Illustration by Violet Lemay
The American shopping mall was invented by a Viennese Socialist.
Architect Victor Gruen came to this country during World War II, and in 1956, he designed the nation's first enclosed mall: Southdale, in Edina, Minn. It seems Gruen wasn't wild about America's postwar suburbs. He wanted them to have their own town centers—walkable, convenient, compelling.
Alas, Gruen's model went the way of many a Socialist experiment in America. The intended communities—which connected shops with residences, public spaces, necessary services, amusements, and parks—were never realized. Retail took over.
And for the next half-century, retail held its own.
By the time Tim Magill of The Jerde Partnership, which designed now-17-year-old Mall of America, said, "We want people to get lost in the mall," shoppers were smiling and nodding. We, too, wanted to get lost—or rather, we wanted to find ourselves, trying on bits of identity with each new T and sneaker.
Now we have the Internet for that. And a cascade of economic crises has made plain what developers started realizing a decade ago: A long fluorescent corridor of chain stores stretched between two jumbo department stores no longer interests us. We're sick of seeing the same old stuff, sick of the neon food court, sick of parking a short plane trip away and beating through a phalanx of teenagers just to buy a shower curtain.
It's time for malls to reinvent themselves. And guess what we've decided they need to be? A sort of Main Street, connecting shops with residences, public spaces, necessary services, amusements, and parks.
The Rise and Fall of the Mall
In 1955, St. Louis built Northland Shopping Center. It wasn't an enclosed mall, but rather an open-air complex of stores, its architecture a Modernist marvel of narrow stainless-steel columns, boxy brick, textured plastics and sandstone, cool aqua and green tiles.
A string of malls followed: Westroads Shopping Center (now the Saint Louis Galleria) later in 1955; "Crestwood Plaza, where the big stores are" (or at least were) in 1957; River Roads Mall in 1961; South County Center in 1963.
Then came another open-air experiment, Northwest Plaza, which some said was the biggest shopping center in the country. People sauntered around the plaza, warmed by sun on their shoulders, cooled by spray from the fountains, thrilled by all the funky teen boutiques, risqué Spencer's, restaurants and four, count 'em, four anchors.
By then, shopping was the national passion, and developers all over the country were glutting suburbia with giant malls. Here, as everywhere, they followed the population: West County Center lit up the Sign of the Dove in 1969, Jamestown Mall opened for North County's booming middle class in 1972. When families headed west, Chesterfield Mall went up in 1976, followed a decade later by Mid Rivers Mall in St. Peters.
Panicked "urban-renewal malls" started opening to fight the exodus (remember St. Louis Centre's white-and-green tiles gleaming through downtown's dust?). But most of them failed, as did the original innerring suburban malls. By the late '80s, both Northland and River Roads were ghost towns, thanks to demographic shifts, and unbelievably, even Northwest Plaza was foundering. Maybe it's the cold weather, the panicked owners told themselves, so in 1989, they stretched a giant canopy above the plaza. Sales soared, only to plummet; soon the plaza had lost three-fourths of its original 210 stores.
When that many stores fail, dominos fall fast: Surrounding businesses and neighborhoods suffer, tax revenue drops, unemployment rises, blight and crime mock our sense of community. There is something oddly reassuring about everybody going to the same mall—and when retail dries up, people get spooked. The quiet's unnatural, hollow and sad. A jumble of unwanted sweaters on a sale table evokes a pathos other cultures reserve for orphans.
Crisis of Confidence
Between March 2008 and March 2009, sales at nonanchor mall stores nationwide dropped 11.3 percent, according to the U.S. Mall Report of the International Council of Shopping Centers. The economic shake-up left even the strongest malls queasy; for Crestwood Plaza and Jamestown Mall, it was a death rattle.
Did we really stop shopping for fun? It's more that shopping in malls stopped being fun. Why spend hours strolling around with an ice-cream cone when you already know what you want, have no time to dawdle, and can't afford impulse buys anyway?
Terrified of layoffs and cutbacks, people started shopping only for essentials, choosing places called "power centers" where they could find clusters of discount and big-box specialty stores that were known quantities. (This year, the biggest drops in mall sales were in home furniture and furnishings, home entertainment, and electronics.)
"A trip to the mall" also lost its practical appeal. This wasn't a quick stop on the way home; it was a coat-lugging, stroller-pushing expedition. That worked when moms strapped the toddlers into the SUV or dropped off the tweens to hang out. Now, gas was expensive, traffic was thick, and the kids were growing up. Demographers estimate that by 2025, roughly 75 percent of households will be childless. Twentysomethings, meanwhile, have grown up on specialty stores, and baby boomers are heading for fixed-income retirement. Both groups want to walk down the street, meet a friend for coffee or dinner, and maybe pick up a few things they need on the way. Experience matters more than stuff.
Maybe, too, we're a little overbuilt? According to a 2008 ICSC report, the United States has 24,499 square feet of leasable shopping-center space per capita; Europe has 2,433.
Overall, Americans haven't lost as much buying enthusiasm as news reports would suggest: In the U.S. Census Bureau's Monthly Retail Trade Survey, the estimate for total retail sales in January 2009 was $303.9 million to $400 million higher than in 2005 and about $75 million higher than in 1999. But more cash is going to discount stores, less to department stores, and more purchases are being made by click, fewer within brick. We do our browsing online—and often, our buying. Total retail sales dropped more than 10 percent between March 2008 and March 2009, the Census Bureau reports, but retail e-commerce dropped only 5.4 percent.
The economic downturn is temporary. The shift in shopping habits is not.
Location, Location, Location
Malls are like your friends from high school: The loud, flashy ones seem a little shallow now. The boring ones have found new ways to be boring. The nerds keep reinventing themselves—sometimes in startling ways. The truly cool are as cool as ever.
For all the aforementioned blather about consumer behavior and retail trends, coolness ultimately hinges on two factors: location and demographics. Highway closures might have hurt the Galleria (Richmond Heights' sales-tax revenue has dropped by 12 percent since the roadwork started), but not even the colossal bankruptcy of the mall's owner, General Growth Properties, is likely to kill it. "The Galleria's here to stay," predicts local developer Amos Harris. "It's the strongest mall in the region."
Interestingly enough, GGP also owns Northwest Plaza, and there, the picture's different: GGP estimates the population around Northwest Plaza will drop roughly 8 percent between 2000 and 2013, and the current average household income there is $53,781. Compare that to GGP's stats for the Galleria: a projected population drop of 0.067 percent and a current average household income of $72,169.
Secure in its location, West County Center has spent $40 million to chop the old Lord & Taylor into an openair "restaurant village." Then there's Plaza Frontenac, gliding through hard times like it's skating to the "Blue Danube." Its owner, Davis Street Land Company of Chicago, doesn't release sales-per-square-foot figures, but Frontenac's got old-fashioned assets other malls forgot: manageable size, natural light, coffee and magazines for bored husbands, veteran salespeople, convenient parking, a serene ambience, good restaurants, and stores that are nowhere else in the region.
Therapy for Retail
Now that traditional malls have lost their magic, everybody hates their unimaginative, cookie-cutter approach. We're tiptoeing until the economy gets better (St. Louis Centre's jazzy Mercantile Exchange redevelopment is on hold; Jamestown Mall's plans to integrate residential space got nixed). But overall, we're moving toward what Gruen intended all along: "mixed-use, urban-patterned, open-air town centers."
The irony comes when the change plays out in ways just as formulaic as the old malls: Middle-class chain stores and food courts weren't good enough, so we'll lure chain stores with more cachet, open a restaurant with a wine list, and call it a "lifestyle center." People want cheap essentials instead? Seduce a Wal-Mart and a couple of other big boxes, and call it a "power center." All that's thriving in the old malls are kiosks? Cram the aisles with them. People just want to have fun? Build plush cinemas (never mind that box-office sales now bring in less than 20 percent of Hollywood's revenue). And if you still need an attention-getter? Turn your mall into an ocean. (No kidding: Half a dozen malls across the country are using Flowriders to let their shoppers surf fake seas.)
What really works, in the opinion of award-winning retail designer Kiku Obata, are good old-fashioned streets—charming hodgepodges of bakeries, butchers, independently owned boutiques, artisan galleries, upstairs apartments, street musicians, and outdoor cafés. Her favorite solution for a bland mall is to chop it up, crosshatch it with streets and gardens, mix in residential spaces and services, and add a few surprises, giving it a strong sense of place.
Just so that sense of place is authentic, Harris emphasizes: "Driving to a fake street isn't that different from driving to a mall." With the suburbs oversaturated, he sees retail's immediate future as urban. "But all those urban-renewal malls failed," I point out.
"That's because they took a suburban concept and tried to drop it into the middle of the city," he responds. Instead of a vertical, self-contained mall, Harris likes stores that face the street and adapt their floor plans to historic buildings. He thinks The Cordish Companies (yes, of Ballpark Village fame) had the right idea back when they designed Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Kansas City's Power & Light District: "Instead of essentially paying anchor department stores for their presence, then making your profit on the inline stores, Cordish ties its success to events in public spaces—concerts and festivals that draw a crowd naturally. That way, Cordish can ask the public sector to help defray the cost of creating these public spaces—and then fill them wall-to-wall with sponsorship opportunities that will bring in significantly more money than the rental fees."
Spaces big enough to hold a steady stream of public events are tough to find in dense downtowns, though, and creating them carries its own costs. Plus, a mix of artisans and mom-and-pops is risky when you need a guaranteed revenue stream. So are some of the wilder ideas being advanced around the world, like turning old malls into hydroponic farms, scuba-divable aquariums, resource centers for the homeless ...
But when developers see space go dark, they'll grab for even a temporary solution until commerce comes back.
And sometimes a stopgap solution shocks everybody by changing the paradigm.
The Art of Shopping
When Crestwood Plaza foundered, its owners sacrificed 200,000 square feet to the art gods, renting empty stores for about $100 a month. Soon, Irish dancers were pounding the hardwood of American Eagle Outfitters, performers were donning costumes in what were once the Gap's dressing rooms, Masterpeace Studios was teaching healing arts in the old LensCrafters, and artist Jeane Vogel was using a former hair salon's sinks to clean her brushes.
The grand opening made a splash like a whale parachuting into a swimming pool. Suddenly, the desolate mall was a destination again.
But when I get all excited about ArtSpace, Crestwood city administrator Jim Eckrich reminds me that "Centrum Properties owns the mall, and they're still planning a redevelopment—retail but not enclosed mall, more of a lifestyle center."
Disappointed, I call Centrum vice-president Vic Pildes to ask if the company is really going to boot the artists and restore the merchants.
"Er ... not exactly," he says. "The reception in the community and the depth of support and interest have really been gratifying. We thought it was a great short-term idea, but there's been such an incredible outpouring of support that now we're hoping to build on it." He sketches a mix of art with traditional retail, and public space, and entertainment.
"Will that bring enough revenue?" I ask, newly shrewd about retail.
"Well, that's going to be the challenge." He pauses. "Patterns of consumption are going through a paradigm shift. We're all just trying to understand where that's going."
Retail Defined
"New Urbanism": A mix of hotels, offices, and condos with boutiques, restaurants, and easy public transit, all streetscaped with what, in America, passes for European charm. Think The Boulevard–Saint Louis along Brentwood, The Crescent at the foot of the Ritz-Carlton, Kirkwood Station, or Maryland Plaza behind the Chase.
"Power Center": Like one of those Godzilla movies that feature more than one monster, a power center is a cluster of giant tenants— most of them "category killers," or the dominant retailer in their market. Think Gravois Bluffs Plaza in Fenton.
"Lifestyle Center": Upscale retail—at least 50,000 square feet of it—comprising national specialty stores, skewed more toward boutiques than warehouses. Typically located in affluent suburbs, with an open-air design that might include lakes, sidewalks, congregating areas, and "leisure amenities." Think The Meadows at Lake Saint Louis, developed last year by the Chicago company that owns Plaza Frontenac.
