Is The Mall Dead?

To survive this new age of austerity, many malls are trying to recast themselves as centers of thrift—hyping low-cost retailers if they have them and trying to add them if they don't. And it's about time, says Stuart Ewen, a City University of New York media professor who studies the social roots of consumer culture. He sees the 20th century as a "100-year barbeque" of resource-burning in an otherwise largely unbroken history of sustainable and thrifty living. "The word consumption used to be a pejorative, meaning death, destruction and waste," he says—now "more and more people are aware of that."

The consumerist backlash has become so mainstream that it's even popping up in politics, business and big-screen entertainment. John McCain and Barack Obama both talked frankly during their presidential campaigns about the need for Americans to dial back their spending habits, borrow less and save more, while Disney's best chance for an Academy Award nomination this year is "Wall-E," a film about robot love on a planet left sterile by human wastefulness. Marketers, ever sensitive to new opportunities to name a demographic, have done just that; many now see a group on the fringe of the "green" environmental movement they call "dark greens" and "very dark greens."

Developers, too, are adjusting to the times. They're trying to win back reluctant shoppers with "life-style centers," retail hubs that boast residential apartments, parks and promenades—the better to blend shopping seamlessly into everyday living. Such structures are going up faster than ever, with 37 new lifestyle centers—almost 40 percent of the form's total square footage built in the last decade—going up last year,according to Portfolio and Property Research, a Boston-based retail consultancy. One such break from the fashion-and-food-court formula cropped up this past summer in southern California, where a development called The Americana at Brand looks more like a movie set than a $400 million outdoor mall. The un-mall is laid out to resemble a small town, with a trolley car, chemist and car-free streets that resemble the quaintest quarters of New Orleans or Boston.

All of which makes the overt branding and commercialism of Xanadu stand out—for all the wrong reasons. The mega-mall has drawn fire from an unusually large and strange set of bedfellows: the Sierra Club, which sued to save environmentally protected wetlands; the Federal Aviation Administration, which has complained that the 287-foot Ferris wheel might disturb planes landing at nearby Teterboro airport; and former New Jersey governor Richard Codey, who has called it's design "yucky-looking." More recently, according to a person familiar with the matter, Xanadu's architects at the Rockwell Group have stopped returning the developer's calls and may remove their name from the structure, citing aesthetic concerns. Not that Xanadu entirely lacks believers. Its own personal Kubla Khan, developer Larry Siegel, has staked his career to the deal, while Pepsi has sufficient faith in the venture that it has bought the naming rights to the Ferris wheel (now the "Pepsi Globe") for a reported $100 million.

Still, with a move towards a quieter, more retrained way of life, New Jersey's Xanadu may yet find its dreams of leisure and retail success are as fantastical as the mythical world for which it was named.

© 2008