Anybody know the latest on Cottonwood Mall? It was looking very run down when I left Utah in ‘05

I loved the old ZCMI store even though I couldn’t care less about the church. The basement was the best – with it’s bakery, deli, and best of all, the candy counter. I was heartbroken when I later went to the store after it had been taken over by the May Co. and the basement had just been sealed right up, as if it never existed I also loved the ZCMI windows at Christmas – especially when they were made entirely out of candy. That was pretty much the coolest thing ever.

I remember going downtown with my Dad on Sundays to “work” in his office and we would usually head over to the food court in Crossroads for lunch. For awhile, I remember going to the lone Mexican restaurant in the ZCMI Center (I think this was before there was even a food court built there) that was actually OPEN on Sunday. It was so strange. We were literally the only people in the entire mall.

Such good memories. I’m sure that City Creek will be nice, but nothing can replace those two malls in my mind.

Rather than as you stated the malls were not blocks apart, but directly faced each other across Main Street. To hop in between you only needed wade through a thicket of skate board punks and anti-Mormon pamphlet pushers and cross the street. Between the two was the a transportation depot of sorts as all downtown buses stopped at large stops in front of each mall. This facilitated I and many other kids from the suburbs to spend our weekends, and the odd ditched school day firmly planted at the mall. We could meet other friends, shop and go to the movies all without asking Mom and Dad for a ride we just hopped any downtown bus.

The two malls were a study in religious/secular contrast. Crossroads (which is actually closer to the temple) was the more secular mall with the national chain stores, it’s key anchor for many years was Nordstrom, which brought a fair amount of cachet as well as foot traffic. Crossroads also had the better food court (which seemed to be remodeled endlessly however). And it also had a multi-screen theater, which for many years hosted the opening night of the Sundance film festival.

Crossroads was a busy, busy place in its heyday unlike ZCMI Center which never seemed to ever really work. The major reason for this was that the ZCMI anchor store was not open on Sundays and thus the mall could never really attract any tenants that didn’t mind losing half a weekends worth of business. The mall was actually open on Sunday for some reason, but all of the key tenents were Mormon related. Mr. Mac, a sensible haberdasher and Mormon Missionary outfitter, and Deseret Book the Mormon Church’s official bookstore occupied a large part of the mall and were really the only constants. For a time there was a full post office in the mall which was convenient.

The ZMCI department store was the other big reason the ZMCI Center never did very well. Apart from being closed Sunday, and before it was sold to the May Company and rebranded Meier & Frank and finally Macy’s, it seemed to me to grow increasingly out of touch with its customers. Although being a very large store with everything from underwear to sofas, ZCMI seemed to cater only to a certain kind of customer — almost certainly Mormon woman ‘of a certain age’ (I believe my grandmother was this woman incidentally). Their entire stock seemingly chosen for it ability to be as well made as it was benign. The best parts of ZCMI were a) the career giftwrap ladies who could wrap huge packages in seconds with whimsy AND perfect creases, and b) the annual Christmas displays in the picture windows of the iconic storefront façade which were always something to look forward to at the holidays.

In the end I think it was as much the Mormon church’s changing vision for the area that closed the malls as it was shifts in tastes of the buying public. The first sign of this came when the church’s decided to close Main Street just north of the malls to build a park between the temple and the church offices across the street — this changed traffic flow in the area to make parking in either mall’s garage a difficult proposition.

I have been to the Gateway a few times, and maybe it is that I now live somewhere warmer, but I found that shopping there in the winter is less than enjoyable. I like to shop and be able to feel my hands feet at the end of the trip, and shopping in a parka is cumbersome as well. I seem to remember they had some hand-warming stations, and the Starbuck’s was popular with those looking to warm up, but mostly we just shopped fast and hurried home to get warm.

Two options:
1. Live there and deal with the climate, as humans have done for millions of years. The Vikings, the Slavs, the Russians and the Canadians have shopped and conducted business outside, in “ill-suited” weather long before the advent of the enclosed mall.

2. Don’t live there! If you find cold weather “ill-suited” to your lifestyle, why in the heck are you living in a place with a cold climate? That’s like hating the water and moving to Key West!

So, the opposite also proves the point: how DID people, from the Indians to the Mexicans to the original Texans, ever live and breathe (and shop) without A/C? It’s amazing that civilization even occured!

—–”It’s all in the circle of real estate, sadly. A nice neighborhood is built, falls into disrepair, and gets revitalized. Meanwhile the “downtrodden” move on to another neighborhood.”—–

What’s interesting is the different build pattern left behind in the newly downtrodden suburb. For example, when Miami was a city of poor people by day and night, and a city of business people by day, the poor people could use transit, and a tight grid of streets to walk from home to store to home and back again. Move those same people to a suburb, however, and they’re confronted by the incredible, undeniable need for a car, or at the very least, a much longer walk. There’s also the very real, very true reality regarding disparate build quality between the Levittown mentality of quick and cheap, versus homes and businesses built in prior generations, which were expected to be multi-generational. Again, perhaps not really the subject of this site.

—–”The suburb issue is a topic that encompasses a whole lot that is beyond the scope of this little blog. So these “downtowns” in suburbs are not a “return to the downtown”, it’s a “return to the festival marketplace”. From Wikipedia, festival marketplaces built in the 70s and 80s in downtown areas as “studies had shown such areas were often perceived as both dirty and dangerous. In response, they developed the festival marketplace concept as a way to reverse the negative trends and attract both suburban residents and out-of-town visitors to the downtown areas.
A typical festival marketplace would include local involvement in the creation of a safe and trendy attraction intended to serve as a major catalyst for other redevelopment. Generally, a festival marketplace offers major restaurants, specialty retail shops, and an international food court. Often, there is an exciting nightlife with music, dancing and live entertainment.” Gee, it sounds a lot like lifestyle centers, in a way, doesn’t it?”—–

Agreed. Point taken. For most of these lifestyle centers, it’s just a new name on the same thing. Florida embraced these with a vengeance in the 1980s.

—–”It’s one of those capitalism things: you can sell things to idiots and they can buy things, thus making you more powerful. That’s not to say everyone who goes to Disney World is an idiot, but just because it’s popular doesn’t make it the right thing. Drugs and pornography are proof of that, for instance…”—–

Popularity doesn’t make something right, that’s true. But it’s a huuuuuuge causal leap from “Disney theme parks” to “drugs and pornography.” Let’s take the three separately. To create an inviting, walkable and inviting environment is not a bad thing at all, and it’s not merely something that smart people inflict upon the masses to separate them from their money. Good design and architecture have been proven to to be behavioral catylists, for example. And Disney World, Disneyland and the rest are not exactly full of rides and amusements. Your typical SixFlags has double the rides. Disney creates spaces that stage the rides, spaces that people want to spend a day in, just soaking up the atmosphere, and I think that the lifestyle centers are trying to emulate that a bit. Does it detract from the business of commerce, or perhaps, drive the cost of said commerce up in a lifestyle center? Perhaps (or maybe “of course.”) But one can “purely” buy things at a Wal-Mart, not exactly the best place to spend time. To put this another way: I go to Wal-Mart to buy things. I go to Bethesda Row or Georgetown to shop.

The drugs and porno debate ain’t really for the mall-lovers blog. But sign me up for both, please!

—–”Some lifestyle centers will indeed succeed, but that is only the few and far between. Eventually all these trendy lifestyle centers today (most of them) will just become empty white elephants.”——

Just like many of the malls covered in this very site, no? Perhaps the argument isn’t against or for malls/lifestyle centers, per se, but against overdevelopment and overexposure. Too much of anything is “bad.” Hey, maybe this IS the place to discuss the drugs and porno after all!

—–”Sounds more like an urban redevelopment project to me rather than a lifestyle center du jour to me.”—–

Nope. A lifestyle center. Perhaps it’s because of the critical mass issue, and the overarching mentality of the region. Lifestyle center begats housing begats new, fake downtown. Maybe it’s the weather! 70 degrees with a breeze!

—–”THE TRUTH COMES OUT!”—–

I make no apologies for my career. And nor do I sugarcoat it: propaganda is what it is, whether it’s in the service of commerce or the government. Besides, the axiom holds true: you can never underestimate the stupidity of the American Public. Practiced widely by members of the marketing wing, as well as the government, I’d imagine (witness the insane closeness in the polls for president, or record sales at Wal-Mart, the very company leading the way towards outsourced manufacturing and lowered pay service industry jobs.)

——”But that’s a problem, the “theme” is becoming pretty old. If everyone picks the same theme (old-timey downtown/European village), what’s left? If you give a facelift to a strip mall, is it a lifestyle center or a strip mall? And even enclosed malls have neat themes. Memorial City Mall in Houston or Westfield Citrus Park are essentially the “downtown feel”…but it’s enclosed! “—–

The themes generally fit the locale. Florida tends to go for a Spanish theme. Greater DC has been working the old-time downtown theme. I personally like the idea of a drugs and porno theme. Maybe LA will launch one of these…or Vegas.

Regarding the facelift, I’d venture that it depends on the strip mall. In Coral Springs, FL…they redid a strip mall to be “The Walk,” your fairly typical “downtown” themed lifestyle center. What’s remarkable is that The Walk was so successful, that it launched an actual downtown development, in a suburb with NO downtown to speak of. In effect, the lifestyle center became the backbone for an overarching development that is bringing the lifestyle itself.

And yes, many enclosed malls have themes. I, for one, love the Mall of America’s many different ‘districts.’ Does the theme detract from the outer ‘box in a sea of parking’ misery? Not really, in my opinion.

Actually, I’ve got the opposite problem…it’s just too dang hot in Texas. While the lifestyle center/strip mall is good functionally, it’s just not a place that you would want to stick around at (in a good way, buying other stuff). Americans really just like something “new”. Back in the 1970s, it was new enclosed malls and now it’s open-air! And in some areas, it really is great weather that you would prefer open-air shopping preferred to indoors. That’s why Ala Moana Center is so successful in Hawaii. But for me, I’m going to go with indoor malls…

>>And I agree with the fixing of the real downtowns over the building of the fake downtowns. However, this only really works when an urban area hits “critical mass” of population, and can’t do anything else but restore their downtown. Using South Florida as an example again, it took 25 years and many billions of dollars to finally begin to make a dent in the downtown livability of Miami…and that only happened because all other options, from Coconut Grove to South Beach had been explored and gentrified. (There’s also some quite cruel about this process of reclaiming formerly downtrodden urban fabric, as the formerly downtrodden now have to find a new place to live whilst still being downtrodden. But that’s a whole other argument.)

It’s all in the circle of real estate, sadly. A nice neighborhood is built, falls into disrepair, and gets revitalized. Meanwhile the “downtrodden” move on to another neighborhood.

>>The point is this: while many people, including myself, prefer the confines of the authentic city, a great majority of Americans clearly do not. They want the suburbs, and while they may be expressing a need for a sense of place in the sprawl, they clearly don’t want to give up the ‘burbs (and in most American urban areas, why would they? The central city is a bombed-out nightmare. Inefficient as it may be, DC owes itself and its viability to having the government. This region could easily be the typical Detroit donut hole, with all the life along the perimenter.)

The suburb issue is a topic that encompasses a whole lot that is beyond the scope of this little blog. So these “downtowns” in suburbs are not a “return to the downtown”, it’s a “return to the festival marketplace”. From Wikipedia, festival marketplaces built in the 70s and 80s in downtown areas as “studies had shown such areas were often perceived as both dirty and dangerous. In response, they developed the festival marketplace concept as a way to reverse the negative trends and attract both suburban residents and out-of-town visitors to the downtown areas.
A typical festival marketplace would include local involvement in the creation of a safe and trendy attraction intended to serve as a major catalyst for other redevelopment. Generally, a festival marketplace offers major restaurants, specialty retail shops, and an international food court. Often, there is an exciting nightlife with music, dancing and live entertainment.” Gee, it sounds a lot like lifestyle centers, in a way, doesn’t it?

>>You also bring up Disney as an example of what not to do, which is almost absurd, considering both the success of their theme parks and the success (and controversy) of their city, Celebration. Millions of people pay $70 a day just to gain admission to Disney’s over-the-top lifestyle centers around the world…and several thousand paid a pretty penny to buy a residence in Celebration. I’m frankly surprised that Disney isn’t more entrenched in the mall and lifestyle center business. Clearly, there’s a market for the fantasy they are selling.

It’s one of those capitalism things: you can sell things to idiots and they can buy things, thus making you more powerful. That’s not to say everyone who goes to Disney World is an idiot, but just because it’s popular doesn’t make it the right thing. Drugs and pornography are proof of that, for instance…

>>You are right, however. Many of these lifestyle centers are poorly designed, poorly located, and will neverbecome fabric. Some will, however. But many are just what they are critiqued to be: gussied-up malls surrounded by parking lot seas, owned by a single owner (like the enclosed mall prior.)

Some lifestyle centers will indeed succeed, but that is only the few and far between. Eventually all these trendy lifestyle centers today (most of them) will just become empty white elephants.

>>And yet, I just went to the Apple Store in “downtown” Clarendon a couple of days ago. A former brownfield, Clarendon consists of some rehabbed old buildings, new mid-rise condos, apartments and offices…and a ‘fake downtown’ lifestyle center. Maybe the difference in this case is that its off of the Metro. Maybe it’s less an isolated ‘lifestyle center’ and more of a mixed use development, where the whole point is to cater to the people who DONT drive in Metro DC. Maybe it’s that Metro DC has hit critical mass, and is ready for this style of development. Whatever the reason, it was pleasant and populated, and it didn’t stick out from the surroundings like a thumb.

Sounds more like an urban redevelopment project to me rather than a lifestyle center du jour to me.

>>And, in the interest of full disclosure, I used to be an ad writer and brand developer for those very same developers (although on the residential side.) And many times, more often than not, you’re right, it’s just marketing BS. So…I didn’t have to swallow it: I created it. 6.5 out of 10 times, it was not really going to be a downtown…but I have to say, I lived for the 3.5 times that it was (and made quite a bit of cash…for writing! What an awesome job.)

THE TRUTH COMES OUT!

>>Finally, if the only difference between a lifestyle center and a strip mall is “theme,” I’ll totally take theme! Heck, bring it to malls. Any Shoppingtown would totally benefit from a bit of theme!

But that’s a problem, the “theme” is becoming pretty old. If everyone picks the same theme (old-timey downtown/European village), what’s left? If you give a facelift to a strip mall, is it a lifestyle center or a strip mall? And even enclosed malls have neat themes. Memorial City Mall in Houston or Westfield Citrus Park are essentially the “downtown feel”…but it’s enclosed!

I’d like to hear someone else on this issue. CoryTJ? AceJay? Adam? Anybody?