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Shopping Centers Today -> September 2002
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U.S. CENTERS TO HONOR SEPT. 11 TERROR VICTIMS
By Debra Hazel
Shopping centers will commemorate last year’s Sept. 11 terrorist attacks with a range of ceremonies.
Some companies are allowing each center to plan its own events, while others have chosen a portfoliowide approach.
“For us to ignore it would be inappropriate,” said Jane Lisy, corporate marketing director at Forest City Enterprises, Cleveland. Bands and choirs will perform throughout the day at the company’s 12 centers.
“Music has been a sense of solace,” Lisy said. “It’s a great healer.”
Each mall will determine the musical performances individually, based on market tastes. At The Galleria at Sunset, Henderson, Nev., for instance, a bugler will play taps at noon.
“We wanted to do something respectful,” said Vicki Duncan, the Galleria’s marketing director. Duncan is also working with local military groups on an exhibit about the history of the American flag, as well as organizing a blood drive.
“My goal is to have something going on continuously here,” she said.
Taubman Centers’ International Plaza and Bay Street, Tampa, Fla., will play host to “Here is New York,” an exhibition of photographs taken in the aftermath of the attacks. The exhibit includes pictures of New York City as well as of Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, where the attacks took place.
Baltimore’s Eastpoint Mall, owned by New York City-based Shopco Group, is distributing flag pins to shoppers.
Crown American Realty Trust, Johnstown, Pa., is sponsoring “Faces of Freedom” at its 26 malls. Communities were asked to submit photos of members of their local fire and police departments, emergency workers and military personnel, and to tell something about them.
Mall of America will hold three events: “Ordinary Heroes,” a program to recognize 48 recipients of the Medal of Honor who will be at the Bloomington, Minn., megamall on Sept. 11; “Flags for Freedom,” a display of U.S. flags; and the unveiling of a statue honoring Tom Burnett Jr., a Bloomington High School graduate who died in the attacks.
Each of Chicago-based L&H Real Estate Group’s 15 centers will organize its own observances, but all will display a “peace pole,” a handcrafted, four- or six-sided monument displaying the message “may peace prevail on earth.” The poles are an idea of the World Peace Prayer Society, an Amenia, N.Y.-based nonprofit organization to promote world peace, said Carol A. O’Grady, SCMD, L&H Real Estate’s director of marketing and corporate communications. Other L&H centers are looking at planting “freedom trees,” saplings descended from trees of historic significance, including trees from George Washington’s orchards.
One of three memorial crosses that Rosendo Velez, a New York fire chief, built from the steel of the wreckage will be shipped to L&H’s Sunset Mall, San Angelo, Texas. This is in gratitude for a massive donation of supplies to New York City organized by its marketing director, Pamela A. Howell, CSM, CMD, in the wake of the attacks. More than 4,000 shoeboxes (symbolizing shoes left behind by firefighters who were lost) were filled with relief supplies by local children and shipped to New York.
Shopco’s Riverside Square in Hackensack, N.J., which is less than 25 miles from the World Trade Center site, will unveil a mural displaying poems and drawings by children from the region. More than 100 people from the Bergen County community perished in the attack.
“Riverside Square wants to be a place where people can reflect and remember,” said Brenda Haas, marketing director.
Some centers have placed discreet ads in newspapers, stressing the idea of the mall as a gathering place, a role played by many centers a year ago.
“On Sept. 14, 2001, we held a candlelight vigil at the mall,” said Monica Davis, a spokeswoman for Mall of America. “We saw Minnesotans needed an outlet to gather and mourn.”
Propriety, however, is a major concern of many centers; they are anxious to avoid the perception that they are capitalizing on the commemoration. Eastpoint Mall’s marketing director, Lisa Scarda. said she doesn’t plan to publicize her center’s events much.
“Everyone will recognize that day,” agreed Christine A. Menna, SCMD, Crown American’s vice president of corporate communications and marketing. “But it is really important that it be treated in a dignified way.”
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