Changes on tap for Triangle Square

Lolita Harper

COSTA MESA -- Destination restaurants may be the salvation for

Triangle Square.

After months of evaluation, crunching numbers, late-night meetings and

brainstorming, the community can expect to see improvements in the

physical appearance and tenants at the troubled Triangle Square.

And a big part of those changes probably will involve building on the

success of the Yard House restaurant.

Dick Bridy, president of DBI Asset Management, who has been hired to

give Triangle Square a much-needed make-over, says he came into the

picture at a time when the 12-year-old center had hit rock bottom. The

landscaping was neglected, the foot traffic was nearly nonexistent, and

morale of management and tenants was low.

“There is nowhere to go from here but up,” Bridy said Tuesday after

announcing his intentions to revamp the center. “The attitude of

ownership and management is positive right now. We are very optimistic

and so are our tenants.”

“What I do is redevelop shopping centers,” Bridy said. “The owners

hired me to come in and figure out what the problems are and how we can

remedy them.”

The problems, which include a lack of directional signs in the parking

lot, poor tenant visibility, and a failure to retain tenants, were

obvious. It was the solutions that took some time to figure out, Bridy

said.

Triangle Square boasts a great location -- on Newport Boulevard, with

direct freeway access -- and strong anchors such as Niketown, Barnes &

Noble, Virgin Megastore, Northface, the Gap and Yard House.

Bridy said the future revolves around those stores. Triangle Square

was successful in renewing contracts with the Gap and Northface, which

were critical to the center’s survival, he said. The only way to keep the

shopping destination afloat is to find tenants that complement the

anchors, he said.

Playing off the large success of the Yard House, a popular nighttime

destination that serves ice-cold ales and piping hot food, Bridy hopes to

transform the former food court level into a dining plaza that features

what he calls similar “destination restaurants.”

The food court concept works in centers where customers are looking

for a quick bite to fuel their shopping-filled day but has never been

successful at Triangle Square, Bridy said, partly because the center was

not designed for all-day, walk-around shopping. The center must cater to

those who come to the center for a specific purpose. Therefore, Bridy

plans to draw customers by offering unique and edgy dining

establishments, such as the newly signed, high-end sushi and steak

restaurant Fugu.

Bridy said he has hired a parking analyst to redesign the signs in the

parking structure to increase the circulation and traffic flow. The

center also is considering adding a valet parking station, he said.

“You can’t have your customers go into a layered structure, drive

around in circles and have no idea where they are,” Bridy said.

The center will also get a face lift of its external signs and

landscaping, which have been neglected for years, Bridy said. Tenants

will be better represented with larger, more colorful signs that are

visible from the street, and the overall appearance of the center will be

improved with new paint and shrubbery.

Planning Commissioner Bill Perkins, who has worked closely with

different management teams at Triangle Square in recent years, said he is

pleased some tangible changes are finally being made but added that the

face lift is long overdue.

Perkins said the owners have finally broken out of the mentality that

the center was just going through a phase and things would somehow get

better on their own. Perkins said he thought the owners were just

reluctant to spend the money necessary to make a difference.

“They’ve known for a long time that you have to spend money to make

money, but they kept putting it off,” Perkins said. “It doesn’t just get

better by itself. You have to dump money into it, and that’s what they

are doing now.”

Bridy would not comment on why the owners failed to spend the money

earlier and said the important thing is that it is happening now.

“I am spending as much money as I possibly can that makes economic

sense to get a return on their investment,” Bridy said. “I’m spending

some real dough, I’ve got to pull this off.”

QUESTION

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