may not be in attracting consumers but in luring top-notch retailers and venture partners.
"It doesn't have the same meaning to consumers as potential retail tenants," Goodkin said. "Mills, for example, has done successful projects, but if they had totally different names with the same ingredients the world would be the same."
Cordish said he does expect the Power Plant name to help lure retailers. He expects, however, to lure different retailers to each development, ones that are unique to the communities.
The theme will be the old-style industrial architecture with exposed steel and brick - even in Hampton, where the project will be new construction. When other Power Plants are up and running, the branding will have punch with consumers, he said.
