Category: Minnesota

The Galleria is a 417,000 square-foot, mostly single-level upscale enclosed shopping mall in Edina, Minnesota, an upscale suburb of Minneapolis.  Anchored by Gabbert’s furniture, Crate and Barrel, Barnes and Noble, and a Westin Hotel, The Galleria is an upscale complement to a super-regional mall, Southdale Center, which is located across the street.

In 1976, twenty years after Southdale was developed by famous mall-mastermind Victor Gruen, Gabbert’s furniture opened a store across 69th Street from Southdale’s south entrance.  That same year, construction began on a row of shops to complement Gabbert’s.  Eventually, these shops became the enclosed mall that stands today.

The Galleria is unique, not only because it sits less than 300 feet from one of the country’s first shopping malls, but also because it has a relatively narrow, long corridor and an eclectic mix of upscale shops and restaurants.  The Galleria is what I’d call an “upscale mom mall” – it caters to the well-to-do 35-54 female set fairly well, with stores like Pendleton, L’Occitane, J. Jill, Coach, Chico’s, along with upscale salons and stationery stores.  There are many Volvos, Range Rovers, and German luxury cars in the parking structure here, which is located beneath the mall’s main level along with a handful of additional stores.  This makes sense, considering Edina, Eden Prairie, and environs are some of the more upscale suburbs in the Twin Cities area.

In 2006, The Galleria embarked on a small expansion, adding a Westin Hotel to the east end of the mall and a large Crate & Barrel store to the front of the mall, next to Gabbert’s.

The Galleria continues to be a successful, upscale ancillary to Southdale, even in spite of stark competition from other Minneapolis-area retail centers, such as Eden Prairie Center and the Mall of America.  However, The Galleria’s upscale and specialty-store niche will continue to work in its favor, even despite having no traditional anchors.

We’d like to know more about the history of The Galleria.  Has it always been enclosed, and was it built in a modular style?  We’d also like to see more cohesion between The Galleria and Southdale.  It seems they can co-exist, so why not tie them together more?  Southdale’s row of restaurants and south entrance line up nicely with the Galleria’s north entrance by Gabbert’s, separated by only 300 feet and across 69th street.  It would be really neat if they were skywalked, or at least had a dedicated and obvious pedestrian connection that was well-signed and marketed throughout both centers.  I believe both centers would benefit from the complementarity, despite being separately owned.

This Best Buy sign is actually not part of The Galleria.  It’s across the street and currently Best Buy’s oldest operating store, but not for long as it’s one of the 50 stores Best Buy is closing due to their recent financial woes. I thought it was neat though, because it’s an earlier pre-pricetag version of Best Buy’s logo.

I took these pictures of The Galleria back in April 2010.

Austin, Minnesota is a small city of about 23,000 residents in the southern part of the state.  It is just over 100 miles from the Twin Cities, and 40 miles from Rochester along Interstate 90. 

Austin is famous for one thing:  SPAM.  Since 1937, Hormel Foods has been churning out tons of this salty, processed meat product at a factory near the interstate.  There’s even a Spam Museum for those who love a little kitsch; and, those who do are also lucky, because the museum is successful and has expanded from its digs in a vacant store space in Austin’s Oak Park Mall to a larger building of its own across from the SPAM factory.  If you do visit the museum, you can even take an interactive quiz hosted by none other than Minnesota Senator and Saturday Night Live alum Al Franken.  That alone would almost get me to go. 

I wasn’t able to dig up too much more about Oak Park Mall – the mall’s webpage states it has been around 30 years, which means it probably opened sometime in the late 1970s. The mall is located on the north edge of Austin, directly adjacent to I-90 at the exit for US 218.

Oak Park Mall is rather small – ICSC lists the leasable area at 350,000 square feet, which is appropriate given Austin’s market size and trade area.  The anchors, Green Bay, Wis.-based discounter ShopKo and Iowa-based full-line department store Younkers make up about half of the total retail space.  

The mall’s indoor corridor connects these two anchors, with a short cross wing near the middle.  Stores inside the mall are also typical of malls in this tier, with few fashion-oriented national chains and many local offerings.  Unfortunately, also typical of malls in this tier, there are many vacancies.  Stores in the out-of-date directory on the mall’s website include a Do It Best Hardware Store, two chain salons, Christopher & Banks (closed early 2010), a Hallmark, Family Dollar, a nail place, an optical shop, GNC, a cookie place, mexican restaurant, Claire’s, some offices, the Austin Art Center, a sports bar, and a 7-screen movie theater.  That’s about it.  Sadly, the mall is on the decline, with more stores closing than opening.  A Sears hometown location and Foot Locker were also recent casualties here, along with a hip-hop store called E&J Hook-Up. 

In addition to being apparently unloved by shoppers, it appears that a Rochester woman hates the mall so much that, in December 2007, she intentionally drove her car into it at a high rate of speed, causing $37,000 in damage to both the building and to merchandise in the Younkers store. 

The decor at Oak Park Mall is typical of malls (or, as we like to call them, sMalls) of this size and features barebones accoutrements and minimal decor, especially compared to larger centers in bigger cities.   The color pack is outdated, the floor is a sterile white tile, and the drop ceilings make the corridor feel more like office space rather than a shopping center, but who do they need to impress? 

The nearest competition for Oak Park Mall is in Albert Lea, whose Northbridge Mall is only slightly more functional – for more serious shopping excursions Austin residents probably go to Rochester or the Twin Cities. 

We last visited Oak Park Mall in June 2009 and took the pictures featured here.  Feel free to share your own stories and thoughts in the comments section.

This might be the most important one we’ve featured here.  Southdale is the mall that started it all, from the man who started it all – Victor Gruen.  Sure, there were shopping centers and arcades, bazaars and this and that all over the world predating Southdale, which opened in 1956, but Southdale was the model for everything that came after.  Southdale transformed shopping in America, shifting it away from downtowns and into the suburbs.  Furthermore, it was built by an eccentric, energetic visionary, Victor Gruen, whose socialist ideals for retail development were infiltrated, bastardized (Gruen’s word!) and changed by American capitalism, giving us the frenetic retail landscape we know today.  He had some major help from U.S. Congress, though, who in 1954 passed a bill to stimulate manufacturing in America; instead, it unwittingly created the retail building boom and hastened a cultural change in the built environment as we know it.

Before 1956, there were certainly shopping centers, plazas, and arcades dating back to the dawn of humans.  There were even similarly “modern” enclosed shopping malls predating Southdale, like the Westminster Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island, which opened in 1828, and even the modern Valley Fair Mall, which opened in Appleton, Wisconsin in 1954.  And there were others yet, to be certain, such as the Northgate Mall in Seattle, which is said to be the first shopping center to coin the term mall, and opened in 1950.

The idea of grouping like businesses in a marketplace dates as far back as history itself, and we’re not arguing that Southdale started this at all.  Southdale did, however, pioneer the grouping of like businesses with the idea of providing a controlled, sustained, uniquely socialized community under one roof.  Anybody can throw up a mall, sign some leases, and be on their way, but Gruen gave malls meaning; he’s largely the reason we have any collective attachment to memories of malls at all, and also the reason this website exists.  Every mall in America and the world has followed his model, working to improve it along the way, and his original ideas have even given rise to the modern ‘mixed-use’ development popular in today’s new urbanism.

Southdale’s creator was mall mastermind Victor Gruen, an Austrian Jew who fled to the United States in 1938 during the Holocaust.  Gruen grew up in a privileged class of artists, and before the war he attended the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts for architecture and performed in cabaret theatre in Vienna’s vervey night club scene.  When he arrived in New York, with “an architect’s degree, eight dollars, and no English” – his own words – and immediately formed a cabaret troupe.  Then, one day Gruen ran into one of his old friends from Vienna in midtown Manhattan, and the old friend hired him to design his new Fifth Avenue leather goods boutique.

When designing the boutique, Gruen trademarked his famous Gruen transfer, innovating the way stores were designed and the way people shopped.  Instead of the traditional shop layout with entire store space flush to the street, Gruen created nuggets of interest in the entryway in the form of mini-arcade.  The nuggets were a scripted disorientation, drawing the shopper in.  The Gruen transfer refers to the moment when a consumer enters a shopping environment, and, surrounded by an intentionally confusing layout combined with music and an elaborate decor, loses track of their original intentions.  The effects of the transfer include a slower shopper pace, glazed eyes and, of course, spending more money.

The design was an instant hit, driving sales through the roof at the boutique, and Gruen spent the 1940s designing more stores around New York in the same manner, perfecting his Gruen transfer at this smaller scale.  Then, in the early 1950s, Gruen turned his sights to the American suburbs and designed his first large-scale suburban-style shopping center near Detroit for J.L. Hudson department store, Northland Center.

Hailing from Austria, Gruen was a socialist, and viewed the suburban built environment of post-war 1950s America as ugly, brutalist, and lacking in spaces where people could congregate and linger.  All the retail strips that popped up weren’t pedestrian friendly and didn’t encouage people to stay at all; instead, people drove their cars up and down the street to patronize individual businesses, using the ample seas of parking in and around every building, all the while not interacting with each other as they ran in and out, to and from their cars.  Gruen bemoaned this, and wished he could create a prototype community where he still had the control of building a suburban shopping mall but also with a real sense of community infused.

Gruen saw pieces of his Vienna in American downtowns, which had the critical mass necessary for his model but were beginning to die and lose out to suburban developments, so he knew he had to act fast.  Also, Gruen felt he could improve on downtowns by building his own in the suburbs, and perfecting the mistakes that were made.  The way Gruen saw it, downtowns were organic developments, and, over time, they developed mistakes that could not be easily controlled by a planner – the extant built environment built its own pattern, and you couldn’t just put a large parking structure wherever you wanted, or place like businesses in adjacency like you could in an environment you built yourself.

So, Gruen embarked on a grand experiment in retail with Southdale Center, which broke ground in Edina, Minnesota – a southwest suburb of Minneapolis – in 1954.  Southdale was, in Gruen’s view, not an alternative to downtown Minneapolis, but what downtown Minneapolis could be if you ironed out all the mistakes and could build it all over again from the beginning.  The Southdale development was not supposed to be only a retail development either, but a mixed-use development as well, one of the first of its kind, combining all of the ingredients of a model city – retail, residence, offices, medical facilities, recreation, schools and more.

Gruen, like many other retail developers, also took advantage of a tax loophole in a recently enacted federal law.  In 1954, Congress passed a bill accelerating the tax depreciation process for new construction.  They did this to stimulate the manufacturing industry, which had slowed a bit since World War II, in order to construct new factories with new technology.  This law applied to all new construction, though, not just factories, and commercial real estate investors used it to make fat profits from new retail construction.  Before this law was enacted, it took an investor a long time to reap profits from new construction, but after the law assed, he or she could set aside a signifcant amount of the profits of the business tax-free.  This is the basic way it worked:  it was assumed by the government that buildings would last approximately 40 years, so an investor could take off 1/40th the value of the building each year tax-free.  This rewarded investors for building new malls, because the depreciation of the building’s value in the first few years was enormous, and they could reap a likewise enormous tax savings.  Some developers even routinely operated at a tax loss this way, even though they were making tons of profit.  This law was a major catalyst for the glot of retail and suburban new construction which has taken place ever since, changing the retail built evironment exponentially instead of gradually.

Southdale opened to impressive fanfare on October 8, 1956, to 40,000 visitors as well as national press that included a story in Life Magazine.  The centerpiece of the Southdale development was a two-story, 800,000 square-foot enclosed mall, anchored by two Minneapolis-based department stores – Dayton’s, who financed and developed the mall, and Donaldson’s – along with space for 72 in-line stores, including majors Woolworths, Walgreens, and a Red Owl grocery store.  At the time, an enclosed mall was a dramatic departure from the outdoor malls popping up all over the country, but Gruen reasoned that an enclosed mall would be beneficial to this development, and his means, for several reasons.

First, an enclosed mall would suit Gruen’s means of providing a built environment encouraging the social, community-inspired culture he wanted to import from Vienna.  It would provide a gathering place for not only the residents of Edina, but for the greater Twin Cities as a whole, and as such also invented the super-regional mall.

Gruen also wanted Southdale to be an entire community, too, so he placed much more than retail in this initial development.  Many useful services as well as recreational leisure-time activities were combined with retail under one roof, giving Minnesota residents not only respite from their long, cold winters, but also no reason to go elsewhere.  These services included a large restaurant in the middle of the mall, a post office, ample tropical foliage, a petting zoo, statues, fountains, stages for community events, pageants, trade shows, and even a game show hosted by none other than Bob Barker.  All of these accoutrements were in Southdale’s wide, enclosed Garden Court, which ran the main length of the two-story mall on the first level, connecting Dayton’s to Donaldson’s.  Gruen also exiled cars from this enclosed development because he felt they were noisy and rude, which was a strong stance in post-war suburban America where cars were king, but Gruen felt they did not help his communal vision.

To effectively house this enclosed community-of-tomorrow, Gruen designed Southdale with a more socialist lilt than modern-day malls.  The main mallway, Garden Court, is impressively wide, which became Gruen’s trademark style when designing malls.  This design allowed for the functional space necessary for all the non-retail activity taking place at the mall.  It also gave a more human, communal element to the mall – listening to the sound of people laughing and enjoying each other in the middle of the mall while eating at the restaurant in their shirt sleeves in January imprinted warm, fuzzy feelings upon the shoppers’ subconscious.  To this end, Gruen also installed public art in the mall, as well as two large bird cages which lasted until the 1990s.  Some of the original art, including a two-story metal sculpture which hung in center court, is still there today.

Southdale, featured in Life Magazine in 1956, from kottke.org:

Southdale all decked out for the holidays.  If you look on the left, you can see the prominent bird cage:

Southdale’s Garden Court in 1963, from lileks.com:

As time progressed, Southdale was copied both locally in the Twin Cities – by Brookdale (1962), Rosedale (1969), and Ridgedale (1974) – as well as nationwide.  In response to this competition, Southdale embarked on an expansion that added a three-level addition northeast of the original mall.  The centerpiece of this addition was a brand-new 247,902 square foot JCPenney.  The new addition was connected to the original mall via two disparate hallways on different levels, one on the first level and one on the second, both of which led to the  JCPenney court.  Also, a basement court was built in front of JCPenney with more retail space connecting to the Garden Court through the basement.  This space would eventually become a 44,000 square-foot Marshalls, which had entrances leading out toward the basement court in front of JCPenney as well as escalators leading directly up to the original mall’s Garden Court.  This addition was complete in 1972 and gave the mall a totally unique, yet architecturally incoherent layout.  We think it’s amazing, though.

Gruen’s original vision for Southdale as being much more than an enclosed mall was unfortunately never truly realized – the area around the mall did develop a hospital, residences, and recreation, but it wasn’t as organized as Gruen would have liked, and it wasn’t self contained.  Also, France Avenue south of the mall became the nightmarish car-oriented antisocial strip Gruen abhored, and strips like it popped up around nearly every other mall that copied Southdale in the years and decades to follow.  In fact, in the early 1980s, a 417,000 square foot mall, anchored by a Gabbert’s furniture store, popped up just a few hundred feet of Southdale.  Galleria Edina was never a major competitor to Southdale, though, as it houses mostly upscale boutique stores in a mix of half local to half national.

Gruen also eventually grew to loathe malls themselves.  Near the end of his life, in the late 1970s, Gruen remarked at what a travesty modern retail was, and how much it had diverged from his ideal vision, perfected in theory.  Gone were the wide berths of central space in enclosed malls – they were too expensive to construct.  Gone too were the public artwork, zoos, supermarkets, restaurants, and other public spaces in American enclosed malls, and gone before they were ever constructed were the full realizations of the mixed-use projects intended to go with these malls.  Even though new malls were being constructed at a breakneck pace, the corridors got narrower and the warm, fuzzy accoutrements began to disappear.  The typical kiosk-laden mall of today, with a minimalist design and the removal of most extraneous decor for maximized profit, would certainly send shivers down Gruen’s spine.

Disillusioned and disgusted, Gruen left America and returned to Austria a broken man in 1978, torn up by the soul-less, antisocial, monoliths of dispassionate retail development surrounded by seas of parking lots malls had become.  At the very end of his life, a mall even opened in the suburbs of Vienna, and he called it “a gigantic shopping machine” with none of the community-inspiring amenities he imparted in his designs.  Ironically, the mall began to kill the downtown Vienna culture he wanted to share with the world.  Instead of bringing a little Viennese socialism and culture to America, Gruen unwittingly brought American capitalism to the world.

Even before Gruen’s death in 1980, Southdale lost much of its originality and charm, becoming lost in the sea of shopping options in the Twin Cities – a testament of Southdale’s influence.  By 1980 there were 8 super-regional shopping malls in the Twin Cities, and in 1992 the biggest mall in the country opened just four miles away – the Mall of America.  In yet another tale of Mall David and Mall Goliath, where one can expect predictable outcomes, Mall Goliath usually wins and Mall David usually dies, either slowly or catastrophically.  David is sometimes redeveloped, and occasionally saved due to proactive management and an oddly quirky set of locals who might even prefer it.  Thankfully, this was one of those cases.

In 1991, a full year before Mall of America debuted, Southdale’s owner saw Goliath appearing on the horizon and decided on an expansion and renovation.  Dayton’s, the northwest anchor and original mall developer, moved to a mammoth 359,000 square-foot four level store adjacent to its original store, and the old store was gutted and turned into three levels of mall space in a new wing extending southwest of the original Garden Court.  This addition also included a large food court at the end of the new southwest wing, on the third level, and an expansion of the Garden Court.  A new parking deck was also added.  This expansion and repositioning allowed Southdale to compete against the Mall of America, and as it turns out shoppers were much more fickle about dealing with the mammoth mega mall four miles to the east, and preferred shopping at a more convenient mall close to home.  To Southdale’s delight, it held its own against the Mall of America, and being located in one of the nicer, monied areas of the Twin Cities certainly didn’t hurt.

Some notable anchor changes have also taken place at Southdale.  Fairly early on, the Red Owl supermarket was kicked out, and in 1987 the Donaldson’s chain went out of business – most became Chicago-based Carson Pirie Scott.  However, Carson’s was unable to make their Minnesota stores profitable, so they sold them to then-Minneapolis-based Mervyn’s, a discounter that was originally from California but was purchased by Minneapolis-based Dayton-Hudson in 1978.  Meanwhile, Dayton’s was converted to Marshall Field’s in 2001 when Dayton-Hudson (now renamed Target Corporation, after their most profitable venture) wanted to combine all their upscale department stores under one banner, and decided the Chicago-based Marshall Field’s name carried the most clout.  Then, in 2004, Target wanted to get out of the upscale department store business and focus on Target, so they sold Marshall Field’s to May Company and Mervyn’s to a capital management group.  May then sold Marshall Field’s to Federated in 2005, who converted all of the Marshall Field’s to Macy’s stores in 2006, and the new owner of Mervyn’s decided to exit the Minnesota market completely in 2004.  Today, Southdale is anchored by Macy’s, Marshall’s, JCPenney, and dead.

The next expansion and repositioning at Southdale took place in 2001-2002, coinciding with the dramatic renovation of Eden Prairie Center, a super-regional mall located just 6 miles southeast of Southdale.  Eden Prairie Center, which was featured in the movie Mallrats, had fallen on hard times during the 1990s.  However, developers realized the area around Eden Prairie Center, one of the wealthiest areas in the Twin Cities, could support a redeveloped mall, and they tore most of the mall down – sans anchors – and rebuilt the entire thing.  They added mid-level as well as upscale stores, including the upscale Iowa-based Von Maur department store.  All of this was bad news for Southdale, sandwiched in between Eden Prairie Center, the Mall of America, and successful Ridgedale Center, so another expansion and repositioning was in order.

Southdale’s owners constructed a multi-million dollar lifestyle addition onto the mall’s south end in 2002, but instead of mainline retail they added mostly destination restaurants and entertainment options instead.  They were keenly aware that bringing more than retail to the mall would be a boon for its future success, so they brought in a 16-screen AMC Theater, California Pizza Kitchen, Maggiano’s Little Italy, PF Chang’s, Cheesecake Factory, and Ruby Tuesday.  It was given the name The District on France.

At the same time, they focused an area of Southdale’s third level, between the Garden Court and the food court, on teen-oriented fashions such as Pac Sun, The Buckle, and Zumiez.  Called Trendz on Top (I know, kind of dorky, right?), the newly focused area not only made use of an area of the mall which might have become neglected, but gave teens a specific reason to go there, dragging their parents through the rest of the mall.  Trendz on Top premiered about the same time as The District on France, between 2001-2002.

Since the most recent addition, Southdale has struggled a little due to the economy and competition, and its vacancy rate has ticked upward.  In 2004, Southdale received a major blow as the southern anchor Mervyn’s closed when that retailer pulled out of Minnesota.  As of April 2010, it is still vacant; however, in 2006 the Mills Corporation, who owned the mall at the time, proposed another renovation and expansion at Southdale that would have brought a Nordstrom to the space, as well as a ‘lifestyle center’ addition to the mall and possibly even Neiman Marcus.   Unfortunately, though, Mills went broke and was acquired by Simon.  Simon is better poised to manage the mall, and also talked of renovation as recently as 2008, but the economy has ultimately shelved these plans for now.

Southdale is still a viable, popular mall, but ever since the economy tanked the vacancy rate at Southdale has ticked up, and as of January 2010 was 22 percent.  This is not an alarming figure, considering the economy, and Southdale still has many destinational and upscale stores, including an Apple Store, H&M, Coach, J Crew, Banana Republic, all of the restaurants, and the 16-screen AMC.

However, despite these popular destinations, parts of Southdale are extremely troubled.  The three-level JCPenney court is pocked with vacancy, a dollar store, some services, and an ancient Arby’s, and across the mall the gigantic food court only has two remaining stalls open.  In addition, in 2008 Crate and Barrel jumped ship and moved a few hundred feet away to a two-level location at the Edina Galleria mall, and in early 2009 Maggiano’s and B. Dalton closed.  Most of the central Garden Court as well as the three level wing in front of Macy’s is well-tenanted, though.

Caldor and I visited Southdale on one of our first-ever mall trips in 1998, and I’ve been back many times since.  Gruen might not be proud of what his vision ultimately created, but even he couldn’t deny that his influence did at least some good.  I mean, we created this site, and we all appreciate and have fond, warm memories of the malls of our youth.  The photos below were taken in April 2010.  I encourage you to leave your own comments about Southdale, Twin Cities retail, or Victor Gruen; we appreciate them.

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.  

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.