Small vs. mall: redevelopers are betting main streets will replace America's dying malls

Insight on the News, May 20, 2002 by Joanne Hudson

Shopping habits shape cities and reflect culture, and a sea change has occurred in how Americans try to buy. Declining malls are the latest trend. Once hailed as the new promise of American capitalism, the supermall is scaring away customers because of waits for parking, long walks from store to store and "a stultifying sameness, a McDonaldization," says Ann Satterthwaite, a city planner and author of Going Shopping.

American shoppers increasingly are seeking out offbeat and unique shopping options such as flea markets, antique shows, garage sales and craft fairs that offer one-of-a-kind goods. From Seattle's Pike Place Market to Washington's Eastern Market, vendors sell food but promote community in similar farmers' markets that have become weekly rituals for urban residents. These shopping alternatives, a reaction to large-scale retail shopping centers, are community meeting places that attempt to get back to the face-to-face transactions that in past decades engendered trust between buyers and sellers.

But other factors are contributing to the decline of malls, Satterthwaite notes. Anchor department stores are pulling out or downsizing. The time-consuming maze of multilevels makes it difficult for customers to find what they want. The big difference, however, is that women have less time to shop. If anything, female consumers "precision shop" by zeroing in on exactly what they need instead of leisurely cruising the mall, Satterthwaite writes in her book.

Meanwhile, proverbial main-street America, immortalized at the entrance to Disney theme parks, is making a comeback. More than 1,600 small and midsized towns and large cities are reviving their main-street shopping areas. "Shoppers go through something I call the `Mayberry effect' where they feel a closer connection to the merchants of a smaller, more quaint atmosphere as opposed to the congestion of malls," says Michael Shmarak, an account supervisor for Ketchum Communications Group in Chicago who has been a retail-industry consultant for 10 years.

The latest consumer model is the town-center concept, where a collection of stores provides the communal ambience once found on downtown main streets. Bowie Town Center, which opened in Maryland in late October, is capitalizing on this idea. The open-air shopping center with curbside parking is the first of this kind for Indianapolis-based Simon Co. It contains a mix of national retail specialty shops, major department stores, restaurants, a grocery store and service stores along a "main street" that bisects the mall.

The developers pursued a "user-friendly and community-friendly design," says Roderick Vosper, a Simon Co. regional vice president. The company has begun developing a similar shopping center in Garland, Texas, because officials from that city liked what they observed in Bowie.

"Town centers provide a communal flavor that has been missing in the malls," says Satterthwaite, who visited Bowie Town Center in April. "It has the feel of a contemporary village, with the diagonal street parking, lampposts and benches. It doesn't have the feeling of oppression like indoor malls; however, it also doesn't have the advantage of the weather-controlled climate."

Starbucks Coffee was one of the first companies to understand the appeal of consumerism at a street-friendly level. According to Howard Schultz, founder and chief global strategist for the company, the 1990s fostered the growth of informal gathering places for a populace increasingly confined to eight working hours in front of a computer. "Americans are so hungry for community that some of our customers began gathering in our stores, making appointments with friends, holding meetings, striking up conversations with other regulars," Schultz writes in his book Pour Your Heart Into It.

In response, Starbucks began offering more seating. "People don't just drop by to pick up a half-pound of decaf on their way to the supermarket, as we first anticipated," he writes. "They come for the atmosphere and the camaraderie."

JOANNE HUDSON WRITES FOR Insight's SISTER DAILY, THE WASHINGTON TIMES.