Our Love Affair With Malls Is on the Rocks

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By DAVID SEGAL
BLOOMINGTON, Minn.

DEARLY beloved.

We are gathered here today, in the midst of economic calamity, to ask if we really should be gathered here today, in a funhouse of merchandise designed to send us deeper into debt.

Specifically, we are gathered in the Chapel of Love, sandwiched between a LensCrafters and a Bloomingdale’s and tucked into a relatively quiet corner of the vast prairie of retail and amusements that is the Mall of America.

It’s a convenient starting point for rethinking the 50-year marriage between the American shopper and the American mall. Because we’ve been married to the mall for so long that some of us are now getting married in the mall — 5,000 couples in this chapel since it opened 10 years ago.

And one recent Sunday afternoon, Brianna and Jesse Bergmann are standing here under a white wedding arch, beside an ordained minister, having promised to cherish each other in sickness and in health. There was a homily about forgiveness, an exchange of vows and finally a kiss and some applause.

Before everyone heads past the Foot Locker and down the escalator to the Rainforest Cafe, the bride — a cherubic 19-year-old — leans against a wall in her billowy white dress and explains why she chose this spot for her big day.

“I love shopping,” she says, giggling. “Mostly clothing. I love Macy’s, Aero’s, American Eagle, Maurice’s.”

“I come with her when she shops,” says her husband, a 21-year-old who loads pallets in a food warehouse, “so she doesn’t spend too much.”

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of the problem: We are reliably informed that whatever part of the economic crisis can’t be pinned on Wall Street — or on mortgage-related financial insanity — can be pinned on consumers who overspent. But personal consumption amounts to some 70 percent of the American economy. So if we don’t spend, we don’t recover. Fiscal health isn’t possible until money is again sloshing into cash registers, including those at this mall and every other retailer.

In other words, shopping was part of the problem and now it’s part of the cure. And once we’re cured, economists report, we really need to learn how to save, which suggests that we will need to quit shopping again.

So the mall we married has become the toxic spouse we can’t quit, though we really must quit, but just not any time soon. The mall, for its part, is wounded by our ambivalence and feels financially adrift.

Like any other troubled marriage, this one needs counseling. And pronto, because even a trial separation at a moment as precarious as this could get really ugly.

So we have come to this 4.2-million-square-foot behemoth — the mother of all malls, a pioneer in the field of destination retailing, and a sprawling, visceral economic indicator — for some talk therapy with shoppers, retailers and management. We let people vent, grumble and sift through their feelings. They catalog their anxieties, describe their fears and express the surprising varieties of guilt that only dysfunctional relationships can produce.

“I feel a need to get out there and do the mall thing, because I don’t want the mall to disappear,” says Cookie Tomlinson, who is visiting from Maryland and sits on a bench next to her son near Lego Park.

Mrs. Tomlinson and her husband are here Christmas shopping for their two grandchildren, who are too young to realize that their gifts are a tad late. “It’s a social experience, being with the grandkids, watching them interact,” she says.

Her son, Gary Tomlinson, is a computer repairman who wears a black T-shirt that reads, “No, I will not fix your computer.”

“The mall is tactile in a way that online shopping isn’t,” he says. “So the kids pick out stuff that they wouldn’t pick out if we were at home shopping on the Web.”

But could you quit the mall if you had to?

“Yeah, I could quit the mall,” he says. “But I don’t want to see it die.”

THERE are roughly 1,500 malls in the United States, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, many of them ailing, some of them being converted into office buildings, and others closing their doors for good.

At Web sites like deadmalls.com, the carcasses of these abandoned buildings are photographed and toe-tagged, along with tributes from former shoppers. All this as the worst retail environment in decades continues to sag in a sickly economy.

But from those overseeing the Mall of America, you don’t hear panic. “We’re bucking the trend,” says Maureen Bausch, vice president for business development. “We always knock wood when we say that.”

Ms. Bausch has the effervescent, can-do cheer of a small-town mayor, which, in a way, she is.

Eleven thousand people work at the mall in this suburb of Minneapolis, a five-minute ride from the airport. Forty million visitors arrive here each year, which, according to the mall’s promotional material, is more than visit Disney World, the Grand Canyon and Graceland combined.

The mall has a seven-acre theme park with 24 rides, an aquarium with hundreds of sharks, an 18-hole miniature golf course, 20,000 parking spaces and 520 retail stores.

The mall has its own security force and a holding cell, which is run by the Bloomington police. There are 250 video cameras spread around the mall, which Darcy Kwyla, a security systems controller, monitors in a hushed room.

“You see everything,” says Ms. Kwyla, as she flips from camera to camera with a control panel on her desk. “Sex in the parking lot, a naked guy on drugs walking through the mall, thefts, fights. You name it.”

Since the mall opened in 1992, there have been a handful of suicides — mostly people jumping from the seventh level of the parking lot — as well a murder and two accidental deaths on the amusement park rides. But you are far more likely to see a TV chef than a crime on the premises.

Last year, 95 celebrities were limoed here, mostly B- and C-listers like the professional wrestler Bret Hart and Jay McGraw, the son of Dr. Phil and author of “Life Strategies for Dealing With Bullies.”

“We’re more promotional now than we’ve ever been,” as Ms. Bausch puts it.

Sitting in her office in the basement, she is explaining how it’s possible that total sales at the mall were up 2 percent in 2008. Even she seems a little amazed by the number, in part because a major highway nearby was shut down during some crucial days in the holiday shopping season.

Yes, 11 stores closed in 2008, including Hot Dog on a Stick, a clothing retailer named Big Dog, and Wilsons Leather. But 31 new stores opened, among them American Apparel, True Religion and Best Buy, which brought in New Kids on the Block, the reunited boy band, for what the store billed as an “exclusive Best Buy opening performance and autograph signing!”

Tourist dollars helped. There are 71 Mall of America package tours from 32 countries. And there are special events, like the “Spirit of America” cheerleading competition, which unleashes a couple of thousand cheerleaders in the mall on the weekend we visit.

But the girls in sparkly mascara, on teams with names like Xtreme Storm, are outnumbered by shoppers. And few of those shoppers are in the mood to spend.

Here, for instance, are six women from St. Cloud, Minn., waiting for a table outside Ruby Tuesday. They have come for their eighth annual weekend trip to the Mall of America. Four of them are sisters and two are women who married into the sisters’ family, and happen to be sisters, too.

“Can you guess who the four sisters are?” one asks. (We can, but by dumb luck.)

They are all splitting a single suite at a hotel, which will cost each of them a mere $16 a night. As they do the math, it’s clear that an unofficial competition is under way for the title of Least Extravagant Shopper.

“I got this for $25,” says Shannon McDonnel, draping a leopard-pattern scarf around her neck. “From Macy’s. On sale.”

“That’s not a sale item!” a sister shouts.

“It is a sale. It was originally $40. No wait, it was originally $34. So that’s a sale.”

“I spent $36 and got eight items,” says Kyna Reiter. “All of them from Garage, a store I’d never heard of, but it was a great store.”

“I got a dress from Ann Taylor for $5,” says Meaghan Banes. She also has a burrito from Chipotle in her hands, which she will take into Ruby Tuesday, which means she’ll spend less than everyone else on lunch. So she wins.

Each of the six women is in a defensive spending crouch for a different reason.

One woman’s husband hauls new cars, which means he’s on the verge of being laid off. Another’s husband is training to be a police officer, which means he isn’t earning anything now. The couple have been trying to sell their house for a year, hoping that they can downsize to a smaller home, in the $100,000 range. But so far, no one has even asked to see the house twice, let alone made an offer.

“Have you buried a statuette of St. Joseph in the yard?” Ms. McDonnel asks. (The statue is supposed to bring good luck.)

“A year ago,” Ms. Reiter says. “We buried St. Joseph a year ago.”

The black disc that Ruby Tuesday gave them is now blinking and making noise. Their table’s ready.

“Maybe you should bury St. Jude,” Ms. McDonnel says, heading into the restaurant.

St. Jude?

“He’s the saint of lost causes.”

IF we were actually in couples therapy with the mall, we’d have to confess to something: We have changed, not the mall.

The economic crisis has caused shoppers to go into an essentials-only mode. But the mall has never trafficked in essentials. You can’t, for instance, fill a prescription at the Mall of America, because it doesn’t have a pharmacy. You can, however, buy a vanilla hazelnut fragrance candle in the shape of a miniature cooking skillet. Or a $13 baseball hat that looks as though it’s made of cheddar cheese. A store called Corda-Roy’s sells a variety of bean bags that convert into beds. Magnet Max sells a battery-operated guinea pig that runs continuously on a spinning exercise wheel.

And, as ever, the Mall of America is filled with I-dare-you combinations of fast food and entertainment. You can nibble on a carton of Long John Silver’s buttered lobster bites, then ride the SpongeBob SquarePants roller coaster. You can grab an A & W Coney cheese dog and barbecue fries and then take a virtual submarine ride. You can treat yourself to Mama’s Cinnamon Bread Pudding at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. and try the flight simulator at A.C.E.S.

The mall is the stalwart spouse that hasn’t learned any new moves in a decade. It is owned by the Ghermezian brothers, who live in Canada and run a real estate conglomerate called Triple Five. They rarely talk to the media and declined requests to be interviewed for this article.

Recently, they upgraded the Mall of America’s movie multiplex, and in 2006 they dropped the Camp Snoopy theme in the amusement park after failing to reach a deal with United Media, which owns the rights to the brand. The park is now Nickelodeon Universe.

But the basic design and sales pitch of the mall are unchanged. The mall is still a huge rectangle, with the stores surrounding the park and the shopping areas divided into four sections — each with its own name, décor and background music.

As the publicist Dan Jasper explained in an e-mail message, the West Market — the hallway between Nordstrom and Macy’s — is supposed to feel like a European train station and gets smooth jazz. The North Garden, which connects Sears and Macy’s, is lined with trees and lampposts and is supposed to feel like an outdoor park; the retail mix skews toward teenagers and the music is described as “pop contemporary adult hottest hits.” South Avenue collects the upscale, chic stores and pipes in “rock adult album alternative.” East Broadway is supposed to feel contemporary and gets “pop adult contemporary/modern.”

Despite the different looks, and despite navigation maps on kiosks around the building, you never quite get your bearings. Several stores have more than one location — there are two Nestlé Toll House Cookies spots, for instance, and four Caribou Coffees — which gives you the impression that you’re lapping places you haven’t yet been.

The mall has skylights but, like a casino, has no windows and not a single clock.

“Why do we want you to know what time it is?” Ms. Bausch says with a smile. “We don’t want you to leave so we don’t want you to be in a hurry.”

SPEND enough hours in the Mall of America and you wind up in a sort of fugue state in which the specifics of time and place turn fuzzy. The hope, one assumes, is that you’ll spend more freely in this alternative universe of nonstop distractions.

It seems to have worked on Consuelo and Steve Ebert, a good-looking couple in their late 30s. In their well-stuffed shopping bags are a sweatshirt, a ski coat, pajamas and a children’s book about Martin Luther King Jr. for their daughter. This after having spent, by their own calculation, more than $1,600 in the mall in the weeks before Christmas.

At a time when most people are watching from the sidelines, these two are shopping decathletes. So one wonders: What do they do for a living?

“I’m a 911 dispatcher,” Mrs. Ebert says, “and he’s a fireman.”

Both have been labeled “essential workers” by the state, and they feel more essential than ever.

“I take calls from 36 cities,” Mrs. Ebert says, “and for weeks, when the price of gas was at $4 a gallon I would get a dozen calls a day from gas-station managers reporting a gas drive-off” — when a driver speeds off without paying. “We got so many of them that the police finally said that they wouldn’t pursue anyone unless more than $70 worth of gas had been stolen.”

Mr. Ebert, meanwhile, was kept busy with calls to homes — all of them vacant, many of them in foreclosure — that had been stripped of copper pipes, presumably for sale as scrap.

“People would smell gas coming from those houses and call the fire department,” he says. “For a while, we had one of those calls every day.”

These are among the few people with job security — the ones fielding the local distress signals of the American economy. But there are, it seems, far more people making those calls than answering them.

“There are days now when I make $160 and think I had a good day,” says Mark Classen, co-owner of Just Dogs! Gourmet, a store in the mall that sells, among other items, signs that say “My Labrador retriever is smarter than your honor roll student” and dog treats shaped like fire hydrants.

“You’d be amazed at how many people are returning things now,” Mr. Classen adds. “I’m going to have to start enforcing my return policy because — well, look at this.”

He reaches under the counter and retrieves a pair of pink dog shoes called Cozy Boots, size “xxsmall,” which are in a custom-made plastic zip bag.

“A woman just brought these back,” he says. “The zipper is broken. The cotton in the booties is gone. I can’t sell these again. This keeps happening. Today, every time I got past $300 in sales, somebody brought something back and I was back under $300. Back and forth all day.”

Mr. Classen isn’t buying the “up 2 percent” line that the mall’s management is bragging about. In fact, you hear a lot of skepticism about that figure from retailers here. (Except for the big ones. Representatives of the mall’s four anchor stores — Nordstrom, Macy’s, Sears and Bloomingdale’s — either did not return calls or said they would not comment .)

The people who run the smaller operations are chattier — like Derrick Wolf, the co-owner of a kiosk that sells hermit crabs as recession-friendly pets.

“I’d say we’re staying afloat,” he says. “We’re down over last year, but not to the point where it’s worrying us.”

Or Felicia Glass-Wilcox, who owns the Chapel of Love. The place has flower sconces on the wall, a “Rod Stewart Unplugged” CD by the stereo and just enough white lacquered pews to seat about 65 people.

It also has veils, flowers, dresses, guest books — and anything else needed for a wedding ceremony — for sale, in a retail section, adjacent to the chapel. On the day of the Bergmann wedding, Ms. Glass-Wilcox is standing near the cash register, describing the kind of brides-to-be she is meeting these days.

“We’ve heard it a lot lately and it just kind of kills us, but we have women come in here and tell us they want a dress for $100,” she says. “We have a few that are close to $200, but they’re pretty informal.”

The retail part of her business is down 25 percent. Fortunately for Ms. Glass-Wilcox, she also offers one of the area’s least-expensive wedding sites, with prices that start at $249, minister included, and go up to $649, with add-ons like a photographer, custom music and Champagne.

“Thank God for those weddings,” she says. “I make more money on my weddings than I do on retail, so I’m up over all about 10 percent. We’re balancing, but barely.”

STORES like the Chapel of Love rent space from the Mall of America. (The four anchors have long-term leases and constructed their own buildings.) Everyone here, says Ms. Glass-Wilcox, has a different deal with the mall and she is prohibited from discussing the terms with other renters. Under the terms of some leases, management can tell a store to move to a different space.

“I’ve been here for five years and they’ve told us to move six times,” says Sarah Ertresvaag, an assistant manager at Tiffany Collection, a lamp store that is closing in a matter of weeks. There are “50 percent off” signs all over.

“The shortest move was 10 days,” Ms. Ertresvaag says. “We moved in, they said somebody else wants the spot, and we moved out.”

This is a revelation: Even the retailers have an uncertain marriage to the mall. And the harder that times are, the trickier that relationship becomes.

Ms. Ertresvaag says she doesn’t know when the store will actually close, or even what is moving in to replace it. There have been rumors of a restaurant; someone else claims that a labyrinth for children is planned. She is just relieved to have another job lined up, one outside the mall.

Come March, she’ll manage a gas station.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/busine...nted=print