YOU ARE HERE : Small Stores Appear to Reap Big Rewards
Catherine McLean says her idea of a good shopping trip is an outing at the Shops at Palos Verdes in Rolling Hills Estates.
Sitting on a bench inside the mall one day last week with her daughter, the Palos Verdes Peninsula resident said that she avoids traveling to the massive Del Almo Fashion Center in Torrance, especially during the crush of the holiday season.
Too many hassles with traffic and crowds, she said.
But at the Shops at Palos Verdes, the atmosphere is different, McLean said. For one thing, the sales people are helpful, she said. For another, “it’s quiet.”
Originally called the Courtyard Mall when it opened in 1981, the center underwent a $3-million face lift last year aimed at attracting more shoppers--and making the mall less quiet.
The strategy was to shed the mall’s image as a miniature version of the South Bay’s other regional shopping centers and re-create it with specialty stores appealing to the buttoned-down, middle- and upper-middle-class people living on the peninsula.
“The people here really are conservative,” said Mary Harris, the mall’s director of marketing. “That’s why they moved here. . . . We kind of compare it to a Connecticut or New England.”
Davis said the mall, which is next to the 60-store, open-air Peninsula Center, tried to create a “whole new image” by bringing in small stores that sold quality merchandise. No Rodeo Drive chichi was allowed. No shops touting trendy, costly, here-today, gone-tomorrow goods. In came merchants such as Eddie Bauer, Williams-Sonoma, The Nature Co., The Bombay Co. and Talbots.
Judging from last year’s sales figures, the new stores have rejuvenated the mall, Harris said. Mall figures indicate Christmas sales in 1989 were up 40% from the previous year.
Of course, only time will tell if the make over will prove successful over the long haul. Harris concedes that the Shops at Palos Verdes are still in competition with upscale merchandisers situated in malls such as Del Almo and the South Bay Galleria.
And on the peninsula, the center may face another challenge--the so-called Hamburger Hill syndrome. The phrase refers to those people who move to the area because of its fine schools and semi-rural life style, but then wind up with little disposable income because of the area’s high cost of housing.
Nevertheless, shopper Victor Carbone, who has lived in Rancho Palos Verdes for 35 years, said he has already noticed a big change. He said he used to call the mall “disaster alley” because so few people were seen there.
But judging from the number of shoppers there one recent Tuesday afternoon, those days may be over, he said. “Just look around. I’ve never seen this much traffic.”
SHOPS AT PALOS VERDES, ROLLING HILLS ESTATES
Year opened: 1981
Retail square footage: 385,000
Anchor stores: I Magnin, May Co.
Number of stores: 70
1989 sales tax paid to city: $452,680
% of city’s sales tax revenue: 29%
Memorable feature: Contains an ice skating rink.
