A Bazaar Approach to Mall Business : Retailing: Shops are not enough to lure customers. Games, food, entertainment and carnival acts are the trend.
When the kids clamor for a day of fun and entertainment, many Orange County parents haul them to Knott’s Berry Farm or Disneyland.
And when it’s time for a new pair of shoes or the latest “Beverly Hills 90210” sweat shirt, a trip to the mall is in order.
The theme park may soon be coming to the nearest mall, however, and a day of store-hopping will never be the same.
Faced with competition from discount centers and saddled with large buildings left empty by defunct department store chains, mall owners were urged Monday to consider entertainment as a way to add new life to older centers.
This is one of the major themes emerging from the International Council of Shopping Centers convention here, an annual conclave attended by 20,000 mall owners and retailers.
An Ohio company plans to create department store-size arcades filled with interactive games of all sorts.
Horizon Entertainment, a division of Edison Brothers Stores Inc., hopes to introduce American kids to virtual reality games. Wearing helmets that make the players look like large ants, contestants can zap alien antagonists as if they were both inside the video machine itself. “Virtuality,” as the company calls its system, was recently demonstrated at the MainPlace/Santa Ana mall.
A number of malls, including South Coast Plaza, have found that installing carousels is a magnet for luring parents with small children. Carrying the idea a step further, other malls are installing full carnivals under their roofs.
The Mall of America, under construction near Minneapolis-St. Paul, will have a full-scale Knott’s Camp Snoopy theme park, under an agreement with the Buena Park tourist attraction.
Peter Petz, a German painter and sculptor, said that when he began selling carousels at the convention five years ago interest was scant. Today, Petz said he has sold 250 of the merry-go-rounds to American shopping center operators.
“The leaders are going in that direction,” said Rob Swinson, national sales manager for Chance Rides Inc. in Wichita, Kan., an amusement park ride maker that has seen increased sales to malls.
Tustin Marketplace developer Daniel W. Donahue, chairman of the Donahue Schriber real estate firm, said he has taken notice of the trend. His Newport Beach firm, which explored possibilities for improving the flagging Anaheim Plaza mall, predicted that his company’s malls would incorporate entertainment in the next few years.
But carnival rides and amusements are not the only forms of entertainment that can benefit a mall. The Atrium Court portion of Fashion Island at Newport Center is considered a success, for instance, because it has managed to combine leisurely dining and shopping in an upscale setting under the same roof.
Paul F. Jacob III, vice president of the architectural firm of RTKL Associates Inc. in Los Angeles, which designed Atrium Court, said the Irvine Co. “didn’t want a typical food court.” It had to have the flavor of the old Farmer’s Market that used to be there, while bringing in the new elements of upscale food outlets on several floors, he said.
“It’s quality. You have to have good quality,” he said.
