Sitting on the Edge of the Rivers of Commerce

Grand Opening of New Market, Columbus Ohio, March 28, 1995. Rick Hill age 32, Richard Hill age 6 and Devon Hill age 4

The Two Rivers of Commerce: How the Consumer Goods Distribution Channel Lost Its Way — and Where It’s Flowing Next

In 1982, standing before an audience of developers, brokers, and architects at an ICSC conference in Atlanta, I said something that surprised even me:

“The consumer goods distribution channel is like rivers of water. Over time, it will find its most efficient path from one place to another.”

It was not a metaphor—it was a diagnosis.

I wasn’t talking about stores, or even malls. I was talking about the entire system through which goods, entertainment, and experiences move. Long before the internet, Amazon, and same-day delivery, I could sense the current shifting. Retail was reorganizing itself—not around people, but around efficiency.

Downtowns, department stores, and malls were once the public face and physical place of the retail distribution network. They were the touch points where commerce and community converged. Over time, those points grew fewer and farther between. Malls matured. Festival marketplaces faltered. Outlet, power, and lifestyle centers emerged as new channels, each more streamlined than the last.

The water was still flowing but its channel was changing shape.

The truth I was reaching for that day is still the same today:

The physical marketplace sits between two powerful currents: one of mechanical and automated efficiency and the other human centered and experiential.

One seeks to deliver goods with perfect efficiency and the other builds community through places that deliver meaning and connection.

The First Current: Retail as Water

The pursuit of efficiency has always defined the consumer goods distribution channel. From the rise of catalogues to big-box retail to e-commerce, the goal has remained the same: deliver what people want - when they want it - and at the lowest price.

When I began my career, department stores were the gravitational center of the mall. In 1975, they generated more than half of total mall sales. Today, they represent less than ten percent. Many department stores, one the only mall anchors, have been demolished and replaced big boxes stores and with outdoor restaurants and entertainment courts.

Online retail, now roughly 15–18 percent of U.S. retail sales, continues to cut a more direct and frictionless path between producer and consumer.

The rivers of purely transactional commerce never stop, constantly seeking the lowest point of resistance.

But in that relentless search for efficiency, we’ve washed away something essential: human places of community gathering, connection, delight, wonder, and meaning.

The Second Current: People Need a Shore

When I first walked into The Mall in St. Matthews, Kentucky an upscale suburban community in the Louisville metro area at the age eleven, I wasn’t there to buy anything - heck I didn’t have any money anyway. But unknowingly I was about to experience something new: a Victor Gruen inspired enclosed mall: the first in Kentucky. To this day I remember the koi ponds between the tropical plants, reflecting pools, dancing waters, aviaries, the giant chessboard, the Calder-like mobiles floating overhead, and the portrait artists working in storefronts open to the public promenades. It was civic theater unlike what I had ever seen and far beyond the experience of my hometown’s main street.

Years later, I learned that a marketplace with a soul isn’t built from a curated tenant mix or a ledger tallying sales per square foot. It’s built from emotional intent: a rhythm, a flow, and an authenticity that connects people to place.

In 1985 I saw that truth in New Market in Columbus, the first enclosed outlet mall I developed after leaving The Rouse Company in 1983. On opening day my son and daughter sat on the steps of the fountain I designed, their feet at the water’s edge. Years later, I saw it again at Bal Harbour in Miami, where a mother and daughter were feeding koi in the glow of the world’s most luxurious storefronts. Neither scene had anything to do with transactions. They were moments of people simply being human together.

Between Currents: Lessons From Change

After redeveloping Charlottetown Mall in Charlotte into Outlet Square: the first regional mall converted into an outlet center, as the Wall Street Journal noted I began seeing a different kind of current forming. To celebrate the successful opening of Outlet Square, in November of 1982, I traveled with Eugene Kalkin, founder of Linens ‘n Things and David Bishop of Waccamaw Pottery to search for new retail formats.  On a rainy day in Munich we discovered IKEA and I ran down the store manager and asked for a corporate contact. The first day back in my office in Charlotte, I  wrote to Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, inviting him to the United States. That letter resulted in a quick response that led directly to IKEA’s first three U.S. store: Plymouth Meeting and White Marsh Mall, two Rouse Company properties and Potomac Mills developed by Western Development. Through the eyes of Eugene Kalkin, I could see that IKEA made efficiency visible at mass scale: a guided behavioral pathway, self-service logistics, and instant take-home.

When I developed New Market, I tested whether off-price and outlet retail could coexist in a 157,500 square foot small, enclosed mall without anchors and softened by trees, skylights, and fountains. It worked operationally and financially (i.e. sold to New York Life) but it revealed an important truth: it]s very difficult to merge price-driven retail with non-essential gathering places and expect emotional connection to survive.

My next chapter moved into the experiential marketplace when my company, Hill Partners Inc. developed Jackson Brewery in New Orleans with Planet Hollywood and Virgin Megastore for New York Life and created a redevelopment strategy with Disney for the Old Post Office in Washington, D.C.  I also became a development partner in Barefoot Landing in Myrtle Beach, anchored by 13 restaurants, Alligator Adventure, and House of Blues which was managed and leased by Hill Partners. These were living laboratories for understanding how vacation behavior, national historic landmarks, waterfront wonders, and emotion intersect in a new form of experiential marketplaces.

But across the nation many projects during this era mistook entertainment for experience. “Festive Marketplaces” initially were hyper local with fish and meat markets eventually became tourist destinations and devolved into frivolous retail mixes of teddy-bear shops, kite stores, and “everything left-handed.” Losing traction to the novelty of the festive positioning developers tried to graft spectacle with entertainment characterized by Planet Hollywood, DisneyQuest, GameWorks, and Rainforest Café. Most eventually failed. They were engineered for novelty, not meaning. They created attention, not a loving attachment to place.

The Places That Still Matter

Some of my most important recent work has focused on luxury hospitality, immersive cultural destinations, and regenerative communities.

At Four Seasons Punta Mita. Mexico, over weeks I studied guest behavior. 32% arrived by private jet. An amount equal to the room rates was spent on dining, services, and retail. More importantly I found that by the fourth day, guests were restless: sunburned, golfed out, tired of the 3-meal-a-day restaurants, and seeking authenticity. What they truly wanted was something real, something emotionally grounding, and something uniquely local to occupy a fully active 6–7-day vacation.

A major lesson:  UHNW individuals give resorts their most precious commodity – there time.

In Jeddah, I was entrusted with leading the pre-design programming of a 40-story mixed-use project in the Holy City of Mecca, a place of extraordinary spiritual importance to at least a quarter of the world’s population. An ah! ha! moment occured when discussing the nature of pilgrimages that I realized that raising floor heights, upper floors gained a direct view of the Holy Kaaba. A simple architectural adjustment created a profound spiritual connection to a physical place far outpacing any known pricing model. It was a lesson in empathy: design begins with listening.

Across all these experiences, I’ve learned that efficiency can deliver goods, but only humanity can deliver grace.

What I’ve Learned

    The trite, the untested, the quick fix, and next big thing is always going to be replaced by another big thing.

    Any type of shopping centers beyond the most functional commodity centered are operating-living-breathing-organisms that require ongoing injections of life and cannot be managed as fixed assets.

    Efficiency always wins the immediate transaction, but humanity needs far more than transactional marketplaces.

    Be one or the other: The most efficient means of transaction or a place of meaningful connections.

    A place without soul can’t be fixed with gimmicks and spectacle.

    The ability to listen and hear is an asset.

    The silence of a place often tells you what’s missing.

    The best developers are community builders and not curators of income generating units.

    People do not want to escape life; they want to feel and experience it more deeply.

Where the Currents Are Now

Efficiency and humanity are two separate systems, each vital, each with its own logic.

    The efficiency current compress time and distance: selection, price, convenience, speed.

    The relentless drive of the most efficient delivery of goods is driving department stores and even big bog stores off center stage.

    Mall promenades and parking lots are now fulfillment centers.

    The human current expands time worth spending: belonging, ritual, and memory. It creates plazas, gardens, and pavilions where there is the point.

Problems arise when these systems are confused. Developers bolt spectacle onto transactional space and call it “placemaking.” The result is another round of short-lived entertainment concepts that fail to create a place where people truly want to be and where they can simply be human.

The result? Another round of short-lived entertainment concepts that fail to create a place where people want to be to be human.

The fix is not cosmetic—it’s structural

If a project is about distribution, honor its purpose: clarity, access, and operational precision.
If it’s about people, design for lingering: edible edges of cafes, shaded thresholds, music at human volume, water that invites touch, and moments that become memorable.

Strategy for the Next Decade

    Acknowledge the divide. Transactional places should serve speed; people places must serve meaning.

    Stop trying to be the mall of the moment with the instant replication of new concepts that have not met the test of time.

    End the “bolt-on entertainment” reflex. Replace it with daily rituals such as morning walkers, places of tranquility, weekend markets, local music, and extraordinary seasonal programming. Return the trees, the fountains, the giant chessboards, the art, and sculptures.

    Re-urbanize comfort. Borrow from parks, not stadiums. A billion-dollar arena will never equal the civic magnetism of a great urban promenade like the High Line or Central Park.

    Measure what matters. Beyond sales per square foot, measure time well spent in dwell time, repeat visits, and patterns of belonging.

    Lead with intent. Design for specific communities, not anonymous averages.

Where I Stand

After decades in this business, I remain convinced: retail will continue to behave like rivers of water. It will find the fastest, cheapest, most efficient route to the buyer. But people will always seek the steppingstones of human life: the plazas, cafés, promenades, and parks where time slows and community becomes visible.

Today, my work uses technology for state art data collection to develop cutting edge market driven strategies but clearly filtered through decades of observation to help cities, suburban communities, and rural areas and their elected officials, planners, and developers choose the river they’re carving out of urban fabric and the natural landscape.

The goal is to restore soul to the marketplace with human centered community experiences without resisting progress.

When the purpose is distribution, remove friction. When the purpose is belonging, compose the moments that give life meaning.

Where the two rivers now meet in efficiency and humanity lies the opportunity to define what comes next. I do not believe the next generation of meaningful places will come from another retail format, development trend, and next big thing. They’ll come from how we create the spaces between commerce, culture, and daily life which goes well beyond the current buzz words of placemaking.

Imagine vertical promenades like the High Line intersecting with historic industrial buildings and affordable real estate: places where old frameworks find new expression and throwaway zones are brought back to life. Imagine public gardens with cafés serving as neighborhood hubs, much like Tulsa’s Gathering Place. Think of Tivoli Gardens reimagined through the language of light, water, sound, and digital choreography rather than the tacked on new entertainment uses. Consider culturally immersive destinations, regenerative communities, and new workplaces that blend creative industries, hospitality, and education in a single human-scaled environment.

These are not entertainment districts or lifestyle centers. They are the living evolution of the public realm—designed for participation, conversation, and memory. They serve commerce, but they belong to community.

In the end, efficiency will always find its fastest path, just as rivers do. But meaning is found where the current slows—where we linger long enough to connect.