Mall Greets Shoppers With Lists of Do’s and Don’ts : Northridge: Some say signs will ensure safety of shoppers. Others fear they’ll unfairly target youth.

It reopened last month with the expected fanfare: balloons, fireworks, even live entertainment. But shoppers browsing through Northridge Fashion Center’s sparkling new shops and corridors--remodeled after the devastating earthquake--found something decidedly unexpected.

Posted near mall entrances were signs declaring a long list of banned activities--from running to wearing clothes “likely to embroil other groups.” Patrons and mall merchants said the signs even prohibited shopping in groups of more than four--a claim mall management denies.

“It’s just behaviors that are not allowed on the property because we feel they would be disruptive to other individuals,” said Annette Bethers, marketing director for the Northridge Fashion Center. “[The code of conduct] explains very clearly what we expect and why we expect it.”

Although the signs have been removed so that management can revise their wording to make them “friendlier,” the content will remain the same, Bethers said.

As startling as the signs may have seemed to eager shoppers, they only made public policies that were already in effect before the quake, Bethers said. And the rules were hardly original but part of a nationwide trend: Beginning in the early 1990s, mall managers started creating laundry lists of “do’s and don’ts” for visitors. A growing number of operators say such codes are needed to ensure the safety and comfort of shoppers.

“The reason malls are instituting codes of conduct is because apparently, parents aren’t instituting them at home,” said Mark Schoifet, spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade association representing 30,000 shopping centers.

“Over the last few years, handling teen-agers in enclosed malls has been one of the most difficult problems for managers,” Schoifet said.

But civil libertarians and others argue that the codes are often used to rid malls of young people who may be perceived as troublemakers, whether they have done anything illegal or not. “The issues that concern us are primarily issues of discrimination,” said Ed Chen, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s Northern California office. “We find that whatever the code says--you can’t wear certain colors, or be in groups of four--it’s almost always only applied to youth and most often to youth of color.”

The daily conflict unfolding in malls--between youths who want to hang out and managers who want to make money--reflects society’s overall frustration in dealing with young people. Perhaps more than in any other generation, teen-agers today are feared by their elders.

Yet, society cannot afford to dismiss teens, and neither can shopping malls, experts say. “It’s not a group any mall manager wants to alienate,” Schoifet said.

According to a study by Teenage Research Unlimited, teen-agers spent a whopping $99 billion in 1994. Of that amount, about $63 billion was their own money and $36 billion belonged to their parents or other adults.

Teen-agers take that spending power with them wherever they go--and they go to malls more than any other demographic group, Schoifet said.

In California, the courts, urban planners and others have acknowledged the mall as the new urban center, the modern-day equivalent of the old town plaza. In an era where organized recreational venues for youth are scant, malls are perceived as safe terrain, acceptable to both teen-agers and their parents as a wholesome form of recreation.

“A lot of teens see going to the mall as a social event, not just as a means to an end as a lot of adults do,” said Marla Grossberg, director of syndicated research for Teenage Research Unlimited.

While the overwhelming majority of teen-agers and others who visit the mall are well-behaved, managers say, a small number push the limits: yelling, running, skateboarding and roughhousing. Sometimes just their presence in large numbers is alarming to other customers.

“It’s a tough situation for malls,” Schoifet said. “In many cases they’re put in the position of being baby-sitters. This is not a day-care center. This is not a recreation center. It’s not a public park. It’s a privately owned shopping center.”

In the view of Schoifet and mall managers, the codes are just one way of handling troublesome visitors and assuring others that the mall is a safe place.

At the Northridge Fashion Center, the code of conduct signs will be replaced in the next few weeks, once they are rewritten.

“We just weren’t happy with the way it was worded,” Bethers said. “We felt maybe there’s a better way we could do it. . . . We just wanted it to read in a more friendly tone than it read.” She refused a Times request to release the original wording but outlined the code of conduct in an interview, while shoppers and mall merchants described the signs.

“No smoking, no drinking, no traveling in groups of four or more--it covered basically everything they might want to kick somebody out of the mall for,” said a store employee.

The code of conduct was posted near entrances and distributed in a pocket-size version to those who violated it, Bethers said.

Part of the Northridge code addresses safety. It prohibits skateboarding, running, skating and bicycling, Bethers said. The code’s prohibitions included the use of large radios, obscene language, religious and ethnic slurs, and physical and verbal threats. Some customers said they were pleased to see the signs, according to Bethers.

“Basically, the reason we have a code of conduct is to guarantee that it’s a comfortable environment for everyone who wants to shop here,” Bethers said.

But some prohibitions could actually cause patrons great discomfort.

Under a restriction limiting groups to no more than four, a family of two parents and three children conceivably could not shop together.

“There’s no reason why a group of four people of any age can’t shop together or sit at a McDonald’s on a bench,” said the ACLU’s Chen.

Even if the rule supposedly applies to all mall visitors, it is not likely that management would “apply it to a nice, ‘wholesome’ family of four,” he said.

To apply such a rule arbitrarily--to only youths shopping in large groups, for example--would possibly violate the Unruh Act, the California civil rights law that prohibits discrimination, Chen said.

In a landmark free-speech ruling, the California Supreme Court determined in 1979 that malls function in their communities as the “town plaza” of days past. So certain activities in malls are constitutionally protected, said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the Southern California ACLU.

One potentially troublesome part of the Northridge code, Ripston suggested, is a ban on “non-expressive commercial activity without prior permission of management.” What that means, Bethers said, is no campaigning, rallying or collecting signatures for petitions.

But such activity is constitutionally protected, and while mall owners can require prior permission, they cannot deny political activists and others access to shoppers, Ripston said.

“In California, the Supreme Court said that malls and parking areas are quasi-public property and you can exercise First Amendment rights in these places,” she said.

Not all codes are as comprehensive as the one in Northridge; some are even stricter. In a few instances, malls have taken the drastic step of banning all youth unaccompanied by an adult on Friday and Saturday nights, Schoifet said. Some managers post codes throughout the mall; others hand out pocket-size versions as a warning to violators.

At Fallbrook Mall in West Hills, the code of conduct--a short, easy-to-understand list--is not posted and only rarely handed out to patrons.

“Northridge takes it a step further,” said Mark Knudson, Fallbrook’s general manager. “When you see the word ‘no’ so many times, it’s kind of obtrusive.”

At the Fox Hills Mall in Culver City, the code is available at the management office but is not posted.

“These were not active problems for us,” said Janet LaFevre, Fox Hills’ marketing director. “We did not need to put this in the forefront of the consumer. For us, it was just something we wanted to subtly put out and make people aware of.”

Nationwide, the codes have led to lawsuits.

In two cases Chen represented, Latino and African American youths in Northern California were asked to leave an amusement park and a mall because they wore clothing that violated a dress code. The codes were ostensibly designed to keep out gang members.

In both those cases, managers at the Great America amusement park in Santa Clara and the Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo settled the cases out of court, promising not to exclude patrons based on dress.

In yet another case involving Sunrise Mall in Sacramento, a security guard arrested a teen-ager accused of violating the mall’s dress code.

In a federal lawsuit, attorney Othello H. Curry argued that the dress code--aimed at gang members--was unconstitutional because it was enforced only against youths who are not white.

Eventually, the mall settled the suit, paying the teen-ager an undisclosed sum.

Some malls actually embrace young patrons, recognizing that they are potential customers.

Topanga Plaza, for example, has “adopted” nearby Canoga Park High School and has a close relationship with administrators and students. Mall managers make an effort to employ the high school’s students and also call administrators during school hours to determine whether teen-age shoppers may be truant.

“They understand what the code of conduct is without somebody saying there’s no pushing and shoving, said Clyde Ahl, Topanga Plaza’s general manager. “The young people today are not ignorant. You can’t just categorize and stereotype that customer . . . Everybody else was once young too.”