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Shopping Centers Today -> October 1999
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The Uncommon Area
By Jon Springer
Octogenarian marathon runner/speaker/author Dr. John Bland and dietitian/exercise specialist Jenna Colby have teamed to write “The Complete Mall Walker’s Handbook” (Fairview Press, $14.95), now available.
... Rapper Turvis Grey, who performs as Juvenile, was arrested at Jacksonville, Fla.’s Regency Square mall recently after a fracas that followed mall security guards’ request that Grey’s companions comply with the mall’s dress code. Mall officials say the arrest was due to the behavior of the group, and not because of the dress code.
... Retailers in Germany are finding clever ways to skirt state rules prohibiting Sunday shopping. In Berlin recently, the Kaufhouf department store got permission to hold a street fair, enabling it and other local businesses to remain open. A few weeks prior, shops in East Berlin put souvenir stickers on everything from ironing boards to glassware, in order to take advantage of state rules allowing sales in tourist areas. (For more on Sunday shopping in Europe, see page 55)
... Montgomery County (Pa.) detectives believe they have uncovered a credit-card theft ring that accounted for at least $100,000 in fraudulent sales at the Plaza at King of Prussia mall.
... When you sell a mall for $1.8 billion, what do you do with the money? If you’re Paul Sykes, the private owner of the recently sold Meadowhall mall outside London, you fund a political blitz against the euro.
... It was Christmas in August for shopping centers in Texas after that state hosted its first-ever sales-tax holiday. Same-store sales surged more than 22%, according to some figures.
... The provincial-owned Alberta Treasury Branches bank, which has been tangled in a $420 million lawsuit lawsuit regarding controversial loans to developers of West Edmonton Mall, will not be privatized. “They don’t want the West Edmonton Mall story all over their faces like bad acne,” said one opponent of the decision.
... Tour de France cycling champion and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong has joined bike.com, an Internet start-up that sells bicycles online.
... As devastating to malls in Canada as it may be, Eaton’s bankruptcy probably won’t result in changes to its namesake centers. “The World Series wasn’t named because it was championship of the world but after the World newspaper,” Eamon Kelly, CMD, manager of Toronto Eaton Centre, told SCT. “At least that’s what someone told me.”
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