Revitalized Crenshaw Plaza Striving Toward Success
Despite innovative marketing tactics and a modern facility that invites comparison to Southern California’s finest malls, the Crenshaw Baldwin Hills Plaza--the nation’s first mall built in a mostly black, urban community--is struggling to attract shoppers and retailers a year after it opened.
With Christmas less than two months away, only 67 of the 100 available store spaces at the $120-million, two-level facility have been leased, and stores that are open report that shoppers are sparse. Although sales are reportedly robust at the mall’s three anchor department stores, one retailer--Laserland--is having such financial difficulties that the owner is said to be considering leaving the mall, which is situated at Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards.
“That project has not developed as fast as we would have liked,” Mayor Tom Bradley mused recently during a breakfast meeting with minority entrepreneurs at City Hall.
Laserland’s owner, KNBC-TV reporter Furnell Chapman, could not be reached, and a store manager would not comment. Adding to the store’s troubles is the fate of its parent company, Laserland Corp. USA of Aurora, Colo., which filed for reorganization under the federal bankruptcy laws earlier this year.
The mall’s problems are considerably less dire. However, the lack of crowds is unmistakable.
“People tend to want to be around other people and there aren’t many here,” said Paula Theard, a Los Angeles Unified School District bus driver who was browsing in the mall on a recent Wednesday with her co-worker Pamela Walton. People say, “If it’s not popular, it’s not happening.”
Business and political officials from around the country have been closely watching the plaza to gauge its ability to lure back disgruntled shoppers from the surrounding middle class communities of Ladera Heights, View Park, Baldwin Hills and Leimert Park. Many shoppers in the area had defected to other malls such as Fox Hills--and even further to the South Bay and West Side--since the original Crenshaw shopping center opened in 1948.
To lure them back, the project’s developers--Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency and Alexander Haagen Co.--spared no expense. They installed etched glass railings, skylights and towering, mature palm trees inside and outside the plaza in hopes that a first-class facility would bring Crenshaw-area consumers more convenience and choice as well as providing new jobs and boosting the economic fortunes of retailers.
In some ways, the investment has paid off.
The mall has had a big impact on development in the surrounding Crenshaw community, dramatically boosting local real estate values and local employment, experts say. The facility has also sparked interest in a host of nearby projects, including a proposed new supermarket and an overhaul of Santa Barbara Plaza, directly west of the mall.
“The (surrounding) property values have definitely gone up and that puts pressure on” more commercial development in the area, said Ron Smothers, president of the Crenshaw Chamber of Commerce.
“It’s still a struggle,” Smothers added. “But when you look at some of the other malls, we are not doing that bad. We are ahead of the pace of the Beverly Center when it first opened. I see more people each time I visit the mall.”
Such improvement has made some analysts who had been pessimistic about the mall’s prospects more optimistic today.
“I’m pleasantly surprised,” said Bernard Anderson, managing partner of the Urban Affairs Partnership, a privately held urban development consulting firm in Philadelphia. “I don’t know if there are any special circumstances in that area. But the experience there gives us reason to be hopeful about the economic feasibility of (similar) shopping centers across the country.”
The Crenshaw center was the first regional shopping center--featuring more than one major department store--in the United States when it opened in 1948. But it fell on hard times during the past two decades as white residents abandoned the Crenshaw district and retailers began to cut store service and selection.
The departing white residents were replaced mostly by affluent black professionals. But the reputation of the Crenshaw district nevertheless suffered in the eyes of shoppers and retailers in part because of the area’s proximity to more crime-ridden and economically depressed areas in South Central Los Angeles and the run-down appearance of Crenshaw Boulevard--with its collection of liquor stores, video rental stores and other mom ‘n’ pop businesses.
Despite widespread publicity about the new mall and a near absence of crime there, fewer shoppers than expected are patronizing the plaza. Shoppers and mall officials blame the relatively small number of retailers that have opened stores in the facility.
“The leasing has been difficult,” acknowledged Leopold A. Ray, the mall’s manager. “It’s a combination of factors. But one of the biggest factors--and there’s no way to soft-pedal it--is that most of the national retailers are not used to going into minority areas. . . . The vast majority want to take a wait-and-see attitude toward the mall. That creates some problems for us.”
Ray claims that a leading national cookie franchiser and several well-known women’s retailers have declined offers to lease space in the mall. To lure Waldenbooks to the mall, officials said they had to get radio station KACE-FM owner Willie D. Davis to intercede with the book chain’s owner. Davis, a former professional football player, sits on the board of Waldenbooks’ parent company, K mart Corp.
The slow progress in attracting a greater variety of stores has kept away disgruntled shoppers, who complain that there isn’t enough selection at the plaza.
“I think it looks nice,” said Linda Maria Douglas, a lawyer who lives near the plaza. But Douglas said that despite the swanky new look, “I tend to go other places to shop because I am disappointed in the merchandise there. They don’t carry the name brands that I would like to buy.”
“I still go to the West Side occasionally because they have a lot of children’s shops and other stores I like,” admits Adrienne Mayberry, an organizer of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Network.
Some say a management dispute earlier this year marred hopes of the mall getting off to a smooth start and quickly changing the minds of dissatisfied consumers such as Douglas and Mayberry.
In a move that sparked an outcry from the NAACP and two other civil rights organizations, developer Haagen ousted the first black manager of the plaza Jan. 5, and replaced him with a management team that included the daughter of county supervisor Kenneth Hahn, a longtime friend.
Haagen moved quickly to quell the protests the next day by naming Ray, who is black and was the plaza’s associate developer, as the sole mall manager. But some observers say the incident may have hurt the plaza’s initial efforts to improve its image and sign up more retailers.
Today, mall officials say they have become much more aggressive in marketing the plaza.
Not only is the plaza using such attractions as cake-cuttings, bands and a special anniversary promotion next week, it is also employing more innovative marketing techniques.
Radio station KACE-FM, whose studios are in the mall, provides hours of free publicity with regular live broadcasts from the plaza. A community meeting room, which is booked solid through the end of the year, helps introduce the mall to a larger circle of neighborhood groups. Meanwhile, a Los Angeles Police Department substation and private security force provide around-the-clock mall protection.
The tactics may be starting to pay off.
At least one mall tenant--women’s apparel store Lerners of New York--is so pleased with business that it recently asked to nearly double the size of its store to 12,000 square feet.
The major department stores at the plaza--Sears, May Co. and the Broadway--also say they are doing well, although they will not disclose sales figures.
“Sales have definitely met our expectations,” said Jim Berry, manager of the Sears store.
“Overall our sales are doing very well,” said Myra Bauman, a spokeswoman for the Broadway. She added that the department store continues to be “optimistic” about the plaza’s prospects and is “planning additional special events to celebrate the (mall’s) anniversary.”
