Today we’d like to introduce you to Carol Todreas.
Carol, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I still find it strange that the company I co-founded grew out of a life-long interest. Ever since I was kid growing up in a suburb of Cleveland, I was fascinated by Downtown and the gritty warehouse area called The Flats. These 2 areas and the inner city Hungarian and Italian neighborhoods of old Cleveland had great vibes while the suburbs felt monotonous and predictable. Since then my fascination and thus my mission has been to understand what makes retail areas exciting and how exciting retail areas can help to bring life back to urban places and downtowns.
Having studied European History and Art History it is no wonder the BRA (Boston Redevelopment Authority) could not find a place for me in their organization, so I had to nudge my way in as a volunteer. After 6 weeks I became an employee in the Historic Preservation Planning Department, a very unpopular and understaffed department at that time. After surviving many lay-offs I finally was the victim of one and had to leave. Looking back it was a blessing in disguise changing my trajectory from writer/ researcher/planner to a leading voice in the dynamic and ever-changing world of retail development.
My big career opportunity came with the innovative and hugely challenging project of converting Faneuil Hall Marketplace’s, the three historic but dilapidated and underused market buildings, into a new kind of retail center, the Historic Festival Marketplace. In the mid 1970’s a well-known developer, The Rouse Company, bravely took on the once failed project. In its frustrating and frenzied effort to get the central building, Quincy Market, open in time for the Nation’s Bicentennial I was able to create a job assisting the developer market and lease the newly transformed spaces. The most challenging aspect of this job was to create enough of a buzz to have the project and me representing it on national TV, newspapers, international magazines, and any and all media available at the time. I had 6 months to do this part of the job. I was awarded a Public Relations Award for my effort.
It was the most exciting and original retail development project on the planet. Its unexpected success turned around conventional ideas about retail, erased many sacred rules of thumb about what retail centers needed for profit and showed the world that a substantial retail center could be built in a downtrodden part of a city in historic buildings without the usual sea of parking around it, among other things. At the same time it revived Boston’s sick tourism industry and lifted the spirit of the city as a whole. Retail became a major tourist attraction and a center of nighttime entertainment.
After this incredible win, I moved to Paris and self-created another job working for the most innovative European retail and new town developer, Societe Des Centres Commerciaux. From then I searched for projects that advanced my mission and allowed me to explore, innovate, and expand my horizons in sync with the ever-changing world of retail development. To achieve these goals I co-founded Todreas Hanley Associates (THA)
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Since the late 1980’s most new retail development in the USA has been to create ever larger malls and shopping centers. Unfortunately, big did not often equate with exciting or even interesting. Rising gas prices, increase in working and commuting time combined to change shopping from an interesting diversion into a boring chore.
What THA does is to provide fine—grain, market-based retail options to the marketplace and in so doing to bring to US downtowns and neighborhoods the amenities, quality and joy provided by the kind of mix of merchants and uses found in European cities and towns.
We advise owners, business groups, and local governments on what will make their existing or proposed shopping area more interesting, exciting and attractive. We advise how the building owners, store owners, brokers, bankers, city officials can work together to understand their place in the market, the options and tools that are available and the possible benefits to all concerned.
The biggest challenge has been to identify strategies that the players listed in the previous paragraph understand the value in their location, the importance of their decisions and actions and how to build on local customs, foods, history and other attractions that are obliterated in large scale cookie cutter malls. Creating the balance in the tenant mix between national retailer and independent locals goes with the territory and thus with the challenge. A similar challenge is to support long established stores and new innovative ideas that shake things up and keeps shoppers coming back to see what is happening now!
Please tell us about Todreas Hanley Associates.
We are a consulting company focused on innovative, smaller-scale retail development and re-development. Our specialty is assisting developers, city officials, property owners, architects, and planners understand each other and work together to create sustainable retail wherever it may be planned, with or without other uses.
We believe the viability of neighborhood commercial streets and downtowns and even shopping centers is deeply connected to local merchants who understand and want to serve neighborhood customers, be they residents, employees, or visitors. And that retail centers are a critical component that enriches the quality of life, vitality of a community, or the experience of a particular place.
Some of our most successful projects are: Brookline Village; Thorne’s Market in Northampton, MA; MIT’s Ray and Maria Stata Center; and The Grove, Shrewsbury, New Jersey. Some of our most successful consulting efforts prevent financial disaster to a developer: We show how the market forces cannot support retail in the location.
Like other consultants we do studies and obtain and analyze data, but in addition, we are different.
What sets up apart:
•We are committed to understanding market details: we walk, shop, and talk to shoppers, merchants, property owners both in the project area and in competing areas to determine voids and specific needs;
•We bring the perspective of the tenants and the customers to the project team to assure that their critically important points of view are never lost;
•We are global, traveling and sourcing ideas from markets around the world , we speak Spanish, French, Hindi, and Arabic;
•We are also Economic and Downtown Development professionals and serve other consultants in preparing those elements of Master Plans;
•Our interest, knowledge, and desire to work with small independent merchants and small individual developers and our deep-rooted history in planning pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.
•Our belief that no job nor any part of a project is too small if the project fits our mission.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Going downtown to shop with my mother and then meeting my father at a restaurant for dinner.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2000 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02140 - Website: todreashanley.com
- Phone: 617 482 7008
- Email: carolt@todreashanley.com
- Instagram: ballerinaged
- Facebook: todreashanley
- Twitter: @caroltodreas
- Other: tripadvisor: caroltod
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