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Shopping Centers Today -> August 2006
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U.S. malls turn Flag Day into Old Gloryous event
U.S. shopping centers expressed their patriotism through the Old Gloryous Celebration, an event The Macerich Co. created in 1999 and that ICSC sponsored this year for the first time. Starting on Memorial Day, with the endorsement of The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Veterans (AMVETS), nearly 500 malls held flag-flying pledge drives and patriotic festivities that drove shopper turnout and drew nationwide media attention. The campaign culminated on Flag Day. “It was phenomenal,” said Sandra Minnick, marketing manager of Mall of Abilene (Texas). Forty soldiers and veterans from the 130th Airlift Division of the West Virginia Air National Guard participated in ceremonies at the Charleston (W.Va.) Town Center. Last year the center helped the community gather signatures for a petition to keep the division in Charleston. Mayor Danny Jones articulated his pride in West Virginia’s National Guard and in the community for their tenacious lobbying. Said Lisa McCracken, the center’s marketing director, “It was our best Flag Day event yet.”
Keith Maupin, father of Sgt. Matt Maupin, the sole missing U.S. soldier in the Iraq war, introduced a local official at Cincinnati’s EastGate Mall, where more than 1,000 pledges were raised. A nonprofit organization for military personnel and their families set up a satellite station in the mall’s food court. “The great volunteers from the Yellow Ribbon Support Center have helped make the Old Gloryous flag celebration a wonderful event,” said Diana Bresser, an EastGate marketing associate. Macerich was pleased to see its brainchild expand. “We were so pleased that ICSC saw the value in this nationwide effort,” said Mickey Marraffino, SCMD, vice president of marketing operations at Macerich. “The national media exposure was phenomenal, and we look forward to seeing more growth in 2007.”
Westfield Group gears up for 2012 Olympics
Westfield Group gained 100 percent control over the London site of the 2012 Olympic Games. The Australian development firm paid £140 million ($258 million) for complete ownership of the site, a housing and retail development in east London called Stratford City. Westfield had owned 25 percent of Stratford City since 2004. The firm bought an additional 50 percent share from British billionaire brothers Simon and David Reuben, who bowed out following a dispute with site owner London & Continental Railways. Westfield bought the remaining 25 percent from Stanhope. The site, valued at £4 billion, will accommodate 17,000 athletes during the Olympics. Afterward it will be converted to 13 million square feet of mixed-use development, including 2 million square feet of retail. This is Westfield’s second major retail project in London. The firm is building White City, billed as London’s biggest mall, which is scheduled to open in 2008.
Head of the class
College professor Edward Streb and a group of communications students at Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J., spent a semester studying the application of their discipline to the mall industry. The course examined the industry and its inherent messages, challenging the students to create communications strategies for the future. “Different teachers teach different forms of communication, things that send a message,” said Streb. “I chose shopping centers.” Streb, an ICSC member, attended an ICSC study tour last year that helped to him to develop the idea of the mall as a classroom topic. The course, which received $5,000 in funding from ICSC’s Educational Foundation, combined research, visits to Tysons Corner Center, in McLean, Va., and Willow Grove (Pa.) Park, and phone interviews with executives. Students also visited ICSC’s offices in New York City. Each student wrote a report listing the 10 greatest challenges facing the mall business and explaining ways that better communications could help. At press time, the students were merging their research to create a single white paper that could be presented to ICSC later this year. The students graduated in May, some with a new take on a familiar landmark.
Popularity of self-service checkout lanes grows
North American consumers are on track to spend over $475 billion at self-checkout lanes, ticketing kiosks and similar self-service machines this year, up 47 percent from last year’s $324 billion, according to IHL Consulting Group, a Franklin, Tenn.-based research firm. “Kiosks are fundamentally changing the way consumers do business,” said Greg Buzek, president of the firm. “Among retailers, we are seeing anywhere from 15 percent to 40 percent of all purchases being made at self-checkout machines.” IHL says self-checkout expenditures will rise by about 51 percent this year and 33 percent next year. “Demand for self-checkout systems,” Buzek said, “should push the dollar value of transactions up near $1.2 trillion by 2009.”
House of cards
Greeting-card stores are losing sales to dollar stores, according to WSL Strategic Retail’s biannual How America Shops survey of over 700 U.S. consumers. According to the New York City-based research firm, 18 percent of this year’s respondents said they buy greeting cards most often at dollar stores, up from 11 percent in 2004, when the survey was last conducted. By contrast, 24 percent of respondents this year said they shop for greeting cards most often at specialty stores, versus 32 percent in 2004. Lower-income shoppers are driving the trend. About 48 percent of shoppers with annual incomes in the $12,000-$25,000 range are getting their cards at dollar stores.
Macerich’s scientific method
The Macerich Co. is bonding science to shopping at its Twenty-Ninth Street redevelopment project in Boulder, Colo. The developer is teaming up with seven scientific organizations, including the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the National Renewable Energy Lab, to create “The Wonder of Science at Twenty-Ninth Street,” a permanent exhibit whose features will include a 35-foot-tall rocket, solar-powered kiosks and a light sculpture that tracks the atomic clock. Local design firm CommArts is helping create the exhibit space. The project, which opens this fall, will replace Crossroads Mall with 850,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space and the headquarters of specialty grocery chain Wild Oats Markets. Macerich is contributing $500,000 to the project, and the science groups are footing the rest.
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