Friday marks the official opening of southwest Fort Worth’s newest shopping center Waterside, a residential and retail development.
REI, the specialty outdoor retailer, will open its fifth Texas store at Waterside on Friday.
When it is complete, Waterside will feature 175,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space, 800 residential units, 200,000 square feet of office space, a hotel, a public event space, hiking trails and access to Trinity River for paddling.
A development of this nature is more of a “lifestyle center,” according to one retail expert, who suggested Waterside has “taken to another level” what facilities like Watters Creek in Allen and Plano’s Shops at Legacy have already achieved.
“They’re really looking for experiences. They’re not necessarily looking for material goods,” said Dwight Hill, of retail consulting company McMillan Doolittle. “What a lifestyle center offers is not only shopping but, also dining and also, perhaps, an event, or maybe play areas for customers to shop and linger. And that’s the whole point of a lifestyle center. They want you to linger in order to really experience the center.”
