RETAIL : MainPlace Converts an Empty Store Into Hospitality Suite for Shoppers

Memo to shopping center operators.

Subject: What to do with those embarrassing empty spaces left when recession-battered merchants fold their tents.

It won’t help if a May Co.-sized opening occurs, but the management at Santa Ana’s MainPlace mall has come up with a neat way to enhance the shopping center’s image with Christmas shoppers while covering up an awkward vacancy where a specialty women’s clothing retailer used to be.

The center has gutted the old store and remodeled it as a holiday hospitality suite where the footsore may rest and the just plain bored may wait while others in their party complete their shopping rounds.

The hospitality suite will be open through Dec. 24. Until then, it offers shoppers comfy couches in a living room, plus a dining room, restrooms and private areas for nursing infants and changing diapers. And it incorporates a complimentary, supervised coat- and package-checking center.

There is no word on whether the mall’s image-makers have thought about the goodwill benefits of keeping the hospitality suite open all year.