The Mall Face-Lift Craze : Retailing: The looks of the ‘60s and ‘70s just won’t do. Multimillion-dollar remodeling jobs are bringing back customers and boosting sales, despite a recession.
Hailed as dramatic and airy when it opened in late 1980, Santa Monica Place helped to revitalize the small city’s deteriorating downtown and, with its ocean-view balconies and well-scaled design, even won an award for its trend-setting architect, Frank O. Gehry.
But that was nearly 11 years ago; time and trendiness march on.
Santa Monica Place has just emerged from a $15-million remodeling and is being billed as brighter and “more people-friendly.” It is chock-full of new, more upscale stores, has shed its red tile floor for cool white marble, installed an unusual drip fountain in its center court and completely overhauled its food court, which has been dubbed “Eatz.”
The remodeling “wasn’t tinkering with (Gehry’s) design,” said jeweler Bob Bubar, president of the mall’s merchants association. “It was a lot of subtle things that really improved the overall ambience of the mall.
“I think you always need to do that. Now it’s more exciting,” said Bubar, whose Bubar’s Jewelers has operated in Santa Monica for 46 years. Despite a slumping economy that has hurt retailers, “Christmas was very strong,” he said.
Everywhere you turn, malls are undergoing face lifts--from the $120-million retooling of Brea Mall in Orange County to the $30-million renovation of College Grove, San Diego’s first shopping mall, to the just-completed $35-million enclosing of Sherman Oaks Fashion Square.
The region’s two largest and most successful malls, South Coast Plaza and Del Amo Fashion Center, are constantly remodeling something, officials said, and countless small centers are doing the same. On the other hand, the recession has scuttled a multimillion-dollar expansion plan by No. 3, Glendale Galleria.
Retail centers are trading in the fern bar look of the ‘70s and the chrome and glass of the ‘80s for something new. Malls are changing the store mix, adding space and tossing in more food and entertainment to keep customer satisfied.
This wholesale revamping of the shopping centers of America seems to be particularly apparent in Southern California, one of the most competitive retail areas in the nation.
Nowadays, too many shopping centers are chasing too few shoppers who are shopping less often, experts say. So malls are sprucing up to bring customers back in or to attract a new breed of buyer.
The nationwide pace of shopping center remodeling or expansion jumped 35% in the first three quarters of 1990, compared to the same period in 1989, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers in New York. In contrast, new development of shopping centers dropped 29% during the first three quarters of 1990, spokesman Don Pendley said.
Consumers have roughly 36,000 U.S. shopping centers to choose from, providing about 17 square feel of retail space per person.
For some developers, the decision to remodel comes down to basic economics: Recession-shocked banks are much more willing to loan money to remodel a proven product than to build a new mall, Pendley said.
Many malls are trying to recreate that feeling of the old town square, the zocalo, the place where people gather to meet and greet.
“The revamping is hinged on the fact that so many of these centers were the eighth wonders of the world when they were built . . . but now they’re not such a big deal,” said Larry Ebel, senior vice president of RPA, a retail planning and consulting firm in Columbus, Ohio.
Many overhauls aim “to bring the centers back to a better reflection of the indigenous architecture, the indigenous influences,” Ebel said. “The generic shopping center doesn’t cut it anymore because Susie and John Yuppie don’t relate to chrome and glass and terrazzo floors. Community pride and Main Street America have curiously become cutting-edge again.”
Malls that dare to renovate usually “get an immediate impact on sales,” said Al Gobar, president of Alfred Gobar & Associates in Brea, a firm that conducts market studies for malls.
Take MainPlace/Santa Ana, which debuted as an open-air center in 1957 under the name Santa Ana Fashion Square. The once-bustling center began to show its age and steadily lost patronage to nearby enclosed malls.
To revive it, the old fashion square was razed and in its place was built a state-of-the-art enclosed mall with two levels, an open-beam ceiling filled with skylights and a new Nordstrom store as an anchor. After it opened in September, 1987, tourists were shuttled in from nearby hotels to the reborn $90-million mall. An expansion to be completed this year is expected to cost $10 million.
It paid off. The mall rose from 12th place among Orange County malls, with $80 million in sales in 1987, to third place, with $203 million in sales in 1989, according to the latest figures available from the State Board of Equalization.
Hoping for similar success, the aging Sherman Oaks Fashion Square recently underwent a $35-million transformation from a small outdoor shopping promenade to a two-story enclosed mall with 150 largely upscale retailers.
As a result, stores that were in business before the two-year renovation saw sales jump 20% to 30%, said David Sauers, executive vice president of City Freeholds (U.S.A.) Inc., which owns the 850,000-square-foot mall.
“We saw a very successful center, but it really wasn’t serving the needs of the community” when City Freeholds bought it in 1985, Sauers said.
Mall merchants said they liked the old shopping center but felt that it needed something different.
“It got tired. It was like an old suit,” said Arnold Levine, owner of Country Linens.
Levine said the renovation helped give Country Linens the best Christmas it ever had, despite the nationwide retail slump.
“I think the renovation of the mall was the salvation of the mall,” said Levine, a tenant since 1978. He said sales increased 26% from December, 1988, to December, 1990, and will probably double during the first year after remodeling was completed.
Leonard Freedman, co-owner of Sy Devore men’s clothing store, said the mall’s new look helped boost his December sales by 10% to 15% over pre-renovation holiday seasons.
“Many customers said they would never come back if the mall was enclosed,” said Freedman, whose store opened when the mall did in 1962. “But since it’s been renovated, we get a lot of positive comments from those same customers. Most were surprised that it turned out as pretty as it has.”
Across town, Century City Shopping Center explored the possibility of enclosing the mall but rejected it after customers urged the owners not to, marketing manager Christi Woods said. Instead, the mall added “shade structures” as part of a 1985 remodeling that also changed the facades and generally spruced up the ‘60s-era center. In 1987, the center spent $25 million to add the Marketplace, a food and entertainment center, as well as additional retail space.
Sales have continued a healthy increase and should be up about 6% or 7% in 1990, despite the recession, she said.
Another expensive overhaul that is bringing good returns is continuing at 14-year-old Brea Mall.
A regional mall with few distinctive qualities except an ice rink, the Brea Mall was given an extensive $120-million revamp that will not be complete until Robinson’s opens a new store this summer. Sales at the mall, which will have 50 new shops, climbed a hefty 19% to $223 million in 1989. The ice rink, however, was a casualty of the remodeling.
Another senior citizen of the shopping world was College Grove, San Diego’s first shopping mall. Built in 1960, the center was “functionally obsolete,” with half its stores vacant, when new owners bought the property in 1982 and decided to embark on its $30-million remodeling effort, said William J. Stone, president of William J. Stone & Associates, the mall’s managing agent and developer.
But College Grove, renamed the Marketplace at the Grove, did not go upscale, as did many of its competitors. Instead, Stone’s group set about creating what amounted to two malls within the remodeled center.
Half the mall would be clustered around a new bowling alley, movie theater and other entertainment. The other half would revolve around a group of “off-price” retail stores more attuned to the neighborhood surrounding the mall.
The strategy has worked, Stone said, as sales at the 85-store, 710,000-square-foot mall are roughly double what they were in 1987 and are approaching $100 million annually.
Times Staff Writers Philipp Gollner in the San Fernando Valley, Chris Woodyard in Orange County and Chris Kraul in San Diego contributed to this report.
