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Shopping Centers Today -> January 2008
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A MALL DEALS WITH TRAGEDY, EUROPEANS MUST MAKE GOOD ON GREEN TALK, AND MAGIC PUSHES URBAN DEVELOPMENT
OMAHA MALL AND ITS COMMUNITY UNITE TO HEAL FOLLOWING FATAL SHOOTING SPREE
Shoppers returned to General Growth Properties’ Westroads Mall, in Omaha, Neb., as it reopened in early December, three days after eight people were shot to death there. The company wanted to reopen the mall as soon as possible, said Jim Sadler, the mall’s general manager. “We needed to get things going again and get employees back together,” said Sadler. “We got so many calls from citizens that they didn’t have a place to go.” At the entrance to the Von Maur department store, the site of the shooting, mourners and community members left ribbons, wreaths and paper snowflakes in remembrance. The mall sponsored “Operation Snowflake,” in which visitors wrote messages to the families of the victims on self-made paper snowflakes and placed them on a Christmas tree inside the mall and on the walls. “The victims reminded one of our shoppers of snowflakes, each individual and fragile, and she came up with the idea of using them as a memorial,” Sadler said. “It absolutely took off, and now we are in a blizzard of snowflakes. We have been overwhelmed by the outpouring from Omaha.” Management also set up large snowflakes within the mall, one for each victim. Security at the center has been beefed up, including more patrol cars and guards, Sadler says. The Red Cross provided “comfort dogs” for mourners to pet.
EUROPE CALLS FOR ‘GREEN’ ACTION
The European Union must communicate more effectively about regulatory and other efforts to save energy and protect the environment, says a survey of retailers by ICSC and Cushman & Wakefield. The survey questioned 250 retailers from 23 European countries. Of the respondents, 69 percent said they were unaware of a directive set to take effect in the EU by 2009 requiring new and existing buildings to be measured for energy efficiency. Seventy-four percent of respondents had not heard of any of the major certification programs currently in effect worldwide, among them the U.K.’s BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method).
European retailers could pay a price for failure to do enough to reduce their impact on the environment, said Yvonne Court, Cushman & Wakefield’s head of European retail research and consultancy. “There is clearly an awareness among retailers of the importance of sustainability and its likely effect on the retail sector, but this is not necessarily being matched by action,” said Court. Only 28 percent of the surveyed retailers with stores in Europe said they have a policy on corporate social responsibility with regard to impact on employees, shareholders and the environment, and 83 percent said they have no kind of policy at all to reduce environmental impact. U.S. retailers in Europe are the ones most likely to have such a corporate responsibility policy in place, with 44 percent of these saying they have one, while southern European retailers are the least likely, at 12 percent. Nearly 60 percent of the respondents said they do not monitor the use of energy or water or the disposal of waste.
Magic and the city
Consumers in the inner cities may not have the fat wallets that many suburban shoppers have, but they still enjoy shopping and spending money, and they can support the right kinds of retail developments in these neighborhoods, said Earvin (Magic) Johnson at ICSC’s New York National Conference & Deal Making, in New York City. Johnson, whose private equity firm, Canyon-Johnson Urban Fund, holds $1 billion for retail projects in inner-city areas, says developers should not be afraid to venture into such markets. The U.S. ethnic minority population is expected to grow to constitute half the total population by 2050, he said. “Minorities have $1.6 trillion in spending power, which is seven times the power of the general population,” Johnson said. “They have the spending power, but they have no spending options. You have to go to urban America to invest and create options.” There is demand not only for retail, but for homes too, and this bodes well for mixed-use development, Johnson said. American cities need about 2 million more homes, he said. Johnson urged developers and retailers to tailor their offerings to the urban environment. He cited his deal with Starbucks to open units in underserved urban areas in California. “Investors didn’t think that minorities would want to buy a $4 cup of coffee. They’ll buy it, but they don’t know what a scone is,” he quipped. (Johnson’s firms own 100 Starbucks stores, the only ones in the world that are not owned by Starbucks itself.) Johnson also cited a T.G.I. Friday’s his firm opened in Los Angeles that, unlike others in the chain, offers high-end liquor. The restaurant has proved to be one of T.G.I. Friday’s highest-grossing restaurants.
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