Mall Management

By Tuhin Chattopadhyay

What is a shopping mall?

A shopping mall or shopping centre is a building or set of buildings that contain a variety of retail units, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit.

What is Mall Management?

Shopping malls or shopping centres are physical spaces created for retailing, fun, leisure and entertainment and have many elements. Primarily, a mall can be divided into various zones: Retailing: Pure shopping Entertainment: Movie theatres, gaming zones, video parlours Food Court: Fine dining restaurants Atrium: Common area, public spaces, prayer rooms, rest rooms, kids area, parking, etc.

What is Mall Management?

Now, to manage all these activities in a huge space, a specialised skill set is required. Various functions under mall management are: 1. Leasing: selling this idea to retailers and other tenants 2. Mall marketing 3. Promotions and activities 4. Security etc. 5. Facilities management Hence, mall management ensures the smooth running of the mall, makes sure that there is coordination between various activities and tenants, settles disputes etc.

What is Mall Management?

Mall management broadly includes mall positioning, zoning, tenant mix, promotions, facilities and finance management. Mall management is a value addition that cannot be measured but translates into intangibles such as the arrival experience, a comfortable ambience and a safe and secure environment, all of which result in retaining loyal customers in ever-shrinking catchments.

What is Mall Management?

Leasing and coordination Handover to tenants and fit-outs Project completion coordination Statutory preparedness Pre-opening set up centre management, recruiting and training

What is Mall Management?

Facility management Asset enhancement and asset management Visitor management Lease administration Marketing - brand positioning of the mall, events and promotions, space on hire (SOH), sales Common area management (CAM) Environment management - statutory compliances, licenses and permits Business analysis and strategy planning and implementation Community connect initiatives Reports, MIS and best global practices

What is Mall Management?

A mall management company takes care of the entire operations of a mall, which includes procurement of various equipment and maintenance. This means leasing out shops and advertising space to interested parties, procuring all necessary equipment, to maintaining the mall. Mall management encompasses operations, facilities management, security, accounts, common area maintenance, marketing, leasing and all the other functions even remotely related to a mall. The biggest problem in this industry is finding the right kind of tenants, while leasing out space to tenants, it is important to keep in mind the image that you want to create in the customers mind.

FACILITY MANAGEMENT
Mall management companies outsource usually many operations to these companies like parking, security, housekeeping, and cash management. Facility Management handle electro mechanical services like fire detection and suppression, power management, access control, water management plumbing, etc. Besides this they also handle business services like guest relations, help desk management, and meeting room management. They also provide soft services like cleaning and pest control, physical and security surveillance, concierge services, and administration services.

FACILITY MANAGEMENT
There are a few other functions that facility management companies are also taking up. These include conducting research for malls to find out their requirements before actually starting to service them. The share of revenue depends on the number of services provided to all the malls in a facility management companys portfolio. It might sound ironical, but finding human resources is the main problem faced by facility management companies, the core business of which is providing manpower to their clients. One other problem that is faced by service providers is payment delays from their clients.

Mall Advertising
As the number of malls in the country is growing at a rapid pace and with it the number of people visiting these malls burgeoning, advertising and promotional activities in malls have become a hot opportunity. A creative agency takes care of all the aspects of advertising, starting from conceptualizing the advertisement to leasing out the space on behalf of their clients, to putting up hoardings or setting up kiosks or conducting events. Both outdoor advertising and BTL activities are revenue generators at the malls.

Who are the stakeholders in a mall?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Developers Investors Occupants (brands and franchises) Customers Government/ statutory organizations Other Stakeholders

1. Developers
After the mall is built and the process of possession is over, the developer generally hands it over to mall and facility management team. In most cases facility manager is a third party and mall management/marketing team is a separate strategic business unit (SBU). This SBU should be considered as a separate entity so as to ensure that the developer doesn't behave like a landlord but as a place developer. In the long run, mall developer should be a client and the entity responsible for its management (unless a third party) should be an agency.

Expectation of Developer
The developer would expect at least little over nominal return on investment so as to earn profit and further invest in such projects. Better ROI would also mean that shareholders and investors in the company would be satisfied. He would want continuity of occupants. He would also want the project to enhance the company's brand image as mall business by nature has a snob value. This should subsequently help in making it easier for him to sell similar projects to brands/franchises/ bankers.

Who fulfills the developers expectations?

Those who contribute to make this possible include occupants who pay good rental as well as advertisers, kiosk owners and sponsors who provide additional sources of revenue. Better management of mall, high footfalls that spend, good event and promotion plans, friendly mall management and professionalism of developer play an important role in this regard. People and stakeholders appreciate the present project/set of projects through its popularity and success.

2. Investors
Investors are the people who have bought property in malls in bits and pieces. They should not be confused with equity partners or directors, but they are the people who bought small units during the built-up stage or later.

Expectation of Investors
Investors would look for better ROI than similar business with similar investment can offer with security and longevity. In other words, he would want confidence and peace of mind.

Who fulfills the investors expectations?

Those who can make this possible are the occupants who will pay good rental and stick to the mall, as well as the developer with strong financial background who can run the business with long-term interest. A performing mall management team with professionals working to enhance the brand image of the mall is equally important in this regard.

3. Occupants (brands and franchises)

For a mall as an entity, its occupants are the most important external stakeholders. They can be an anchor store, multiplex, food court or any other occupant. They are also investors because they can be on lease or would have bought property. An occupant can be a brand (like Shoppers' Stop, Lacoste, Hutch, Adidas, etc) or their appointed franchises.

Expectation of Occupants
They would want ROI and more business than that generated from the nearest market, hasslefree shopping atmosphere, more footfalls at lower cost of marketing and adequate cost of rentals.

Who fulfills the occupants expectations?

Customers who come because of all other stakeholders, and professional mall developer who understands customer needs. Other contributing factors are location, brands, ambience, facilities, management, events and promos. Continuous efforts by mall management, developer and other stakeholders are equally important. So is ROI of developer and investors based on long-term purview so that rentals are affordable.

4. Customers
The end-consumers are the most important stakeholders as it is they who decide in many ways the future of others.

Expectation of customers
They would look for value for money, value for time spent (scope of good quality entertainment, food, etc), shopping with least effort (maximum brands), convenience of parking, better security, ambience, promos, impromptu events that are fresh and spring surprises also.

Who fulfills the customers expectations?

Right occupants with right price and product mix, right tenant mix, location, ambience, facilities, brands, management, events/promos. Also, professional mall developer who understands customers' need and with vision to succeed financially.

5. Government/ statutory organizations

Not many people believe it but local government, municipal corporation and other such bodies are stakeholders indirectly as they have allowed the mall to be built with some goals in mind, which can be providing a better lifestyle to the people or creating a better image of the city.

6. Other stakeholders
They are different in different malls but very important for variable income and mall marketing plan. They could be media partners (newspapers, TV, radio), airline partner, various event sponsors, outdoor advertisers, kiosk owners, etc. They are crucial to the success of the mall, financially and in providing the daily dose of freshness to the mall.

Expectation of other stakeholders

Other stakeholders would look for better brand image of the mall, higher footfalls and existence of the possibility for conversion.

Who fulfills other stockholder's expectations?

Contributing factors include quality-oriented known or unique brands, location, ambience, facilities, management, events and promos. In short, support from all other stakeholders.

Quick Bytes
Mall Management includes mall positioning, zoning, tenant mix, promotions, facilities and finance management. Only a few malls in India follow revenue sharing, which is a common practice in developed markets. Traffic management is critical to the success of a mall. Right tenant mix attracts the focused buyer and right zoning attracts the impulsive buyer. Ambience management and high levels of hygiene are important to attract the family crowd.

Quick Bytes
All stakeholders have a great role to play in the success of a mall. The most important fact is that all stakeholders are dependent on each other for their individual success and for the success of the mall.

Remember that:

A Customer sees more in an hour Than Management sees in one year!

To Start the Value Creation Process you need 3 things:

1 A Good Location

A Good Location

A Good Location

 The future will belong to the concepts that put their hope into the synergetic combination of Entertainment, Experience, Commerce & Communication.

To make a mall successful:

Experience Leisure Convenience Point of purchase have to be defined in an emotional way to bond with the customers. A successful shopping mall is nowadays not only a shopping destination, but also a new centre of life.

To make it a new centre of life, following things can be included:

A convention centre A health spa A library A travel agency Restaurants Squash and bowling zone Golf or tennis Additional kids playground or kids party organization.

 Malls need their own identity. It should not be only a conglomeration of different retail stores. Internationally, the focus is on theme concepts. These could be sports, religion, culture or even a special atmosphere like Mediterranean scenery. The main message is: Malls have developed into concepts with their own identity.

 Shopping has to be a source of lust and excitement. The more diversified, alive and surprising a shopping mall is made to be, the greater the success will be. Mall architecture must reflect the aesthetic value: Beauty & Utility should go hand in hand.

Right Promotion At Right Time

Different groups visit malls at different times on different days (teens after school, working women in the evening). Plan accordingly. Saturday & Sunday are typically the most popular days to stage an event. To find out the right timing, the following things need to be counted: Traffic, average time spent interacting, impressions, media hits, cars in the parking lot segmented by hour.

Positioning a mall
The best international mall management practices include clear positioning of the mall (value, lifestyle, fashion, etc), backed by market research to understand the primary catchments needs and thereafter category mapping or defining the categories of services. Eva, the women's mall in Bangalore Gold Souk, a jewellery mall in Gurgaon Ishanya for interior products in Pune

A tenant strategy means building that portfolio of occupants that appeal to consumers, especially the increasingly large number of recreation oriented visitors who visit malls for family or social reasons, combining shopping with entertainment. This phenomenon is highly prevalent in our Asian cultures which give more importance to communal life, and have small living quarters. The tenant mix must reflect their needs and the portfolio must be re-evaluated at every lease expiry. If a tenant does not do as well as expected, or conversely expands too much, the company can be evicted or shifted at the end of the period.

Tenant strategy? Whats that?

Tenant strategy
An important aspect of tenant strategy that Indian developers must remember is that appealing to entertainment hunger through dedicated facilities such as arcades, cineplexs etc is risky without considerable study of the market. Because of high real estate prices, dedicating space to amusements is a larger financial risk than a totally retail-oriented area, though payoffs can be much greater.

Proof of a successful mall is in its anchoring tenants

A mall is a well defined conglomerate retail format where the space is leased out to the tenants and not sold out. There should be a floor plan well orchestrated for customer circulation with the right facilities in place. The mall mix should be profiled by the mall management team so that it not only becomes a destination for customers but becomes a place for shopping there repeatedly. The anchoring stores are very significant for any successful mall. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and likewise the proof of a successful mall is in its anchoring tenants.

What is the Economic model followed?

Setting the lease rate appropriately is critical. If the lease level works out to more than the average for the mall , the mall is said to be over rented and the property shall experience tenant abandonment and a climbing vacancy rate. If rents are lower, the developer gets sub-optimal returns and rents would have to be substantially increased on expiry of the lease period.

Lease Amount
The lease amount is usually structured so as to reflect the space taken up and the crowd pulling capability of the tenant. Tenants taking up large spaces and able to attract large volume of visitors are approached first and in their role as anchor tenants are provided with substantial discounts on the base asking rates to entice them into taking up space .

Rentals
Rentals based on a percentage of store turn-over are common abroad, and are in fact preferred by many retailers as the mall management then has a stake in increasing the turn-over of tenants. It goes without saying that this arrangement depends on a high level of trust between retailer and developer , in addition the mall management company charges a royalty or service fee to cover the costs of managing the mall i.e., managerial personnel associated office expenses, as well as marketing costs such as newspaper, advertisements, promotions.

Food courts
Food courts should be strategically located in a manner that avoids noise but boosts visibility. The obvious intention behind such design strategy is to increase the number of footfalls (which may increase the number of conversions) in a shopping centre.

Quality Mall Operations

Air Conditioning Mall Safety Mall Security Making the Mall Customer Friendly Mall Cost Control Electrical Energy

Skilled retail professionals

A mall needs to have a strong mall management team with clear requirements of facilities management skills, marketing skills and relationship building & customer service skills.

Revenue sharing model between the developers and retailers

Revenue sharing would motivate the mall management to come up with various marketing programmes conceptualized with common tenant objectives in mind.

 On only 10-12% of malls in India successful Success is measured not by just the rental revenues but by other factors like footfalls and conversions, the ticket size, the coherence and the longevity of the mall mix, the profile of the anchor tenants and the customer profile

 On inadequate planning, improper zoning, poor tenant mix and accessibility are major drawbacks. The structure then does not deserve to be defined as a mall. If it is not planned it is just a shopping complex. A mall is a well defined conglomerate retail format where the space is leased out to the tenants and not sold out. There should be a floor plan well orchestrated for customer circulation with the right facilities in place. The mall mix should be profiled by the mall management team so that it not only becomes a destination for customers but becomes a place for shopping there repeatedly. The anchoring stores are very significant for any successful mall. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and likewise the proof of a successful mall is in its anchoring tenants.

Customers
Middle-class Indians are still hesitant about spending in malls because they think prices are higher in the mall. the percentage of visitors who turn into shoppers is as low as 10-15% in Indian malls

Responsibilities of a Mall Manager:

To provide leadership to all Mall staff and to ensure the proper Management of the Mall. To ensure delivery of the Mall Business Plan objectives, and meet budgetary targets. To run the Mall according to good retail property principles by increasing sales and foot-traffic & ultimately increase the return on investment to the owner. To provide superior client service and to ensure that all reports provide the same service standards. Making the Mall Lawsuit Resistant

Types of Shopping Centre

Types of Shopping Center

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Neighbourhood Center Community Center Regional malls Super-regional malls Fashion/Speciality Center Power Center Theme/ Festival Center Outlet malls

Neighbourhood Center
This center is designed to provide convenience shopping for the day to day needs of the consumers in the immediate neighbourhood. Half of these centers are anchored by a supermarket. E.g. Market No. 1, Market No. 2, Market No. 3 & Market No. 4 in Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi.

Community Center
Typically offers a wider range of apparel than the neighbourhood center does. Among the more common anchors are supermarkets, super drugstores and discount department stores. Community center tenants sometimes contain off-price retailers selling items like apparel, home improvement, toys etc.

New Friends Colony Community Centre Market (NFC)

Barista or Caf Coffee Day for coffee or fast-food from Concept. Among the popular choices are Nathus Sweets for spicy chaat, Open Oven for delicious bakes, Al Bake for a quick bite of Shawarmas, McDonalds for burger and fries and Fast Trax for the fries, burgers and privacy for dating couples. The Pebble Street, Moksha, Mystic Heights, Nothing Authentic, Mezz and Egos many optionsThai, Italian and desiare hugely popular with the spirit-ed and the sober alike. Lily General Store for your grocery or CRS Health for the essentials. Fashion Point is well known for its range of mens wear. Trendz and The Beginning would answer the clothing needs for the entire family. Beauty salons like Affinity and Ravissant

Regional malls
A regional mall is, as per the International Council of Shopping Centers, in the United States, a shopping mall which is designed to service a larger area than a conventional shopping mall. It is typically larger with 4,00,000 square feet to 8,00,000 square feet. Offers a wider selection of stores. Given their wider service area, these malls tend to have higher-end stores that need a larger area in order for their services to be profitable. Regional malls are also found as tourist attractions in vacation areas. E.g. Shipra Mall at Indirapuram with 4.5 lakh sq.ft area

Super-regional malls
A super-regional mall is, as per the ICSC, in the U.S. a shopping mall with over 8,00,000 square feet of gross leasable area. Has more anchors & a deeper selection of merchandise. Draws from a larger population base. E.g. The Great India Place with 15,00,000-sq.ft. Select Citywalk with 13,00,000 ft

Fashion/Speciality Center
A center composed mainly of upscale apparel shops and boutiques. This centers usually are found in trade areas having high income levels. E.g. Khan Market is one of the more up market and expensive places to shop in Delhi. Some of the best-known brands, like Reebok, Nike, Benetton and Adidas, have their outlets in the Khan Market. it also has some of the best tailors in Delhi. Several shops have a range of excellent materials and will have a tailor on hand to make a suit, dress or shirt, usually within a period of one week.

Power Center
A center dominated by several large anchors, including discount department stores, off-price stores, warehouse clubs and category killers. A shopping site with: (a) up to a half-dozen or so category killer stores and a mix of smaller stores, or (b) several complementary stores specializing in a product category. E.g. Palika Bazaar, Connaught Place Cheap garments and electronic commodities are available. Karol Bagh offers Indian garments and shoes.

Theme/Festival Center
These centers typically employ a unifying theme that is carried out by the individual shops in their architectural design and to an extent in their merchandise. The theme for Surajkund Mela 2008 is West Bengal. Teej fair, Diwali fair at Delhi Haat.

Outlet malls
An outlet mall (or outlet centre) is a type of shopping mall in which manufacturers sell their products directly to the public through their own stores. Other stores in outlet malls are operated by retailers selling returned goods and discontinued products, often at heavily reduced prices. E.g. Ansal Plaza (Factory Outlet Mall), Vaishali, Ghaziabad.

Tenant Mix

 A planned center should aim to create an optimal combination of tenants that will maximize center turnover and retailer profits and therefore total net rentals. The retail tenant mix will normally include one or more anchor tenants, a variety of mall stores and food court operators. Each category of retail tenant has a role to play in creating the center's micro retailing climate.

 At the foundation are anchors that attract a base number of consumers to the center. Food court operators can create another function for the retail destination, as well as capitalizing on the high pedestrian traffic flows in the focus of a center. Mall stores cover all of the other shopping needs of the consumer, so as to economize consumers time cost of shopping.

There are two types of tenants:

(1) anchor; and

(2) non-anchor tenants The anchor tenants create a draw card for the center and the non-anchor tenants benefit from locating near the anchor. The anchor tenant is affected only by the amount of space it leases and not by the space allocated to non-anchors. Non-anchors however are affected by the amount of space they lease and the space let to the anchor

 It is typically observed that anchor tenants have far lower rentals per square meter than mall stores and food court operators.

So why doesn't the landlord allocate all space to mall stores and food court operators?
The price of the mall store and food court space depends on the space allocated to an anchor. If there is no anchor the sales these retail tenants would achieve, and therefore the rent they could afford, will move toward zero. This will cause total rental to be less than the optimal.

 Brueckner (1993) has produced a general shopping center space allocation model that does not differentiate between anchors and nonanchors, but between all retail tenant types. Retail tenants are defined according to their retail demand externality generating abilities. The starting point for Brueckner's model is that centers contain a variety of shops to lure consumers because of the time economizing quality of shopping at one destination. If another type of retailer enters a center, this increases the likelihood that any given shopping trip can be executed in a time-cost saving manner by visiting the center

 As some additional consumers will patronize other stores during their visits, the existing retail tenants receive what Brueckner terms an "externality" from the new type of store locating in the center. Retail tenant types differ in their externality generating ability. For example, a mall store selling goods that are not on many shopping lists would generate few externalities, while a department store that carries many goods on the average shopping list generates many.

 Brueckner extends this rationale and formally shows that the rental for any retailer is dependent on the sales volume per square foot the retailer achieves, and also on the sales that other tenants generating externalities achieve. The implication of Brueckner's theoretical work is that landlords must optimize interretailer externalities to maximize center total rents.

 The conclusions from Brueckner's model also appear to be consistent with observed behavior. For example, jewelry stores and lottery stores are typically identified as high rental payers. The landlord does not allocate all the mall store parades to jewelers and lottery stores because the price of these retail tenants depends on their sales per square meter and the externalities generated by other mall store tenant types. Allocation of all the space to jewelry and lottery stores is likely to cause externalities to be suboptimal, as in most cases shoppers will not want only these two store types.

 Size of store is consistently found to be the most significant determinant of base rentals per square meter. Rent per square meter decreases as size increases. Rent per square meter decreases as sales per square meter decreases. Anchor stores have the largest size and the lowest sales and rent per square meter.

 Empirical studies have confirmed the important negative relationship between size and base rents and the positive relationship between sales and base rents.

All tenant strategy should start with the following questions:

Who are we? Who are our customers? How is our retail offering responsive to the needs of our customers? What is our primary promise to the buying public?

 A major retail tenant of a shopping center has a lot of bargaining power. So much so sometimes that it has the power to change the tenant mix in a way which is detrimental to the entire center. The owner of the center sometimes has to make an unpleasant choice to give the tenant the flexibility it seeks and put the viability of the center at risk or deny the tenant its desires and risk losing the tenant.

Fortunately, there are other alternatives:

1. The first is to permit the tenant the widest use of its space but prohibit it from changing the use of that space to the then principal use of another tenant of the center (through change in business of the tenant or through assignment or subletting). Thus, for example, if the major tenant of the shopping center is a clothing store and the center later adds a florist, the lease will prohibit the clothing store from converting either itself or its space into a flower shop. This is particularly important if the size or location of the center is such that the center will be unable to support two businesses in direct competition and has two beneficial effects. It maintains tenant balance in the center while simultaneously giving some flexibility to the powerful tenant by allowing it to use some or all of its space for a business which, while present in the center, is an ancillary, rather than a principal, business of another tenant.

2. Another frequently employed technique is to permit the main tenant to use the space for one or more specific purposes (these being the purposes for which the tenant intends to use the space at the time of execution of the lease) and provide that the tenant may not use the space for any of a list of prohibited purposes, one of which is the principal use of another tenant. This limits both the use to which the original tenant may affirmatively put the property (that is, if a florist shop or a clothing store is permitted and a music store is not, the tenant may not open a music store even if it would otherwise be permissible) while simultaneously restricting uses which would be deleterious to the continued good health of the center.

3. The third common technique is to give the original tenant the broadest possible use of its own retail space, but restrict the purposes for which the original tenant may assign the lease or sublet the premises. These strategies should not be applied without careful consideration of the needs both of the tenant and the shopping center.

Retail Tenant Mix (RTM)

Retail tenant mix (RTM) design seeks to maximise retailers' profits by using pedestrian flows generated by anchor stores and creating clusters of smaller retailers, which act as a magnet to shoppers. This offers them opportunities to assess 'comparison goods', or potential for efficient shopping amongst 'complementary goods'.

 A successful RTM increases patronage of a centre, boosts retail profits and the rent paid to the landlord/investor owning the centre. Understanding effective RTM is therefore important to investors in managed shopping centres, their property agents and retailers. In a managed centre RTM results from the landlord's letting strategy, tempered by retailers' micro-location decisions. As a centre matures, its tenant mix develops in response to changing retail fashions and the landlord manages this process to maximise his investment returns, using lease terms and duration.

Mall Architecture

Architecture is fashion
As our lifestyles change, our environments change, mall architecture changes.

 In architecture, a term used to refer to the front exterior of a building. Also, other exterior sides when they are emphasized. In its most general sense, a facade is an elevation of a building: what you see when standing before one side of the building. Under this usage, a house may have two or more facades: a front facade facing the street, a garden facade facing the back yard, etc. The front facade or principal elevation of a building is sometimes referred to as "the facade."

Facade

Water Fountain in West Edmonton Mall

Roman Statute in Mall

Miniature Golf at West Edmonton Mall

Skating Rink at West Edmonton Mall

Merry-Go-Round in Mall

Water Park in Mall

Food Court Architecture

Atrium
An atrium is a large space in a building open to the ceiling. An atrium usually has a glass ceiling or many windows to let in a lot of light. In classical architecture, an interior courtyard that is open to the weather. In contemporary architecture, a significant interior space, often skylighted, used for circulation. In the Roman period this was the inner courtyard of a house, left open to the sky, and generally built by the affluent urbam classes. In the 20th century the word has been adopted to describe dramatic enclosed glass-roofed indoor spaces associated with high-rise hotels and office buildings that are treated as substitutes for the public realm. An entrance hall of a building, often rising through a number of storeys and containing lifts, reception areas and plants. Originally the hall or chief apartment of a Roman house.

Atrium in a mall

Atrium

Ceiling Of A Mall

Mall Layout

During late 60s & 70s

The design of shopping centre includes: Large car parks. No links to local community. Large box shapes. Often poor regard for the surrounding environment. The capture and contain mentality.

During 80s,
Customer started demanding Better designed environment to shop Recreational opportunities such as: Cinemas, Cafes, Lifestyle retail & Entertainment in various forms.

From the 90s

Greater focus on entertainment and eating. Demanding an environment full of recreation and enjoyment.

Mall of America, Bloomington, Minnesota (Opened 1992)

 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. 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 sides third levels. They built two gigantic identical seven-level parking structures on the east and west sides of the mall,

 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.

Inside the four-storied Mall

 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 Daves on this level. Comprising the rest of the third level on the east and west sides there are many seemingly local stores. It seems the third level is undesirable for many competitive national retailers, save for some junior anchor holdouts. The fourth level, which only exists on the east and north sides of the mall, opened with an allencompassing entertainment theme, and was comprised of several adult-themed night clubs and a 14-screen AMC Movie Theater.

Inside of the malls retail perimeter:

The Atrium

In the past
The mall used to hold National American University college classes at the mall for many years. Presently, it has An underwater aquarium An alternative High School An amusement Park

The Public Space

Interconnectivity through Aesthetic Architecture

Facts @ Mall of America

1. Cost to build - $650 million 2. Economic impact - Mall of America contributes more than $1.8 billion in economic impact activity annually to the state of Minnesota 3. Gross leasable space - 2.5 million square feet 4. Gross building area - 4.2 million square feet 5. Number of stores - More than 520

Facts @ Mall of America (Contd.)

6. Sit-down restaurants - 20 7. Fast food restaurants - 30 8. Specialty food stores - 36 9. Movie screens - 14 10. Employees - 11,000 year-round, 13,000 during summers and holidays 11. Parking spaces - 12,550 on-site 12. Walking distance around one level - .57 miles 13. Total store front footage - 4.3 miles

Visibility Through Architecture

A Sit-down Restaurant

Aesthetic sense created with Plants

Amusement Park Inside The Mall

Stage for Events & Concerts

Did you know?

1. Mall of America is big enough to hold 32 Boeing 747s 2. Seven Yankee Stadiums can fit inside Mall of America 3. If a shopper spent 10 minutes browsing at every store, it would take them more than 86 hours to complete their visit to Mall of America 4. There is no sales tax on clothing in Minnesota

Future Plans:
6,000 seat music theatre, New hotel, Water park etc.

Recent Trends in Mall

1. Increasing spending on food and merchandise; 2. Greater diversity of uses in shopping centers, particularly the provision of Entertainment/ lifestyle attractions such as cinemas; 3. Creation of precincts targeted towards certain parts of market;

Recent Trends in Mall (contd.)

4. The impact of the increasing popularity of electronic services such as internet shopping and phone banking; 5. Creating environments that respond to changing demographics including more singles and childless couples and increasing average age; 6. Creating environments where people feel comfortable including the identification of the third place a place away from home and work where people want to spend their time.

Recent Trends in Mall (contd.)

7. Recreating the image of the mall to suit the expectations of target audience and better integration of the tenants to mall ambience.

Conclusion
However, better architectural design not necessarily ensures successful shopping centers. Conversely, shopping centers which are architecturally challenged may also be successful.