Bel Air, Md. (Map, News) - After nine months of construction and renovation, Harford Mall’s new “lifestyle center” will welcome its first businesses and customers in August, a mall spokeswoman said.

The expansion will replace the food court and expand the 35-year-old, 490,000-square-foot mall by 18,000 feet. The first store to open there will be a Bonefish Grill, but Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries, Maggie Moos Ice Cream Treatery and Qdoba Mexican Grill are expected in September, said General Manager Lauri Altman. More tenants are expected but haven’t signed leases yet.

Lifestyle centers — a mix of upscale retail stores, restaurants and entertainment venues facing outdoors — are popping up all across the country.

“A lifestyle center is really taking the best retail stores and making them visible to the road,” said Malachy Kavanagh, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers. “It’s definitely a trend.”

The Harford Mall will follow the lead of places such as The Avenue in White Marsh, while Westfield Annapolis Mall remodels to create a lifestyle center of its own. But Harford’s center is a hybrid, with the rest of the mall remaining enclosed.

Westfield Annapolis’s center will be much larger than Harford’s, although the hybrid will similarly incorporate “traditional mall and lifestyle center components.” Westfield will include movie theaters, restaurants and a “street-scene environment,” with promenades, lounges and trees, Marketing Director Scott deGraffenreid said.

Where the suburban mall was once considered the ultimate in convenience and comfort, lifestyle centers mimic in some ways the old-fashioned urban shopping districts that malls replaced — combined with convenient parking.

The Avenue, for example, promises on its Web site, “an exciting mix of big-name retailers, small specialty shops, dining and entertainment destinations, along a nostalgic outdoor ‘Main Street’ reminiscent of a less-hurried time in America. The leisurely ambiance is enhanced by broad plazas, fountains, trees, and gardens designed to help shoppers relax among their surroundings, whether dining alfresco or simply watching the world go by from an attractive setting.”

msilvestri@baltimoreexaminer.com