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20 Planning October 1993 «'. regional beltway ringing Minneapolis and that wounded two patrons and aCamp =' St. Paul. Snoopy employee. _ Although the initial flood. of curious visitors-a million a week in the first month-has tapered off, the mall's man- agers report 35 to 40 million visits in the first year. The city says 30 million is more like it, but either figure is well ahead of the projections of 22.5 million made ear- lier by Bloomington planners. Visits by tourists (from beyond a 150-mile radius) are thought to comprise 40 percent of the total. Compare that with Florida's Disney World, which draws 28 million visits annually (note, though that shopping malls generate many repeat visits by local customers. The megamall's combination of retail- . ing and entertainment has changed typi- cal suburban shopping patterns, drawing more visitors than expected in the tradi- tionallyslow post-Christmas and summer months. Exact figures are not available, but the Simon MOA Management Com- pany says sales have exceeded the projec- tions of $238 per square foot of retail space annually. For the city, the positive effects of the mall seem to outweigh the negative ones. ~n September, Bloomington planners re- eased aone-year study of the mall's im- pacts on tourism, transportation, employ- ment, and city services. It reported that, except during weekend peaks, the up- graded road system was doing a good job of handling traffic around the mall (al- ready at 70 percent of the predicted 1995 lever. The mall's multiple bus routes and private shuttles have boosted transit rid- . ership to about 130,000 riders per month; 80,000 had been anticipated: Revenues from lodging, liquor, admis- sionstaxes, and business license fees have increased substantially since the mall's opening. (Hotel occupancy rates now hover around 80 percent, almost 20 percent higher than in 1991.) Some of these tax revenues are earmarked for debt service on tax increment bonds used to finance the mall's public costs. On the negative side are the problems created by the mall's concentration of late-night entertainment activities. In Sep- tember, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune re- ported that the mall's nightspots have been attracting crowds of up to 5,000 on weekends, causing a steady stream of runk-driving arrests on the mall's high- ay entrance ramps. The mall accounted for 14 percent of all the city's police calls in its first six months, most of them for offenses such as shoplifting, drunk and .disorderly conduct, and forgery. Most se- rious was a shooting in February 1993 Not quite so bad When the megamall was first announced, other ietail centers in the Twin .Cities area went on red alert, fearful of over- whelming competition. The immediate response was a flurry of renovation and expansion. The results thus far indicate that most of the centers are rebounding from initial losses or at least holding their ground. "The Mall of America has had as many positive impacts for downtown as it has created challenges," says John Labosky, director of the Minneapolis Downtown Council. On the plus side, it has attracted tourists to the region, helping fill down- town hotels and luring major conven- tions. The mall also created a sense of urgency in Minneapolis, Labosky notes, generating such major improvements as a $2 million facelift of the Nicollet Mall, the city's 30-year-old transit mall. Today, he adds, the downtown, with over three mil- lion square feet of retail space, ranks fifth in the nation in retail sales. Rather than declining, downtown sales have kept pace with inflation in the year since the mall's opening. That's not to say that the addition of the mall's 2.5 million square feet of new retail space has had no impact. Labosky notes that local retailers had been driven to hold more sales to remain competitive, sacrificing profits in an effort to retain market share. He predicts that some stores will not survive. Neighboring St. Paul, the state capital, has a weaker retail base, with only a third as much retail space, most of it serving daytime employees and a small group of downtown residents. Instead of trying to compete with the Mall of America for shoppers, Eileen McMahon of the St. Paul Convention and Visitors Bureau says mall visitors are plied with brochures publiciz- ing St. Paul's hotels and cultural attrac- tions. The response has been encourag- ing, she says. In the first few months after the mall opened, the Science Museum of Minne- sota and the Children's Museum-part of St. Paul's emerging "cultural corridor"- experienced asharp drop in attendance. Both institutions have sprung back after bringing in new exhibits and increasing their advertising and promotions. Outlying shopping centers responded to the megamall threat with a spate of improvements. The two centers closest to the Mall of America, Southdale Center in Edina (famous as the first fully enclosed shopping mall) and Burnsville Center, just south of Bloomington, have com- pleted extensive renovations. And one the largest local department stores- Dayton's, which is owned by the Dayton. Hudson Corporation of Minneapolis- opened anew store at Southdale rather than in the new mall. In general, the mall's effect on subur- ban shopping centers seems far less than expected. A December 1992 survey by the Minnesota Shopping Center Associa- tion reported that the overall vacancy rate at Twin Cities shopping centers rose 1.4 percent in 1992, to 10.2 percent-but that figure is in line with the national average of 10 percent. In contrast, at least some owners of area bars and restaurants are blaming the mall for a drop in sales. The Mississippi Live entertainment complex, which opened across the river from downtown Minne- apolis in May 1992, reported an initial drop in attendance when the mall opened, although numbers were up again by this summer. But while many of the region's busi- nesses appear to have weathered the mall's first year, the long-range prospects are less certain. John Borchert, professor emeri- tus of geography at the University of Minnesota, doesn't buy the mall develop- ers' argument that the region is understored; rather, he suggests that many other re- gions are overbuilt. He points to nation- wide trends that suggest consumers will spend .less time on shopping and less money on goods. The Mall of America, he says, may be the nation's last gasp of retail expansion.