By Katie Kervin, Managing Editor, Commerce + Communities Today

Designers and architects across the Marketplaces Industry continue to push the boundaries of what retail and mixed-use environments can be, blending compelling experiences with community impact and forward-looking sustainability strategies. The 2025 ICSC Global Design & Development Awards honor projects from around the world that elevate urban districts, reinvigorate existing assets and set new standards for placemaking, adaptive reuse and experiential retail.

This year’s Gold honorees demonstrate bold thinking at every scale — from Best-of-the-Best winner Guatemala City’s Oakland Place, which reimagines a traditional mall as a connected urban district, to The Well in Toronto, a pedestrian-first neighborhood powered by innovative low-carbon infrastructure. U.S. winners span immersive brand destinations like The Rawlings Experience and adaptive reuse efforts like City Foundry STL, each showcasing inventive design and measurable community or economic impact.

Announced at ICSC+CENTERBUILD on Dec. 4, this year’s honorees include Gold and Silver winners and a global roster of finalists. Below, you’ll find the Gold winners and Sustainable Commendation projects; additional details on these, the Silver winners and all finalists are available here.

Tenants in a Retail Environment

The Rawlings Experience

Tenants Over 10,000 Square Feet in Area

The Rawlings Experience brings together two former tenant spaces at Westport Plaza — a 42-acre entertainment and office district in the St. Louis suburb of Maryland Heights — as a 14,000-square-foot, two-story flagship that connects nearly 140 years of baseball heritage with an immersive retail environment. Evoking a ballpark at night, the store melds the brand’s red-and-white palette with polished concrete, industrial grates, wood accents and a dynamic LED scoreboard ribbon. A 26-by-26-foot vertical opening made way for a staircase and a dramatic sight line between floors, recalling stadium grandstands and unifying the expanded storefront.

Merchandising and history come together through nearly 200 illuminated gloves, custom display cases and interactive walls that trace Rawlings’ legacy. Experiential zones, including batting cages and custom glove design and fittings, invite hands-on engagement.

Since opening, the store has outperformed sales projections and added to Westport Plaza’s revitalization.

Retailer: Rawlings Sporting Goods Co.
Architect and Designer: Oculus Inc.

This excerpt is from an article that was published on December 8, 2025, on Commerce + Communities Today. Click here for the full article.