While The Mall at University Town Center can no longer claim never to have seen a tenant close shop, major retailers continue to bring products to the region. Hugo Boss in July became one more major name in the fashion world to bring its brand name exclusively to the University Park shopping destination. “New tenants continue to come,” says Octavio Ortiz, general manager for The Mall at University Town Center [UTC], “and we keep seeing what we can bring to this market.”

Even as Taubman Centers scraps plans for an indoor mall in Miami, officials say UTC, open two years as of October 16, continues to meet expectations for the international mall company. “We’ve been very pleased with the traffic,” Ortiz says. “It takes really three years to stabilize a shopping center, but we are very excited about the merchandising and variety of stores.”

The mall, owned by Taubman Centers on land owned by Benderson Development, says the partnership with the Sarasota-based developer continues to be fruitful. An annual report for Taubman Centers shows the entire mall as a 50/50 joint venture, and Benderson continues to announce new development on adjacent properties around University Park. Bob Chait, executive director of leasing, Southeast for Benderson, says the area will be home to four new hotels and a luxury movie theater in the near future. “We are always asking what else we can do to enhance the area,” Chait says. And major Gulf Coast players like Tableseide Restaurant Group plan to open restaurants that take advantage of activity around the mall.

As for UTC itself, there is not a plan to expand on the immediate horizon, though Ortiz says the option still exists to add another anchor on the mall’s eastern side. Until then, the careful balance of retail, restaurants and service remains a priority. Ortiz notes, for example, that the mall in June brought in Tricho Salon, the first hairdresser to operate there. Restaurants like Brio and Seasons 52 continue to brand the center as a place for luxurious dining as well, and the list of places to eat at UTC have only grown since the mall first opened in 2014. As of July, the mall has seen 24 new stores open from Microsoft to the Refinery to Hugo Boss.

Of course, the mall has lost tenants as well. Ortiz can’t speak to ongoing litigation involving such former tenants as Edward Beiner, a brand eyewear boutique that opened its 12th location in the nation at UTC. Mindie Camus, store manager for the Beiner location at UTC, told SRQ at the mall’s one-year anniversary that traffic had been low, but the store was surviving on high-end sales to wealthy patrons. But within a couple months, the store was shuttered.

UTC did recently complete litigation with Sarasota-based Jackie Z. Style, which closed last October amid concerns of low foot traffic. The store had been the only locally owned business in the mall when it opened in 2014, but owner Jackie Zumba says the mall never attracted the level of foot traffic she anticipated. “Everyone who shopped at my store was excited about it opening,” she says. “We did well in Downtown Sarasota and thought we could just carry it over.” But the mall location closed after about a year in operation. Zumba blames the lack of stores like Gucci, which could have attracted a more luxury consumer. Mall officials in October told Zumba the closing would be treated as an “abandonment” of the lease, according to court records, and sought $1.52 million in “accelerated rent.” The matter was settled for an undisclosed sum in June.

But many changes in the tenant line-up, Ortiz notes, have simply been because of changes in the national landscape. The first store to close its doors at UTC was Caché, which shuttered every location in the country at the same time. The same thing happened earlier this year with the departure of Boston Proper.  And the seasonal operations of functioning on the Gulf Coast take some time to understand. Ortiz says about 20 percent of annual traffic to the mall comes from tourists. “Taubman Centers is happy with that number,” he says. The mall is working with hoteliers to incentivize more visitors to the region to do their shopping at UTC.

In the immediate future, the focus for the mall will be on attracting shoppers during the holiday season. UTC last year set up an ice palace in the main court, and Ortiz expects some of similar scope this year, though as of press time he could not announce details.