Perfect 10 in Minnesota / Mall of America, still going strong, will get even bigger
Speaking in the hushed tones
common to medical waiting rooms, receptionist Juli Velebir was struggling to
sum up just what it is that makes the Mall of America such a dumbfounding and
fascinating quirk of modern culture. Then she smiled and nodded.
"Well," Velebir whispered, "you can get homemade apple pie, a vasectomy,
and get married, all in the mall. And all in a short afternoon."
Ten years after it opened - and after almost everyone predicted it would
perish swiftly in an ugly retail wreck - the largest, strangest mall in the
United States has not only succeeded, it has boomed.
You can indeed get a little outpatient surgery at the Quello Clinic, while
the kids ride the Pepsi Ripsaw Roller Coaster at Camp Snoopy amusement park,
perhaps, and your spouse studies accounting at National American University.
Assuming the surgery goes well, you might all be up for a bite at one of 50
restaurants, some shopping at the 520 stores, perhaps topping off the day with
a visit to the world's largest turtle collection.
The United States has about 46,000 shopping centers, according to the
International Council of Shopping Centers. The Mall of America stands alone,
however, as the temple to modern American consumerism, in all its glory and
gaudiness, ingenuity and excess, with all its piles and stacks and storerooms
of stuff.
Seven Yankee Stadiums would fit inside the 4.2-million-square-foot
behemoth. Theme park visitors had eaten 14,991,360 funnel cakes as of earlier
this year. The mall has gone through 96 million feet of toilet paper and 5 1/2
million trash bags.
Mall of America draws 43 million visitors a year, rings up annual sales of
about $900 million and has an occupancy rate of 99 percent.
It was the first major mall to include high-end stores, such as Nordstrom,
and discounters such as Marshall's, sometimes just a few doors away from one
another. It provided assistance for upstart retailers, and organized tour
packages for out-of-towners.
Most notably, however, the mall's developers bet early on that shoppers did
not want only to shop when they went to the mall. They would, the developers
predicted, come for entertainment as well.
With Camp Snoopy and its 30 rides as the entertainment anchor, developers
added several nightclubs, the Lego Imagination Center - from which 156,000 Lego
blocks have vanished - a neon-blue-hued bowling alley.
"We opened a mall," said spokeswoman Monica Davis, "but we grew into an
attraction."
Today, Mall of America lures more visitors annually than the Grand Canyon,
Graceland and Walt Disney World combined. And about 40 percent of those people
are considered tourists, meaning they have traveled more than 150 miles to get
here. About 6 percent of those have come from other countries.
Now the mall is planning to expand, more than doubling in size, by adding
what officials hope will be complementary rather than competitive projects,
such as hotels, office space, perhaps a luxury spa. Groundbreaking is slated
for 2003 or 2004.
"I never thought it would make it, never," recalled Murray Forseter, editor
and publisher of the trade publication Chain Store Age. Forseter was not alone
in his predication.
Four Canadian brothers in the mid-1980s proposed building a
10-million-square-foot mega-mall on the site of the empty Metropolitan Stadium
in Minneapolis, modeled after the giant West Edmonton Mall in Canada . That
size would decrease over the years of planning, but the developers pushed ahead
toward a gargantuan indoor everything-center despite the scoffs of critics.
What many early critics perceived as weaknesses in the plan became selling
points.
"We're here a lot in the summer but all the time in the winter," said Jodi
Shafer as her two young daughters and their friend dug through a pile of shiny
rocks at a gem stand this recent day. "What else are you going to do? This is
Minnesota."
Over the years, the Simon Property Group - one of the original
co-developers, which now runs the mall, Roosevelt Field and others on Long
Island - has worked to increase the number of reasons to come, and to stay.
The mall now contains a bank, a Northwest Airlines travel center, the only
full-service Post Office in a mall. There is the medical clinic, a dental
clinic, the Sage Clinic, which screens uninsured and underinsured women for
breast and cervical cancer.
More than 3,500 couples have been married in the Chapel of Love.
When they opened in 1994, the owners expected "a lot of Elvises, a lot of
zany people," said manager Sue Mills. An overwhelming majority have been
traditional, however. People preparing to tie the knot love the fact that they
can buy their tuxedos, wedding dresses, cake and photographs, all in the mall,
and have the reception in one of the restaurants.
