the magic and menace of malls

The Magic and Menace of Malls

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Autorin: Jennifer Baer-Engel, Göppingen Bildquellen: F1 online/Digitale Bildagentur RM; Jennifer Baer-Engel, Göppingen; Fotolia LLC; ShutterStock.com RF; iStockphoto; Mall of America

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A Where to shop

g 1. Compare the two pictures. Explain the differences, the advantages and disadvantages of

these shopping centers.

S 2. Where would you prefer to shop and why? Write a short paragraph.

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B Where to shop and do lots of other things

g What else do you think you can do at a mall besides shop? Look at this list and discuss which

ones you can or can’t do.

watch a movie swim see and be seen

go bowling eat see a play

go to a bar watch sea lions hang out with friends

play video games exercise ice skate

go on a vacation ride a roller coaster listen to a concert

stay overnight go to church go to a disco

go on a water ride play miniature golf go to a gun shooting range

C Grand Avenue: Rise and fall of a mall

What do you do with a downtown area that is losing businesses and losing customers? How do

you get new stores to open and shoppers to spend money in your downtown area? These were

questions that the city of Milwaukee asked in the late 1970s. Their inner city was becoming a

ghost town as stores and businesses moved to the suburbs. In the suburbs there was more room

for the stores and parking lots. Strip malls were the result. More and more people were living in

the suburbs where they felt safer. It was cheaper to build a house or open a store there, plus this

is where the wealthier people lived. Ultimately, business moved to where the money was. This

phenomenon is called “urban sprawl”.

A typical American strip mall




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Milwaukee decided to try and stop this

trend by offering both business owners and

shoppers a beautiful venue at which to sell

and buy. The decision was made to open a

downtown mall. This was not a new idea.

Before urban sprawl began, downtowns had

been busy places where people both

shopped and lived. However, in the 1970s it

was a rather radical idea.

The new mall, The Grand Avenue, was built

around an original building from 1915 and

opened in 1982. It consists of two large

buildings and takes up four city blocks. The architecture is beautiful with tall ceilings, skylights

and lots of open spaces. When it first opened, the goal was to make the mall fit the city. That’s why

48% of the stores were locally owned, 12% were from the region and only 40% of the space was

filled with national chains. It also had the largest food court in the state, which appealed not only

to the people employed in the mall but also to the many office workers in the city. The Grand

Avenue became a popular destination for people

visiting Milwaukee.

Unfortunately, just five years after opening, the store

owners in the mall began to notice that they were

selling less in their mall stores than in their stores out

in the suburbs. By the middle of the 1990s, more and

more stores were closing, including one of the mall’s

anchor stores – a big department store. As locally

owned stores closed, they were replaced by nation-

wide chain stores and the mall lost its local identity.

High unemployment rates, even higher downtown

crime rates and the recession have hurt the mall even more. Today it still has businesses in it, but

is far from the attractive consumer center it once was.

The downtown area would have to undergo major changes for

the mall to return to its glory days of the 1980s. As people start

rediscovering downtown as a place to live and not just to work,

perhaps the mall will experience a renaissance and be able to

compete with suburban malls. Only then can it awaken from its

current near-ghost-town existence.

1. Write a short definition of “urban sprawl”.

2. What are the advantages of a suburban strip mall?

3. Why were only 40% of the original stores national chains?

4. Why has the mall almost become a ghost town?

5. Find a word that means “an area outside of the city”.

6. Find a word that means “place, location or setting”.

7. Find a phrase that means “lots of restaurants together”.

8. Find a phrase that means “the high point of success”.

9. Find a phrase that means “where you can open a store”.




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• More than 42 million visitors a year.

• Total area 452,000 m2 – 230,000 m2 of that is retail

space.

• More than 50 places to eat and 14 movie theaters.

• 530 stores and 12,287 parking spaces.

• The most visited mall in the world.

• Largest indoor amusement park in the US.

• The Mall of America employs 12,000 workers.

• The SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium has a 91 m-

long curved tunnel through 4.3 m of water to

view over 4,500 sea creatures.

• The Mall of America Transit Station is the busiest

transit hub/station in Minnesota.

• The developers plan $2.5 billion in additions in

the coming decade, adding one new attraction

per year.

• They are planning a $250-million addition that

adds 50 stores, an office tower, a luxury hotel, and

a fancy food hall.

1. Write your opinion: What would be good or bad

about having a mall like this near your home?

2. Read this quote from the MOA homepage: ”It’s no

secret that Mall of America® offers a vacation expe-

rience like no other. Whether you are looking for a

package including hotel, park passes and coupon

books or complete deals with airfare, you’ve come

to the right place.” Does the idea of having a “mall

vacation” sound attractive to you? Why or why not?


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Teacher’s page: The Magic and Menace of Malls


A Shopping malls have been described as a modern, indoor version of the traditional market-place. A typical shopping mall in the United States is housed in an enclosed building or group of buildings. The stores face inward. Many malls have multiple levels connected by escalators and elevators. The mall has at least one anchor store, which is usually a big department store. However, there are often more than one of these at opposite ends of the mall. There are also smaller chain stores and locally-owned stores. Other key elements are parking, either in the form of a parking lot or a parking structure connected to the mall, and a food court with mostly fast-food restaurants and a common seating area.

B Believe it or not, you can do all of these activities at various malls around the world. Some malls have indoor water parks, others have ice skating rinks and some even have roller coasters. However, the most popular mall activities are still sure to be shopping, hanging out with friends, eating and exercising in the form of mall-walking i.e. walking around the mall in exercise clothes (some malls even let the walkers in early before the stores open).

C 1. Urban sprawl is when the areas outside of the city are developed. It means that the areas where people live and work spread out.2. The advantages of a strip mall are that it is cheaper for the business owners and then for the shoppers, too. There is more room for the stores to sell their wares and there is more room for parking. People can shop where they live – in the suburbs.3. Only 40% of the original stores were national chains because they wanted the mall to have a local identity.4. It has become a ghost town because many of the stores have closed. The stores have closed because they can’t make enough money. People don’t shop at the mall because it is in a dan-gerous area with a lot of crime and because of the recession and unemployment.5. suburb 6. venue 7. food court 8. glory days 9. retail space

D 1. Points to consider:

GOOD Bad

-jobs for people in the community-fun for people-have everything you need close by-easy to get to-people also visit other attractions and stores in the area

-lots of traffic-more pollution and noise-lose parks and open spaces-forces smaller stores to close-doesn’t offer highly skilled jobs, low pay-they are a menace to traditional downtown market areas

2. Some things to think about: Since the MOA doesn’t just offer shopping, it may appeal to a wider audience than a typical mall. There are activities for a wide range of age groups. It is an enclosed, relatively safe environment for families. You needn’t worry about the weather once you get there. Parking is usually free and easily accessible.On the other hand, a mall vacation is very oriented towards consumption. You are constantly surrounded by opportunities to spend money. It can get quite expensive if you can’t resist the temptations on every corner.

You might enjoy this sarcastic, humorous, exaggerated look at the Mall of America: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/298/getting-and-spending?act=3#play

the magic and menace of malls

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