Memories That Register

BusinessWest, Sep 29, 2008 by O'Brien, George

Ciro Bracci admits that, at the time, he was "a little scared." Probably more than a little.

It was late in 1967, and he was being invited to relocate the barber shop he opened several years earlier in the Pine Point section of Springfield, or "the Point," as he called it, to something that would be named the Eastfield Mall, a new shopping center opening on what was mostly old farmland well down Route 20, nearly out to the Wilbraham line.

There was ample reason for apprehension amid general optimism, he recalled for Business West.

For starters, his rent would be going from $100 per month to $300, "and that was a lot of money back then," he said. Meanwhile, no one, including Bracci, knew exactly what to expect when this enclosed mall opened on April's Fool's Day in 1968. It was, after all, not merely the first facility of its kind in Western Mass., but one of the first in New England by most accounts.

But except for the significant challenge of surviving the early '70s, "back when everyone had long hair and never got it cut," the past four decades have been pretty good to the Mall Barber Service, which is, with the notable exception of Sears, the only entity to have witnessed the entirety of the mall's first 40 years.

That milestone is being celebrated in a number of ways, said Arlene Putnam, executive director of the mall, who has held various roles at Eastfield for 30 of those 40 years. She told BusinessWest that, as the mall marks its past, it is also looking toward a solid future, despite some rather profound changes in the realm of retail.

Putnam says the mall has had a number of phases, or 'lives,' during its existence. When it opened, it was a novelty and thus a destination that drew people from not only this region, but also across New England and beyond. At the same time, it became home to second or third outlets for several local retail fixtures, while also hastening the demise of downtown Springfield and other urban shopping centers.

Much of the novelty that marked Eastfield's early years wore off with the opening of the Holyoke Mall at Ingleside in 1979 and other, similar facilities across the Northeast. Meanwhile, Eastfield suffered greatly in the late '80s and early '90s, as its original owners, the Rouse Co., turned its attention to the bigger, 'A' retail facilities in its portfolio, allowing 'B' properties like Eastfield to languish.

"We were operating on a shoestring," Putnam said of those years, when the mall became less visible and, seemingly, less of a retail force. "We had to beg, borrow, and steal just to get a little paint for touchups around here. And we had no marketing money."

A significant turnaround began in 1998, when the property was purchased from Rouse by current owners Mountain Development Corp., which invested heavily in renovations that included a new, 16-screen cinema. Today, the mall contends with new challenges, including a currently soft economy and the advent of online shopping, but it is thriving by deploying the same basic strategy with which it started - namely programming, much of it family-oriented, to bring people to the facility.

"The challenge today is the same as it's always been - to get people, and especially families, to come here year-round," said Jilian Gould, Eastfield's director of Marketing, who is significantly younger than the mall she works at, but knows her Eastfield history. "We're proud of our past, but we're really excited about our future."

And Bracci intends to be part of it.

Now 80, he bristles at the terms 'retirement' and even 'semi-retirement,' although the latter is fairly accurate description for his current schedule - he's in by 8 or 9 at the shop he eventually sold to long-time employee Maria Gomes, cuts hair for a few regulars, and is out by noon or so. "I intend to stay active."

In this issue, Business West looks at the birth of a business landmark, its life and times, and prospects for the years to come.

Combing Through Memories

A look at an early tenant list for the mall reveals that much more has changed since the '70s than men's hairstyles.

Indeed, that roster is replete with local, regional, and national names that have long since disappeared from the retail landscape: Anderson Little, Blake's, Valley Bank & Trust, Thom McCann, Kinney Shoes, Steiger's, McCrory's, and the Flaming Pit restaurant, which, says Putnam, had the first salad bar in the region.

"People had never seen one before," she said. "It was incredibly popular ... people came from all over just for that salad bar."

The same could be said about the mall itself. It came more than a decade before the Holyoke Mall, and a few years before the Mountain Farms Mall on Route 9 in Hadley, which later gained the distinction of being the first enclosed mall to close its doors.

In the early years, the Eastfield Mall parking lot was full of cars from Vermont, New Hampshire, and even Canada, said Mike Bourbonnais, Eastfield's assistant operations manager, who has worked at the mall for all but the first six years of its existence. "People were bused in from all over."