In the past decade, the Inland shopping scene has morphed from mega indoor malls to open-air centers designed to lure customers with a new level of retailing and a setting made to encourage lounging, drinking, chatting and even living.

The evolution continues Friday with the opening of The Promenade Shops at Dos Lagos, a Corona center that showcases trendy shops and restaurants encircling two lakes and a bridge traversing a 10-foot waterfall.

Retailers are banking on the idea that consumers want more than the sterile traditional mall. In San Bernardino and Riverside counties, shopping has been transformed from the giant, indoor Ontario Mills to The River at Rancho Mirage, with its amphitheater and man-made waterway, to Victoria Gardens, which marries green spaces, faux historic storefronts and patio dining with standard mall features in Rancho Cucamonga.

The newest, Victoria Gardens and The Promenade Shops, bring a collection of retailers, such as Williams-Sonoma and Banana Republic, that are considered high-end though not Tiffany and Versace luxury.

And The Promenade Shops does it without Macy's and J.C. Penney, bucking the long-held assumption that a shopping destination could not attract top-shelf brand names -- or shoppers -- without department stores.

Such centers work in the Inland Empire because they give residents something more than a mall and provide retailers a way to tap into the region's growing buying power, said Larry Kosmont, a developer and consultant for various Southern California cities.

Stan Lim / The Press-Enterprise The Rancho Cucamonga center has brought the outdoors back into the shopping experience in the Inland area.

"People are crying out for local neighborhoods," he said. "And what these open-air centers tend to do is create a sense of place."

Developers also are looking at ways to turn their customers into residents.

Townhomes and condominiums are being built within walking distance of The Promenade Shops and Victoria Gardens, where twentysomethings are targeted with this tagline: "So chic, so hip, so you!"

The Transformation

Since Ontario Mills hit the scene, it has become a movie-theater and discount-shopping attraction. Victoria Gardens, three miles up Interstate 15, brought open-air shopping on a massive scale with attributes that city officials and the developer hope make it a downtown for a city without one.

Streets crisscross the outdoor mall, which also houses a library and performing-arts center. Civic attractions give Victoria Gardens a competitive advantage, even if in a setting that typically needs refreshing every five to 10 years, said Michael Bayard, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute.

"It's not a matter of which is better. Are these things fake or phony?" he said. "What else is around Rancho Cucamonga that has a better environment for a library?"

Specialty stores have learned that clustering together in an entertaining setting, as they have at The Promenade Shops, can be just as attractive and more lucrative than having department stores.

Terry McEwen, president of Poag & McEwen, which is building and managing The Promenade Shops at Dos Lagos, said annual sales at the company's other lifestyle centers are $400 to $500 per square foot, while the average for most mall stores -- excluding department stores -- is about $392.

'An Adult Disneyland'

William Wilson Lewis III / The Press-Enterprise It remains a popular example of an earlier shopping center style, the covered mall. Climate control made summer irrelevant.

Jaye Houston, who shopped at Victoria Gardens on a recent Saturday, likened the outdoor experience to "an adult Disneyland." Spending money at Victoria Gardens feels like what shopping once was, with stores accessed from sidewalks and parallel, metered parking, she said.

"I brought my daughter here from Tacoma, and she went crazy. Now she'll come to visit me more often," Houston said.

Outdoor shopping was once common, but then many larger centers added roofs to keep pace with the spread of air-conditioned indoor malls in the 1960s and '70s.

Mall developers had it easy in those decades, said Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. They found land, put up a mall and knew shoppers would seek it out.

All Looked the Same

Beyond the two-floor, roofed template, mall companies typically stocked their properties with the same chains, Bayard said.

"When you were inside, you really didn't know where you were. They all had the same palm trees and the same marble floor," he said. "You would think people in the Inland Empire lived exactly the same as people in Chicago."

Bored with the mall formula, consumers began treating shopping as a chore rather than an experience, said Brian Jones, CEO of Forest City Enterprise's western commercial division. Forest City, which owns Victoria Gardens, has 10 centers under construction -- most of them open-air and borrowing attributes from the Rancho Cucamonga property.

Retailers often prefer the outdoor format because they save about 35 percent on maintenance costs, McEwen said. Having no corridors to heat or cool helps, he said.

Carrie Rosema / The Press-Enterprise Andres Ortega, left, Francisco Franco and Alex Oliva prepare the walkway for sealing along a bridge and tunnel at The Promenade Shops at Dos Lagos in Corona. The shopping center's grand opening is Friday.

Also, department stores don't dictate hours, and parking tends to be more convenient than at indoor malls.

But don't say goodbye to the indoor mall just yet, said retail analyst George Whalin.

"There are some very, very successful indoor malls that are a permanent part of the landscape," he said.

Women's clothing chain Coldwater Creek is in dozens of major malls, but given a choice, it likes being in the trendy outdoor centers, said spokesman David Gunter.

The Coldwater Creek customer, typically at least 35 years old and with a household income topping $75,000, likes the convenience of sidewalk shopping and brands that often cluster at the newest outdoor centers, such as Starbucks, Chico's and P.F. Chang's China Bistro, he said.

Coldwater Creek sales last year averaged $540 per square feet, Gunter said.

Mike Edwards, CEO of lucy, a women's clothing chain at Victoria Gardens, likes the location because a street-front presence allows retailers to control the presentation of their brand.

"In a mall, you get lost in the shuffle," he said.

Home at the Mall

Forest City's Jones has one Victoria Gardens regret: the lack of housing on the mall property.

The popularity of mixing retail and upstairs condominiums can be seen in several Inland cities, where developers in San Bernardino, Ontario and Riverside are pushing such projects. But mixing downstairs retailing and upstairs living in an Inland mall setting is untested.

Development consultant Ralph Megna said it's unfortunate that Victoria Gardens doesn't have in-mall condos because much of the retail area has a second-floor facade to give the look of tall, old buildings.

"In 2001, it would have been an incredibly gutsy decision," he said. "Looking at it today, it's like 'ouch.' "

Condos, however, are planned across Cultural Center Drive from Victoria Gardens. The three-story buildings, with two-car garages, a pool and cabanas, are intended to appeal to urbanites interested in yoga, surfing the Web and collecting wine.

Being in or near these types of centers adds value to a home much as proximity to a golf course, lake or mountain view does, said Bob Yoder, president of Shea Homes, which is building the 310 condominiums and townhomes next to the Rancho Cucamonga mall.

Having condos within walking distance of Victoria Gardens, The Promenade Shops and a planned 25-acre center in Chino Hills will boost retail sales early in the week, when business tends to be slow, and provide a built-in population, experts say.

Even so, layering housing above retail would be a shift for the Inland Empire, where homebuyers traditionally have sought houses with yards and are unaccustomed to living with the sights and sounds of an urban core, said Raphael Bostic, research economist with the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.

"Things are trendy at first, but ultimately, you need a pretty deep market so when the first wave of people moves out, someone else moves in," he said.

Until they go far beyond shopping, centers with sidewalks and fountains are but a step in the evolution of retailing, said Rick Cole, who sat on the Pasadena City Council when the city remade its historic core. He is now city manager of Ventura.

Victoria Gardens has a good shot at becoming more than a mall, especially if condos and extra offices are added, Cole said.

"I think it's a bridge to what people today call mixed-use but for the last 5,000 years of our existence have been called cities, towns and villages," he said.

Reach Devona Wells at 951-368-9559 or dwells@PE. com

Reach Leslie Berkman at 951-893-2111 or lberkman@PE.com