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SAN FRANCISCO’S METREON: A MALL LIKE NO OTHER

BY RICK DELVECCHIO

The looming, ultramodern Metreon has become a local landmark.

At Sony’s Metreon complex in San Francisco, the circus never stops, though it changes constantly. But whatever you do, leave your expectations of a normal shopping center at the door when you enter.

Visitors walking into the downtown retail and entertainment center last summer would have come face-to-face with Robby the Robot. This full-scale, metallic-voiced copy of the seven-foot mechanical man from the 1956 science fiction movie Forbidden Planet invited visitors to have fun and shop for “galactic discounts on pop-culture collectibles.”

In March a different kind of movable attraction occupied the spot: a temporary Game Show Network set, sponsored by Bank of America student banking.

The interactive robot greeter and the game show set are representative of two key ideas driving Sony Corp.’s 330,000-square-foot center, now in its fourth year. First, technology is the ticket, be it nouveau or retro, campy or serious. And second, the temporary show is crucial to the business of running a giant entertainment platform like Metreon.

The looming, silver-walled rectangular box has become a landmark at the tourism nexus of the city’s South of Market district.

Metreon’s retail mix changes more often than that of a traditional mall. The culturally and technologically savvy consumer at the heart of Metreon’s trade demands the new, the sensational and the faddish along with the familiar comforts of movie popcorn and the food court.

People who reside within a 100-mile radius of Metreon account for 60 percent of the 22.5 million people who have visited the center in its first three years — a larger local trade than was predicted at the opening.

“We thought we’d become a tourist destination,” Metreon spokeswoman Kirsten Maynard said. “What we’ve become is a local hangout.”

As a result, attendance has kept up despite the general decline in tourism after the Sept. 11 attacks, Maynard said. The center has been clocking 6 million visitors a year — 1 million more than Sony had predicted. Nearly a third of Metreon’s visitors come to see a movie at the 15-screen Loews, which runs neck and neck with Loews’ Lincoln Center theater in New York City as the chain’s attendance leader. Regulars include actor Robin Williams and players from the Bay area’s pro sports teams.

Besides Loews, Metreon anchors include the Discovery Channel Store and Sony Style, an electronics store where visitors are invited to test-drive the company’s latest audio and video gadgets.

A typical Metreon scene at Sony Style, which sells the company’s electronic products, has visitors seated on a couch staring at a movie playing on a huge plasma screen. One recent video showed the predatory habits of undersea crustaceans, with every biological feature looking as detailed as if it were being viewed under a microscope.

While many attractions are frequently changed or freshened up, some have proved to be mainstays. Sony’s PlayStation concession, where players mount stools to try out any one of hundreds of game titles, looks much the same as it did when the center opened. And the Where the Wild Things Are store and playroom on the top floor, which sells books, games, clothing and toys, continues to draw parents in a city with a dearth of kid-friendly attractions.

But two major installations from Metreon’s June 1999 opening are gone. The Microsoft store closed because the software company decided to get out of the retail business. Also scuttled is The Way Things Work, a 3-D movie based on David McCauley’s book about everyday engineering. It proved too static to keep visitors coming back.

Replacing Microsoft is the more casual, hands-on Digital Solutions, a Metreon-run shop for gadget-loving business travelers. And in place of The Way Things Work are retailers dedicated to the art of Japanese animation, or anime, who came in after fans told Metreon officials that they couldn’t find enough of it in conventional stores.

Such informal, kinetic attractions characterize Metreon’s approach. They give the space, which has won awards for architecture and lighting design, something of the flavors of a trade fair, a street fair and an entertainment stage. Although Metreon has lost many of the high-tech meetings and parties of the Silicon Valley boom, which peaked when the center was new, it has gained marketers who are using it as a platform to try out retailing ideas on the local market without having to risk a long-term investment.

Bandai Shop, which sells anime titles, is one example.

“The build-out tends to be not quite as expensive,” said Metreon senior vice president and general manager Eva Miranda. “With Bandai, it’s a way to merchandise their product that doesn’t necessarily get done in larger stores. They don’t get the shelf space and presentation of their products the way they would like to get it done.”

Miranda said Metreon also provides marketers with the means to learn from customers. “Their ability to talk to guests is really valuable,” she said.

Recent marketing promotions have included a Men in Black II kiosk near the first-floor information desk. During the promotion, scenes from the film were flashed overhead on a row of flat screens, while at the kiosk itself shoppers could buy sunglasses.

“It’s a place where people can buy products associated with the film,” Maynard said at the time. “We’re partnering with Ray-Ban to highlight glasses the guys are wearing in the film.”

A Spider-Man display preceded Men In Black in the space and sold plenty of Spider-Man dolls, and a five-day promotion for Minority Report featured a Lexus like the one driven in the film.

An example of a new tenant under a five-year lease is Things from Another World, a comic book and toy retailer that opened on Metreon’s second floor in June. The store carries the contemporary Dark Horse Comics collection as well as an array of nostalgia items for pop-culture connoisseurs, such as models of characters from sci-fi camp classic films. A sales clerk said the trade is “all nostalgia,” and most buyers are between 20 and 40 years old.

Local interest has more than made up for a decline in tourism, Sony says.

To maintain variety and a snappy rate of change, Metreon has many levels of deals with tenants. Some long-term leases run 10 years, others just five. Short-term leases may go six months to a year. Marketing promotions stay a few days to a few months.

Other elements are live TV programming, such as the Fear Factor tryout that drew 2,000 candidates for the show, and the playing of new CDs by David Bowie, Pearl Jam or Bruce Springsteen before their general release. Las Vegas mainstays Siegfried & Roy appeared, without their animals. Also passing through: crocodile hunters, yoga experts and jazz musicians.

In addition to maintaining a lively rate of change, Metreon has softened the high-tech edges of the interior space. The ground-floor atrium lobby once left austerely empty now features stores by Bay area marketers Chronicle Books and Just Desserts. Elsewhere, a Jelly Belly jelly bean store — billed as the nation’s “first customer-interactive” Jelly Belly shop — bridges two anime purveyors.

But there’s still plenty of high-tech. Lito, a Sony Style salesman who declined to give his last name, recently introduced the latest versions of Sony’s $599-and-up robot dog, AIBO. Owners develop relationships with their AIBOs as if they were living pets, he said, and those who fail to treat their robots as if they were in a loving relationship will pay the price in bad pet behavior. “We have a couple who have eight of them,” Lito said, adding that a “bipedal humanoid robot” and robot cats and birds are on the way.

At the PlayStation store, clerk Tyler Wu said the most popular games these days are “Medal of Honor,” which portrays a D-Day-type invasion in World War II, “Britney’s Dance Beat” and “SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs,” a 16-player online game that pits commandos against terrorists.

Games Workshop, in contrast, is totally nondigital. It’s a store that sells battle games featuring game boards and model soldiers of pewter or plastic, which enthusiasts paint by hand.

The store, the company’s fifth in Northern California, stages weekly “Megabattle Sundays.” Fans can compete or just learn how to play on the outsize boards. “Not everyone has room for a battlefield in their house,” notes clerk Justin Kefer.

As noted above, this is no ordinary shopping center.

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