THE NEW ENTERTAINMENT : MALLS : Roller Coasters, Ice Rinks Keep Shoppers Amused

It is a common expression mumbled by haggard shoppers at malls nationwide: “This place is like an amusement park.”

But it’s no longer just an expression. It’s a fact.

What began decades ago with the stationary horsey ride at the local five-and-dime has evolved into the likes of a 52-foot-high double-loop Ferris wheel now whirling and twirling inside one major Canadian mall.

Ever eager for the consumer’s dollar, innovative shopping mall developers are beginning to erect indoor Disney-like attractions--from towering Ferris wheels to intricate submarine rides--and blend a common theme between mall merchants and amusement attractions.

The idea is to place snazzy shops with equally racy rides under the same retail roof. All of this hoopla is for the benefit of consumers who are more than ever demanding to be entertained while they shop.

These amusement malls--as they are called in the trade--are a fairly new phenomenon, but one that retail analysts contend could eventually change the face of many of America’s 23,000 retail centers and add twists--and turns--to the way Americans shop.

“The shopping center is no longer a place to just go and shop, but a place to be entertained,” said David Sierens, director of the International Council of Shopping Centers in New York.

Some Lost Millions

Some of the earliest attempts at amusement malls, however, fell faster than out-of-control roller coasters.

Attractions in Chicago and Atlanta both lost millions of dollars because owners failed to understand their markets and were unable to draw clear links between the retail shops and the rides, critics say.

And the sheer size and scope of these projects tend to upset everyone from environmentalists to operators of nearby theme parks who are suddenly beset with unexpected competition.

Today, just one small-scale amusement mall now operates in the United States, a $30-million project in Baltimore, the Power Plant, which opened in July in the shell of an old power station.

While the Power Plant does not offer rides, it does have a number of attractions such as a Ripley’s-like museum and 3-D movie theater that even lets the audience smell the aroma of whatever’s shown on the screen.

But nearly a dozen amusement malls are now in the planning stages, including proposals from Bloomington, Minn., to Miami, from San Diego to Denver. Others are planned in Australia, the United Kingdom and two are being studied in the Montreal area.

Optimistic developers contend that up to 1,000 amusement malls of various shapes and sizes could eventually spread coast to coast. Even Walt Disney Productions has studied the concept for years and still regards it as project worth pursuing, a company spokesman said.

Meanwhile, two major amusement malls--the $900-million (Canadian) West Edmonton Mall and the $90-million (Canadian) Woodbine Centre in Toronto--have opened in the past few years.

Unlike some malls that have installed attractions as afterthoughts, both malls planned their rides as cornerstones from Day One.

In fact, the glass-enclosed Woodbine Centre was actually designed around a Ferris wheel that attracts passing motorists from a nearby highway.

Developers say that future amusement malls will more closely link retailers to attractions so that a customer can, for example, step off a miniature Jungle Ride and step into a store that sells today’s popular safari clothing.

Some developers insist that these indoor entertainment meccas are best fit for frigid cities. But weather aside, it is the high costs of these ventures--and high risks--that has so far kept most domestic developers at a distance.

It costs somewhere between $8 million and $10 million to anchor one side of a mall with a themed amusement center, developers estimate. And added insurance costs for these mini-theme parks also can be prohibitive.

But with $10 billion expected to be spent on retail center construction in the United States over the next year, retail analysts say full-fledged indoor amusement attractions may soon catch on with a vengeance.

More Than a Trend

“It’s more than a trend, it’s a fact,” said Steve Clark, a Tustin-based amusement park consultant at Management Resources. He said that he is now consulting on five amusement mall projects.

“If you build one of these right, you can so dominate a regional market that it’s like dropping an atomic bomb on everyone else,” said Ron McCarthy, vice president of sales for FORREC Construction Ltd., a Toronto designer, builder and operator of amusement malls.

His company built the Woodbine Centre in Toronto which opened in August. The 1-million-square-foot amusement area features a dozen major attractions, including the largest indoor Ferris wheel in North America and a parachute ride that lets customers fall 25 feet.

Merchants hope that after the plunge, customers will catch their collective breath by strolling through one of the mall’s 200 shops.

“Almost every major developer in the United States is looking at building one of these,” said Dean Nahrup, vice president of Kings Entertainment Co., the Cincinnati company that owns six U.S. amusement parks and manages the amusements at the Woodbine Centre. He said Kings Entertainment is preparing to build amusement malls on its own in the United States.

“There is a potential for one of these in every major city in the United States,” said FORREC’s McCarthy. But the idea is still so new that many potential retail tenants can’t fathom the concept.

“When we tell them we have indoor attractions, they don’t know what we’re talking about,” McCarthy said.

Think Concept Is Silly

Others say that they understand the concept, but they also happen to think it’s silly. For example, you won’t find merry-go-rounds spinning anytime soon at Beverly Center, says Keith MacRae, who manages the 183-store mall. “Our customers are not interested in those distractions,” he said.

As a matter of fact, not one amusement mall is on the drawing boards for Southern California.

“We have so many things to do in Southern California that the idea would appear less likely to fly here,” said Bob Peterson, retail analyst for Coldwell Banker in Anaheim.

He added that high land costs in Southern California might discourage these mega-malls.

Ironically, the inspiration for these themed amusement malls came from one of the Southland’s most successful centers--South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.

On a visit to the mall four years ago, McCarthy, who was consulting for Triple Five Corp.--which owns the gargantuan West Edmonton Mall--noticed the attention generated by the carrousel at South Coast Plaza.

That carrousel has been a part of the mall since it opened in 1967, said Maura Eggan, South Coast Plaza’s director of marketing. The Plaza’s developers carried that carrousel theme throughout the center, even dotting the mall’s parking lot with carrousel posts.

“Remember, South Coast Plaza was new then and we needed something to help draw people to the center,” Eggan said. Today, the center’s annual sales exceed $400 million.

After his visit to South Coast Plaza, McCarthy returned to Toronto and recommended that Triple Five build a so-called Fantasyland inside the West Edmonton Mall--complete with a roller coaster and even an underwater submarine ride. The mall projects that gross sales will exceed $1 billion (Canadian) in 1986.

Huge Mall Planned

But the biggest is yet to come. Two months ago, Triple Five proposed a 6-million-square-foot amusement mall in Bloomington, Minn., more than 1 million square feet fatter than the sprawling West Edmonton Mall. (To compare, South Coast Plaza is less than 2 million square feet).

Developers say that successful amusement malls must place retail shops first and amusements second. “The amusements should function more as a tail on the dog. The shopping center is still the reason that shoppers are there,” said Geoffrey J. Harrison, regional manager with Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd., a Toronto developer which has plans in the works for three amusement mall developments.

But the retail and amusement mix didn’t work in Chicago in 1975, when Old Chicago opened as the nation’s first combined shopping center and amusement park. Five years later, the center went bankrupt and eventually reopened as a discount shopping center.

The Omni in Atlanta also attempted to combine the retail and amusement park themes when it opened in 1975, but since 1979 a number of shops--and some entire floors of the mall--have closed.

Retail analysts contend that both centers were poorly planned and badly marketed. Neither was built in an area that caters to the key audience--upscale families with young children.

And the mediocre quality of their attractions and merchandise would not have appealed to that sector, anyway. They also point to poor security which allowed bands of teen-agers to scare off potential patrons.

Other Experiments

But even before these two debacles, many malls were trying to beef up business with added entertainment.

Some erected massive movie complexes with shoebox-sized theaters while others opted to build food courts with eateries stuck together like so many gum drops.

Yet, others tested family amusements like ice skating rinks, such as The Galleria, a flashy Houston shopping center, which, when it opened in 1970, was among the first to plop an ice rink on its main floor.

Since the indoor ice rink concept has proven successful at The Galleria, some centers in Southern California have also tried the same format, including the $140-million Palm Desert Town Center which was built in 1983 and the University Town Center in La Jolla, which opened in 1977.

Both projects are developments of Ernest W. Hahn Inc., which also developed the $140-million Horton Plaza that opened in August in downtown San Diego.

In an unusual bid to attract business, a museum--the San Diego Art Center--is scheduled to open at the 150-store Horton Plaza in November. Horton Plaza also schedules lives performances--from jugglers to musicians--all day long in the mall’s center.

Some analysts contend that it was Ghirardelli Square, which opened in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area in 1964, that first merged entertainment and shopping on a large scale.

“Entertainment can be as strong an anchor as a major department store,” said Eddie Wang, vice president of the Jerde Partnership, a Los Angeles architecture firm that designed the Horton Plaza in San Diego.

So concerned have retail developers become with entertainment that many are now consulting with some of the top names in Hollywood--and beyond. Wang said that his company recently attended workshops with noted science fiction writer Ray Bradbury.

Some developers, however, are tackling this venture on a much smaller scale. Four months ago, Deauville Corp., a retail developer that owns three malls in the Houston area, placed four kiddie rides in each of its malls.

Mike Lowrey, a partner at Deauville, said the reason is very simple. “If some little kid knows his favorite ride is at one of our malls, he’ll ask his mom to go there.”

Times Librarian Susanna Shuster contributed to this story.