Wednesday, July 19, 2017

CoCo Walk, Coconut Grove (Miami), FL

     As our final Miami post for the time being, we will take a look at one of the city's most overlooked shopping venues : Coconut Grove's CoCo Walk. Named for the city's abbreviation CoCo Walk, CW is a lifestyle center located in the heart of the Miami neighborhood Coconut Grove. It's an acting extension to the downtown area, which has plenty of these weird mallways around, in my opinion. Most stores are locally-owned, with GAP and Victoria's Secret reciprocating on this. While there are vacancies and a recently closed Cheesecake Factory, it's not exactly a dying mall. It brings people to the area, which helps all the shops and restaurants surrounding. Not much more to be asked.
     The mall's short and small history starts in 1990, as the first of three phases opened to the public. At the time, the center's acting anchor was an AMC 16-screen operation. The second phase was completed 4 years later, adding another eight screens to the AMC, becoming the namesake 16 screens. The last phase came in 2002, adding a four-story office building and an expansion of GAP. The movie theatre underwent a few name changes the following years. AMC became Muvico in 2010, and Muvico became Cinépolis shortly afterward.
     Today's CoCo Walk contains about 30 spots for commercial or office development. The offices are located on  the area's fourth floor. The third floor contains the theatre and a couple spots. The second floor has a few local shops and a sports bar. The first floor holds the GAP and Victoria's Secret stores. One retailer on the second floor is a cross clothing store and Pan American Airlines museum (maybe in correlation with the old NAS a couple blocks away?). As I said before, there is a vacancy problem here.
     As for renovation/redevelopment/expansion, there's not much to be done here. Expansions are unnecessary when there are vacancies, and there is nowhere to go. Renovations aren't needed when the mall isn't that ugly or dated. Redevelopment isn't necessary too. Turning it into full offices would decline the downtown as part of the stores are destroyed. Demolition would be downright pointless. Don't fix it if it ain't broke.


Directory. I dunno how I would explain the shape of this.




Those tables are for a Starbucks on the corner.

Add caption

Looking across at the theatre.


Pan-Am museum.



All four floors in full view here. That is a gym at the top.


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