Here it is. The big kahuna. The head honcho. This is it, for the United States anyway. The 15-year-old Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota is one of the largest single-site retail themed complexes in the whole entire country. A few sites in America offer more retail, such as the King of Prussia Mall in metro Philadelphia, and even the Eastwood Mall in metro Youngstown, Ohio, but due to the Mall of America’s large theme park in the center of the complex, it is the largest overall. However, we’re all pretty much aware of this. The Mall of America is huge, and pretty much everybody and their grandmother knows that. What I’d like to interrogate and focus on is twofold: How does the mall and how has the mall operated within its own framework since the beginning; and secondly, how does the mall operate locally in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area?

The Mall of America was born not of necessity, but rather from notions of excessive grandeur. The Twin Cities already had malls, many of them, in fact, and even arguably the very first climate-controlled enclosed regional mall, Southdale Center, opened in 1956 about 10 minutes away from the present Mall of America. It all really began when the Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins decided to leave their home at the Metropolitan Stadium, where they and various other professional teams played from 1956 to 1981, to new digs at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis. The stadium was demolished in 1982, and everyone wondered what would become of the site. Unbeknownst to many, the Ghermezian Brothers, who developed the megamall West Edmonton Mall in Canada came a-calling, and by 1986 had signed an agreement with the City of Bloomington for rights to the site for a new megamall, an American version of what the Ghermezians brought to Canada. Various other groups got involved, including Teachers Insurance and Annuity and Melvin Simon & Associates, and each brought money and mall design expertise to the project. They broke ground in 1989, and in August 1992 the Mall of America opened with great fanfare.

The gross area inside the Mall of America is 4.2 million square feet; however, only 2.5 million square feet are available as retail space on four levels which are arranged in a roughly symmetrical rectangle connecting four anchors at its vertices. The four sides to the rectangle contain roughly 520 stores on three levels, and each side has its own distinct style in terms of decor. There are also two large food courts in the mall, one on each of the north and south side’s third levels. Due to the mall’s footprint being rather small, hemmed in on the space of the old stadium, parking was to be an issue. To solve this problem, they built two gigantic identical seven-level parking structures on the east and west sides of the mall, and the former Met Center was torn down in 1994 and is currently a gravel lot used for overflow parking. Each level in the parking structures is named after a state, to fit with the whole America theme. Also, despite being in one of the coldest parts of the country, the Mall of America is not heated. Instead, the giant structure is heated by patrons, employees, and the greenhouse effect during the day because the roof is made up of transparent windows, which also provide natural light to the Amusement Park during the day. In fact, air conditioning needs to be run at all times to maintain a comfortable climate within the mall, even during January.

As far as the retail spaces within the Mall of America, many inside the mall have changed while the anchors have not. The anchors when the mall opened in 1992 are the same as today: Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, Sears, and Nordstrom. However, the offerings inside the mall have been transformed slightly over the past 15 years. Several junior anchors which graced the mall in its early days, such as Filene’s Basement, Linens ‘n Things, and Kids R Us, have gone away. The mall has also lost National American University, which offered college classes at the mall for many years. However, despite these retail changes, many components of the mall have remained, like the underwater aquarium, LEGO Imagination Center, many sit-down restaurants like Rainforest Cafe, an alternative High School, and even the Chapel of Love wedding chapel. The amusement park in the middle of the mall has also remained, even though it was rebranded The Park at MOA from Camp Snoopy following the breakdown of talks with Cedar Fair Amusement Company, thus ending the Peanuts characters branding.

Also of note are the mall’s third and fourth levels. The first two levels of the mall are typical of any super-regional mall, with many national retailers; however, the third and fourth levels at the Mall of America are a bit different. The food courts occupy most of the third level along the north and south corridor, but there are also many sit-down restaurants like California Cafe and Famous Dave’s on this level. Comprising the rest of the third level on the east and west sides there are many seemingly local stores that sell Minnesota knick-knacks, souvenirs, discounters and even one store which has been open since the mall opened that specializes in only farm toys. It seems the third level is undesirable for many competitive national retailers, save for some junior anchor holdouts like Nordstrom Rack, Marshalls, and Sports Authority on the third level which features a wall of faded pictures of people exercising from 1992. The fourth level, which only exists on the east and north sides of the mall, opened with an all-encompassing entertainment theme, and was comprised of several adult-themed night clubs and a 14-screen AMC Movie Theater. However, in 1999, one of the night clubs had problems with indecent exposure and other issues and closed. These problems were further complicated in 2004 when the City of Bloomington passed a citywide smoking ban in all establishments, and as a response all but one of the adult-themed clubs closed. As of today only Hooters and the movie theatre remain open on the fourth level.

Finally, I wanted to examine how the Mall of America functions locally in the Twin Cities area. When it opened in 1992, the Mall of America was controversial for many residents and local businesses, wondering how they would compete with this monster in the backyard. Surprisingly, though, the Mall of America did not kill every single other mall in the region. Drawing largely on tourists who come specifically for the mall from neighboring states, nationally, or even internationally, the local malls in the area still continue to be local. Many Twin Cities residents feel the Mall of America is too large for the typical shopping trip many people traditionally take to their local malls, spending an hour or two there, and continue to shop at places like Burnsville Center, Ridgedale Mall, Eden Prairie Center, Southdale Mall, and many others. Many who go to the Mall of America are out-of-towners, and this is implicit in the car license plates found in the mall’s behemoth parking structures. An inordinate amount are from the Dakotas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and other regional states. People in the Twin Cities metro have mostly continued to patronize their local malls, and even renovate them extensively. Even the malls which were damaged by the opening of the Mall of America have bounced back, like Eden Prairie Center which was partially demolished and rebuilt with a completely new theme and as an enclosed mall in 2002. Other malls have also been extensively renovated in recent years, like Rosedale Center, and more recently Ridgedale and Burnsville Center. Even the farther flung malls are reinventing, like Northtown Mall in Blaine, and two brand-new large lifestyle centers have even been recently constructed in east-suburban Woodbury and northwest-suburban Maple Grove. In addition, the retail in downtown Minneapolis has also continued to be a destination for locals. So, retail locations are not in short supply or hurting by any means in the Twin Cities area due to the presence of the Mall.

Furthering the importance of tourism to the Mall of America, Metro Transit’s inaugural Hiawatha Line connected the mall via light rail to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and downtown Minneapolis in June 2004. Since the hub airport is literally across I-494 from the Mall, the short five-minute train ride has allowed connecting travelers to visit the mall even on relatively short layovers. Also, Bloomington is centrally located within the Twin Cities area, between the hub cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and several miles south.

So what’s next for the Mall of America? A lot, actually, is in the works, including a major expansion many years in the making which will allow the Mall to reclaim its top spot. Mall of America Phase II, which is scheduled to begin construction later in 2007, will more than double the size of the mall. Included in the expansion are more upscale retailers, and a diversity of offerings including a 6,000 seat music theatre, new hotel, water park and non-department store anchors like Bass Pro Shops which will hinge off the current mall’s north end on the former site of the Met Center. In fact, a piece of Phase II already opened in 2004 with Ikea, which will be connected to the new development via skywalk. The new development is not without controversies, as many wonder how the Ghermezians will finance the project. They are currently asking the state of Minnesota to finance a new parking structure for Phase II and for tax-free building materials for the project. But, it appears they have cleared the first minor hurdle, as the City of Bloomington has already approved preliminary plans for the project. It will be very interesting to see how Phase II is integrated and all of its offerings, and whether it will open on schedule in 2011.

Here are some pictures of the outside of the mall, including the behemoth anchors and the parking structures:

Inside of the mall’s retail perimeter:

Inside the Park @ MOA:

Opened in 1987, Northbridge Mall was the second enclosed mall for Albert Lea, luring shoppers away from then-20-year-old Skyline Mall across town.  Its anchors are ShopKo, a Green Bay, Wis. based discount retailer similar to Target and Wal-Mart, and Herberger’s, a Minnesota-based mid-tier department store now owned by the Bon-Ton Stores Inc.  Northbridge Mall has about 250,000 square feet of retail space and contains room for approximately 30 stores, services, and restaurants including a food court.  There’s also a 7-screen movie theatre.  Also, I suspect it was built as a complement to Southbridge Mall in Mason City, Ia., which is about 40 miles south of Albert Lea.  Could be a coincidence, but I don’t think so.

But why was Northbridge built anyway?  Skyline Mall was only about 20 years old at the time Northbridge was built in 1987.  Plenty of malls last longer than 20 years, but here are some reasons Skyline was outmoded then.  First, Skyline had already lost anchor Montgomery Ward, IGA, and several other stores during the mid-1980s.  Instead of renovating and repositioning Skyline to be the modern mall everyone in the 1980s wanted, the residents of Albert Lea elected to build an entirely new mall closer to the growth corridor along I-90 and I-35 completely across town from Skyline.  In doing so, Northbridge Mall and the nearby Interstates provided a magnet for other retail growth in the area.  In fact, most recently, Wal-Mart left its post at Skyline Mall, leaving it anchorless, as it built a brand-new Supercenter along I-35 not far from Northbridge Mall.  Although it is small at 250,000 square feet, Northbridge Mall was what Albert Lea wanted and needed when it opened, a bright, modern palace of retail located close to transportation and growth.  Skyline mall was the opposite of this, so it was left in the dust. 

The decor of Northbridge Mall, at least as of 2001, reeks of the 1980s.  Huge walls of circular bulbs, blue and pink neon on the ceiling, and geometric pastel designs original to Northbridge Mall paint a picture of days gone by, certainly not representative of the designs today.  If Northbridge Mall was in a larger or busier area it would have been renovated years ago.  Personally I find Northbridge’s style endearing and a call back to my youth and the times I spent shopping in malls with similar decors, only they’re all renovated now.  There’s nothing wrong with it, either.  The carpet looked like it could use a replacement and that’s about all. 

Ironically, Northbridge is about the same age now as Skyline was when it was outmoded.  The dated decor is far from modern by today’s standard, but the mall is also utilized to capacity.  But will Albert Lea residents elect to build another, brighter mall now?  Probably not. 

The pictures featured with this post were taken in September 2001.  As always feel free to comment.  

We like to root for the retail underdog. Don’t get us wrong, we love all things retail, but we appreciate older, outmoded, and visibly dated centers and hold them with special regards. Perhaps it’s our appreciation of retail history, a throwback to our youths, our dislike for retail homogenization, or even something entirely different altogether. Either way, as a result of this appreciation, our next two posts take us to a very typical midwestern town in southern Minnesota.

Strategically located at the intersection of two major interstates, 90 and 35, Albert Lea is home to about 18,000 people. This may seem small, Albert Lea’s retail arm extends into a larger trade area encompassing many smaller communities in south central Minnesota and north central Iowa, which is less than 10 miles south of Albert Lea. With that said, however, many people in Albert Lea and the surrounding areas also travel to areas with a wider variety of retail offerings such as the Twin Cities, about 90 miles away, or to closer shopping areas in Austin, Rochester, and Mason City, Iowa.

As a result of the relatively large distances to other cities, Albert Lea has above average retail offerings for a city its size, including two enclosed malls on opposing sides of town, Skyline Mall and Northbridge Mall. Yes, there are two enclosed malls for 18,000 people. Skyline Mall opened in 1966 on the west side of Albert Lea along Main St. near the intersection with Highways 13 and 69. During Skyline Mall’s heyday, it was anchored by JCPenney on the east side, Montgomery Ward on the west, and an IGA grocery store anchored the north end of the mall.

During the 1980s, however, Skyline Mall fell out of favor, possibly as a combined result of increasing competition from distant cities, its age, and changing trends in shopping in general. In 1983, the first blow came as Montgomery Ward closed. A couple years later, the IGA also closed, leaving two anchors vacant at Skyline Mall. As if that weren’t enough, in 1987 an entirely new mall, Northbridge Mall, was constructed across town. The new mall was modern, larger, and had more features shoppers were beginning to demand such as a food court. In addition, Northbridge is adjacent to an exit from Interstate 90, whereas Skyline Mall is not. Northbridge is also closer to where much of the growth is occurring in Albert Lea, on the east and north edges of town.

After Northbridge opened, Skyline continued on and attempted to reposition itself as an ancillary to Northbridge, featuring many local or discount retailers to complement Northbridge’s higher-end and national chain offerings. Indicative of this repositioning was the placement of one of the area’s first Wal-Marts in Skyline Mall, replacing Montgomery Ward as the west anchor. However, it was not enough to sustain the mall and many stores continued to leave. Ben Franklin, Stevenson’s clothing store, and several more stores closed in the early 1990s and finally JCPenney closed in 1993 or 1994, leaving Skyline with just one anchor.

The past decade or so has seen Skyline evolve from a retail center into a hybrid enclosed community/office/retail center. The hardware store and several other small shops are still open, but there are also a Senior Center and offices. Wal-Mart has recently left Skyline Mall to build a standalone Supercenter across town, on the east side near Interstate 35. As Skyline Mall continues to soldier on anchorless, it completes the transition from retail to community center and your guess is as good as ours what the future will bring.

We visited Skyline Mall in Albert Lea in September 2001 and took the photos featured herein. JCPenney had been replaced by Rainbow Foods, but that has since closed. Jo-Ann Fabrics and Hardware Hank are still open as of December 2006. Leave some comments and let us know what you think, and don’t forget to check out the vintage sign.

Winona Rocks!  Well, at least that’s what someone at the University of Wisconsin was thinking as they scrawled that declaration into several rows of desks in a large chemistry lecture hall there.  Very curious, I thought.  What or who did they mean?  Winona Ryder?  Wynonna Judd?  Maybe it was someone from Winona, Minnesota, who was proud of his or her town. 

Regardless of what that cryptic scrawling meant, Winona, MN, actually does rock.  It’s a small Mississippi River city of about 27,000 approximately 30 miles north of La Crosse, or about 100 miles downriver from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.  Most of the city itself actually lies on an island in the middle of the river, and the city is surrounded on all sides by giant bluffs which majestically tower some 500-1000 feet over town.  The city’s downtown is full of shops and activity along the picturesque shores of the River.   

Needless to say, Winona does not come up short in natural beauty.  But, what else makes it rock?  The small enclosed Winona Mall does, of course.  Opened in 1966, the mall was part of a national trend or fad of relocating retail and central business districts from downtowns and into the periphery of American suburbia.  Winona Mall is located along the busy retail corridor of Highway 61 on the west side of town.  Winona Mall was originally anchored by Montgomery Ward, which I presume was in the space the grocery store currently occupies.  When Wards left is a mystery to me, but I’d speculate it was quite a while ago and definitely not within the past ten years.

Now, Winona Mall isn’t large (or even medium-sized); it’s possibly one of the smaller malls we’ve featured here.  Park Midwest realty, which manages Winona Mall’s leasing (pdf file), reports it is only 138,000 square feet.  It felt a bit larger to me, but possibly because it only has one anchor space and it’s a grocery store.  So, most of the 138,000 square feet is enclosed mall space.  That space is set up like a rudimentary C, with the grocery store hinging off the side.  It’s also important to note that although the mall only has the grocery store anchor attached, K-Mart is across the street.    

The decor and marketing of Winona Mall also makes it rock.  Throughout the small enclosed center, the ceiling is made up of very slanty, shiny, brass colored panels which makes it very unique, and very dated.  In addition, the mall also prints directories, which is unusual for a mall this size (and quite cool).  Also, the mall features one of the last original Two Plus Two stores, a chain much like Claire’s Accessories which operated in many of the malls of my childhood. 

In the past several years, Winona Mall has experienced a renaissance of sorts.  Faced with many vacancies and an unstable future, the mall’s leasing agent aggressively retenanted the mall and vacancy shot up from 50 to close to 80%.   

Take a look at the pictures below.  They were taken August 2006 by yours truly.  As always, share anything you’d like about Winona Mall.

Located in Roseville, Minnesota, almost smack dab in the middle of the Twin Cities metro area, Har Mar Mall opened in 1961.  It was designed by the same company which built Apache Plaza in nearby St. Anthony and opened the same year (Apache Plaza failed as a mall and was torn down in 2004).  However, unlike Apache Plaza, Har Mar Mall thrives, despite being less than a mile away from one of the Twin Cities’ most popular regional malls: Rosedale Center.  It accomplished success by finding a retail niche and being purposely downmarket from Rosedale, and other Twin Cities traditional malls. 

It wasn’t always this way.  In 1981, a tornado swept through the Twin Cities area and damaged much of the area around the mall.  Later, Har Mar Mall had fallen on rough times until about the mid-1990s, and decided to take on an experiment to see if it could still be viable in the 21st century.  It failed to compete with the glitzier, bigger Rosedale Center just up the street and reinvented itself by replacing the anchors with big-box stores and off price, nontraditional anchors and stores.  That’s not to say that Family Dollar and Shaniqua’s Wig Barn have set up shop; instead, very popular, upmarket as well as off-price anchors which usually set up in strip malls make up the eclectic mix of Har Mar Mall.  The anchors are: Barnes and Noble, TJMaxx, Cub Foods (A chain grocery store based in the Twin Cities), Marshalls, and Northwestern Bookstore.  Until the early 00s there was also a large Mars Music, but that closed with the entire chain. There’s also an 11-screen movie theater, a pet store, a phone store, a local book store, and much more.  Instead of a food court, Har Mar has both fast food and sit-down restaurants tucked back at one end of the mall.  Uniquely, all the fast food and sit-down establishments both have mall access as well as outdoor entrances. 

Other design features make Har Mar truly unique and intriguing.  The floorplan of the mall consists of a series of right angles, so the mall continuously zig-zags.  In all, there are 4 separate hallways from the food area to Cub Foods.  The longest and most interesting hallway is the corridor with Barnes and Noble.  It is massively wide, and features an arched ceiling with large windows allowing natural light to come in during the day.  There’s also a small basement court here with a community room.  Another weird part of the mall is the hallway between the food and Marshall’s.  About halfway down, it inexplicably becomes a ramp, making Marshall’s and the rest of the mall from that point several feet lower.  It’s much more dramatic in person, much like the continuous sloping of the Dartmouth Mall near New Bedford, Mass.  

I visited the mall and took these pictures in March, 2000.  I’ve visited more recently and it hasn’t changed.  It continues to be a popular center for mostly locals to watch a movie, buy groceries, get books, and go out to eat.  It’s essentially a strip mall cobbled together into an indoor mall, and for that reason alone it deserves merit.  However, it’s also got a great floor plan and some wonderful design features so it’s even better.  Har Mar Superstar, a performer from the area who took his name from the mall, would most certainly agree.

UPDATE 1/2/07: This entry about Har Mar and the closure of the theatres is featured in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.