The placement of enclosed shopping centers in urban cores and downtowns in America has always been a bit curious and fascinating to us.  Perhaps it’s because their designs must be creative in order to weave the structure into the existing built environment.  Or maybe it’s because they challenge the very notion of the traditional downtown, which struggled with its identity after the automobile age brought clusters of stores into the suburbs and away from downtowns, outmoding them from the 1950s to the present day.

At any rate, most medium- to large-sized American cities have, or at one time had, some semblance of a mall downtown.   Most of these malls were built as urban renewal projects starting in the 1970s as a response to the explosion of suburban malls, in order to compete with the suburbs and keep people and businesses from fleeing downtown areas.  Some of them were built a bit later in successful downtown districts like Indianapolis (Circle Center, 1995) and Chicago (North Bridge, 2000).  Many of these hatve also failed, succumbing to the conveniences suburban malls offer shoppers, such as free parking, less traffic, and convenience to home.  Many downtown malls have also failed even after protracted periods of success, like the downtown malls in Salt Lake City, Columbus, Milwaukee, Rochester, Hartford, and many more.  But why is this?  In most large American cities, people still congregate downtown for work if not for play, and increasingly people are choosing to live closer to urban centers because of gas prices, culture, and other economic issues, not to mention commuting is a pain.

Center City Philadelphia is full of shopping destinations, most of which center around Market Street, the major east-west thoroughfare through downtown.  Along Market Street are several small atriums and enclosed shopping facilities, but only a few of them really function as malls per se, and The Gallery at Market East is by far the largest of them at 1.1 million square feet.  It opened in 1977 (with a major expansion in 1984), and is currently anchored by Burlington Coat Factory and K-Mart, with Modell’s, Old Navy, and Pay/Half taking junior anchor space.  I probably needn’t say more after that, except that the Gallery only holds a modicum of success today when compared to still-successful downtown malls in other cities like Chicago.  But why? 

The Gallery’s layout and design are the most interesting features of the center overall, combined with the mall’s facade and how it interacts with the street.  The main entrance of The Gallery along Market Street provides a portal of access not unlike entering a large fortress.  Because the ground level of The Gallery is subterranean, a wide staircase leads down from the street to sets of doors, which are flanked along a tall wall of glass.  Although this entrance looks impressive from the inside of the mall, the outside of this facade is in a rather small space and easily glanced over.  In addition, the rest of the street facade is also unremarkable, outdated, and awkward.  Gallery East also does a poor job with continuity, and breaks the space in between Independence Hall, downtown, and Chinatown abruptly rather than connecting these areas of the city with a pedestrian-friendly theme. 

The layout of the mall itself consists of four main levels in two “Gallery” developments, Gallery I and Gallery II, which opened in 1977 and 1984, respectively.  Gallery I was the first development and consisted of the block between 10th street and the former Strawbridges.  Gallery II was a westward extension of Gallery I ending at the former JCPenney (now Burlington Coat Factory); today, the I and II distinctions are mostly gone and the mall is simply known collectively as The Gallery At Market East.  The first mall level is subterranean and goes throughout the length of the entire mall, from the former Strawbridge’s anchor in the east to Pay/Half on the west end, spanning nearly two blocks and going underneath K-Mart.  The next level of the mall is at street level, and spans from the former Strawbridges in the east directly through K-Mart in the middle, where it is discontiguous at 10th street and shoppers must go outside and cross the street (or go up or down a level) to come back in again to continue across to Burlington Coat Factory.  The third and fourth levels go from the vacant Strawbridges directly through middle anchor K-Mart and comes out on the other side, ending at Burlington Coat Factory, except the third and fourth levels converge to go through K-Mart.

Throughout The Gallery’s history turmoil has taken its toll right from the beginning.  As soon as the project was announced, city leaders and developers were criticized for the city’s infusing money into the project at the expense of Philadelphia’s beleagured neighborhoods away from downtown.  Obviously the irony that the city ponied up money to compete with the suburbs at their own game while other parts of the city suffered, also because of suburbs, wasn’t lost.  In addition, during its early periods of success Gallery I was the site of numerous protests due to the fact that no black entrepreneurs owned any of the businesses there despite the fact that a great percentage of Philadelphia is black.  Oops.

Nonetheless, The Gallery at Market East enjoyed decent period of success, through the 1980s and into the 1990s.  By that time, even though the center was integrated into SEPTA’s system with three stations, it was still obvious that the mall itself just didn’t ‘feel’ integrated into downtown and the surrounding areas.  Because the area to the east is a heavily trafficked tourist area, The Gallery should present a welcoming facade to them with high street visibility on the Market Street facade, drawing them into the mall, and vice versa from the City Hall side, where locals use the mall’s entrances for a bite to eat at the food court, shopping, or to enter SEPTA.  In addition, the indoor corridors of the mall’s four-level structure could also be updated with warmer fixtures and lighting. 

Anchor and tenancy issues haven’t helped The Gallery’s plight either.  The original anchor and stalwart for all of downtown Philadelphia shopping was the flagship for Strawbridge and Clothier, which became the east end of the mall in 1977.  Macy’s, who ended up purchasing the Strawbridge chain, decided to close this location in 2006; it’s still vacant as of August 2008.  The original west anchor was Gimbel’s, which later became the center’s middle anchor after Gallery II opened in 1984.  After Gimbel’s closed in 1986, this anchor became Stern’s and Clover before K-Mart in 1999.  The west anchor, JCPenney, opened with Gallery II in 1984 and closed, later becoming Burlington Coat Factory which it is today.  The in-line roster of stores has also degraded somewhat after having a more upscale set of stores some 15-plus years ago; today, many of the stores selling apparel are urban wear, discounters, or shoe stores.  The food court has, however, remained viable due to the amount of foot traffic from people accessing the train and tourists in the area. 

Some redevelopment plans and steps in the right direction for The Gallery have emerged over the years.  In 2006, PREIT, the company who owns The Gallery, acquired the vacant Strawbridge’s flagship and have been shopping it around, mostly to uninterested parties.   

In short, The Gallery At Market East could be a wonderful centerpiece for downtown Philadelphia, connecting a multiplicity of neighborhoods and peoples with a far more upscale line-up of stores and services than it has today.  With its accessibility and location, it has the potential to be both visually and economically stimulating to the city of Philadelphia, and in a city living in the shadows of the east coast this is probably not a bad idea.  Instead, The Gallery is slowly withering and even dying, earning a sour reputation among Philadelphians.  Normally I would suggest milking a mall’s decline for all its worth, but not here.  Normally I would advocate the placement of Burlington Coat Factory, Pay/Half, and K-Mart, because these viable stores are better than nothing.  But not here.  This area can do far better.  That is, if it gets in gear and makes some renovations and changes to not only bring the mall into this century, but to bring different parts of Philadelphia together.  It could really be nothing short of amazing.

The pictures featured here were taken by me in July 2008.  Feel free to add your own stories, information, comments, or reactions in the comments section. 

A city known for its pioneering efforts in the arena of space travel, Huntsville, Alabama is the boomchild of the space race.  With a popuation of just 16,000 residents in 1950, Huntsville had 72,000 people by 1960 and an impressive 140,000 by 1970.  Today, Rocket City has 170,000 residents, with over 500,000 in the metropolitan area.

Huntsville’s retail scene consists of two super-regional enclosed malls, Parkway Place and Madison Square.  Another, much smaller mall existed downtown until 2007, and another regional mall exists in Decatur, about 30 minutes away. 

Madison Square Mall is not only the Huntsville region’s largest mall, but one of the largest malls in Alabama at over 900,000 square feet.  The mall opened in 1984 anchored by JCPenney, Sears, Birmingham-based Parisian, Nashville-based Castner Knott, and Birmingham-based Pizitz.  In the early days, Madison Square also had junior anchors Blach’s and Yielding. 

Through the years, several anchor changes and a couple renovations have taken place at the two-level mall, leaving only Sears and JCPenney as original anchor stores open to this day.  Blach’s closed in 1987 and was replaced by Limited and Victoria’s Secret.  Pizitz was acquired by Jackson, MS-based McRae’s and operated under that banner until it was swallowed up by Belk in 2006.  Castner Knott, a Mercantile store, got eaten by Dillard’s along with all the other Mercantile stores in 1998.  Parisian was one of the last to change when the entire chain got converted to the Belk nameplate in 2007.  As a result, the already-existing Belk moved to the larger former Parisian location, and the Belk which was McRae’s is currently vacant.  Lastly, Yielding closed in 1993 and spent the next ten years as Castner Knott/Dillard’s Men’s store, and most recently is a Steve and Barry’s location. 

Major mall renovations took place in 1994 and again in 2006.  However, Madison Square Mall is considerably dated compared to its smaller across-town rival, Parkway Place, which was constructed in 2002 on the site of the former Parkway City Mall.  Today, Madison Square is decidedly playing second fiddle to Parkway Place in terms of both store offerings and vacancy rates.  Nonetheless, Madison Square holds its own and is still a very viable destination. 

The pictures featured with this post were taken by me in March 2008.  As usual, feel free to leave your comments, expriences, reactions, and statements. 

Downtown Salt Lake City used to have two enclosed malls located just blocks apart–the ZCMI Center and the Crossroads Center. Both were torn down a couple years ago to make room for more new downtown development, and another (outdoor) downtown mall, The Gateway, has mostly taken their place.

The ZCMI Center opened in 1975, and at the time claimed to be the largest downtown shopping mall in the United States. ZCMI Center was unique compared to most malls because it wasn’t exactly secular; the mall’s name stood for Zion’s Co-Operative Mercantile Institution, which was a department store chain owned by the Church of Latter Day Saints before being sold to the May Corporation. Popularly known as “America’s First Department Store,” ZCMI had an interesting genesis:

Under (Brigham) Young’s direct leadership, ZCMI was organized by local Mormon community and business leaders, for the purpose of selling goods as inexpensively as possible, with intent to distribute profits among the people; early on, its employees were even paid with store credit. Aptly dubbed “The People’s Store”, ZCMI was founded in 1868, and offered such items as as clothing, textiles, farming and household goods. It has been called “America’s First Department Store.”

It was announced in the fall of 2006 that ZCMI Center would be closing for redevelopment, and demolition began in the summer of 2007. The plan is to replace the mall with a new mixed-use development called City Creek Center.

Crossroads Plaza was the other mall, located near ZCMI Center. Crossroads Plaza was a major mall and office complex anchored by Nordstrom and Mervyn’s, and opened in 1980.

  
More information on downtown Salt Lake City retail here.Thanks to Jay for sending us a great set of old photos and advertisements (mostly from 1997) that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get our hands on.

Whoops.

After one day on the site, it became apparent pretty fast that the region-specific open discussion pages made almost no one happy. They added a ton of clutter and they’d be impossible to follow. Everyone said they’d rather have a message board (just like the ones already in existence at Groceteria, AmesFanClub, and Remembering Retail) than that clunky piece of junk.

I agree.

I have been teetering between wanting more open discussion and not on Labelscar for some time. My main problem is that I think that it dilutes from the primary mission of the site–i.e., this isn’t really a retail-based social networking community, it’s a blog about a ton of stuff that we’ve visited, discovered, and researched, along with news. I’ve gotten a lot of flak recently because of what Labelscar isn’t, but what it IS is a hobby, and a place for the two of us to try and organize a lot of our research and travels and interest in this stuff in one place, hopefully for a bunch of other people to enjoy too. And clearly a lot of other people *do* enjoy it, which is awesome.

Unfortunately, everyone seems to have a different idea for what Labelscar should be, and where it should go, and honestly I have to follow my nose on the future development of the site and do what I think makes the most sense, and sadly those discussion pages weren’t it. Given that it’s hard enough to find the time to post great pages about malls, I need to use my (limited) time towards creating more content for Labelscar rather than lots of forums and things that really take away from the core purpose of the site while presenting a duplicate version of an offering that has been in existence–and thriving–on other sites for some time.

That said, I may change my mind and decide to add a real forum sometime in the future, but I have a fairly high bar for how such a thing would need to look and function, and I’m not a developer, so anything that requires a lot of database back-end to give me something of the appropriate quality isn’t going to work out.
The reason that I shut the pages off so quickly is because I didn’t want a bunch of you guys to devote time and effort in making really great, informative comments only to have them deleted. I value the input you’ve all had in the direction of this site, and it wouldn’t be nearly as successful or fun without the many thousands of comments that reside on all of our pages. I don’t want to dump all effort that into a medium that I just don’t think will work out long term. Since there were so few comments on those pages, I’ve tried to save/move some of the best comments that were left on them so they weren’t lost forever, and a few really good ones will be used in conjunction with some upcoming posts so that they’re in a more relevant and high-profile place.

With a population just over 50,000 in the city and over 300,000 people in its metropolitan area, Charleston is not only the seat of state government but also the largest city in the state of West Virginny.  In its early days, Charleston grew and prospered due to manufacturing and deposits of natural resources such as salt, coal, and natural gas; however, today the diversified economy of West Virginia includes more than these natural resources and has expanded and shifted to focus on trade, medicine, and government.  This transition, however, hasn’t exactly been smooth, and parts of Charleston have experienced periods of both blight and renewal.

By the early 1980s, Charleston’s downtown was in dire need of a makeover due to a changing economy taking hard-earned dollars away from the area and taking its toll on the physical structure of the city as a result.  To help Charleston out, the largest urban mall east of the Mississippi River was constructed along several blocks downtown and was completed in November 1983, along with other new developments that would encourage growth.  Charleston Town Center opened with four department store spaces and almost one million square feet of retail space, on three levels.  In addition, the mall is attached to a 350-room Marriott hotel which serves downtown business and convention-goers.

Charleston Town Center has enjoyed a significant amount of success largely due to its location and accessibility.  Charleston benefitted tremendously from the signing of Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway Act in 1956, which placed Charleston at the hub of three interstates (64, 77, and 79) which allow for fast passage through West Virginia’s rough and rugged terrain, connecting it to cities in the Midwest, South, and Northeast; in fact, 60% of the United States population is within a day’s drive of Charleston.  This location of the interstates has allowed Charleston to retain its status as the hub for its regional retail market, which stretches across much of central West Virginia, and all of these interstates converge close to the mall with easy access.  In addition, planners were wise to build ample, cheap ($1.75 all day as of 2008 with 4000 spaces) parking structures to serve the mall’s accessibility so shoppers aren’t as frustrated trying to find a place to put their cars.

However, being hemmed in the middle of an urban core has also presented disadvantages and inconveniences for shoppers, and possibly the mall itself.  Most of the big box retail strip, chain restaurants, and other such novelties are located a fair distance from the mall along US 119 southwest of downtown, about 5 miles from the mall.  So, unlike many retail markets where the mall is located as the focus for big box strip fodder and shoppers can make the rounds easily, shoppers in Charleston do double duty to visit both big box/strip mall retailers and the mall itself.  Furthermore, although parking is relatively cheap and convenient in the structures at the mall, most suburban malls, by nature, have tons of free parking, so this may frustrate some shoppers here.  It hasn’t seemed to have made a significant dent in sales, though, as this is clearly Charleston’s dominant mall and has a solid store base with limited vacancies.

The design of Charleston Town Center is a mostly two-level straight shot on a north-south axis, with a third level tacked onto the center court which functions as the mall’s food court, Picnic Place.  Picnic Place made headlines in 2004 when mall management refused to renew the leases for two food court tenants - McDonald’s and Long John Silver’s - because management felt that more healthy options should be made available, and also because they wanted to reconfigure the food court.  In the end, the food stalls were relegated to about half of the food court space on the third level, and offices were put in the other half.  At least the Greek/Mediterranean place is still there.  The center court is also the mall’s most impressive feature, with a wide, bright atrium and a maze-like fountain on the first level with a kiosk Starbucks as the centerpiece.  Interestingly, a major renovation of Charleston Town Center has only taken place once, in 1992, so the mall today is somewhat dated.

Charleston Town Center’s store mix is solid, with many popular - and even somewhat upscale - national brands like Hollister, Abercrombie and Fitch, Talbots, AE, and the like.  The mall has two anchor pads on each end, which are currently occupied by Macy’s and Sears on the south end and JCPenney and Steve and Barry’s on the north end of the mall.  Until 2001, one of the south anchors was Montgomery Ward, and after its closure the property sat vacant until 2007 when it was sold to the mall, and sold again to BrickStreet Insurance, who took most of the former anchor space along with a dead Bob Evans.  The space closest to the mall was converted into in-line stores on the first level, and Steve and Barry’s on the second level.  Also, the current Macy’s was Pittsburgh-based Kaufmann’s until 2006.    

We visited Charleston in July 2008 and took the pictures featured here.  If you know any more about the history of the mall or the area, comments are always appreciated.