Waste of Space

Thirty-one years ago last month I went to the grand opening of the Aurora Mall. I was a weird little kid, and now I'm a weird little adult. Today I dragged Matt out to that place, for another grand opening.

Today's was Dillard's, which occupies the space that was May D&F when the mall opened, and continued to be Foley's mens & housewares store into the early 2000s. I should backtrack a bit. When the mall opened, it had four anchors: Sears, JC Penney, May D&F, and the Denver. "The Denver" was the final trade name of a company that had started out as McNamara Dry Goods Company at the corner of 15th & Larimer (in the space currently occupied by the Samba Room and the other tenants of that building), became the Denver Dry Goods Company when it moved to 16th and California, and just "The Denver Dry" some time in the 1950s. "The Denver" was a name created in the 1970s, and its fancy hand-written logo was clearly inspired by that of Lord & Taylor, another store owned by Associated Dry Goods.

That's maybe backtracking too far. In 1986, the May Company bought Associated, and merged the Denver with May D&F (later renaming that division for Foley's, a Houston-based department store. The Aurora Mall was then in a quandary--they had no anchor store to take the place of the one that had gone away, so May D&F moved its women's departments into the former space of the Denver on the west side of the mall (more visible from the interstate), and kept just the upper half of their space on the east side of the mall for their men's and housewares departments. The mall then took the lower floor and tried to turn it into another section of mall with smaller stores, but they had a very hard time leasing it.

Then in 1990 Cherry Creek (a mall, but not called a mall officially) opened, and the Aurora Mall became a place where affluent shoppers didn't go any longer. It became a gang mall, and people were afraid to shop there. After a dozen years of failing to revive its fortunes, the mall's owner, a vast real estate entity called the Simon Company--which owns scores of malls all over the country--decided to spend millions of dollars refurbishing it. To give it four anchors again, they convinced May Company--err, Foley's--to consolidate back into one space again, and they made that space bigger by adding on to the building. That freed up the east side for another anchor, and since Dillard's--which had bought the old Joslin's chain some years ago--wanted to get out of Buckingham Square (if Aurora Mall was "worked" by gang members, then Buckingham was where they went on vacation), they agreed to move the three miles. And that freed up Buckingham Square for a complete redevelopment (primarily residential, with a smaller amount of retail), which the city of Aurora is pursuing with the shopping center's owners.

So today Matt and I drove out there--Matt has a personal connection with Aurora Mall, as his father used to sell appliances at JC Penney, back when JC Penney sold appliances--to see the results. Dillard's officially opened on Wednesday, but this was their first weekend.

Entering the mall from the upper level southwest door (the one where the Aurora Mall 3 Cinema used to be), I was pleasantly surprised by the new look--all new floors, walls, and ceilings, with only the escalators remaining from before the remodel. They've added a high-ceilinged food court, clearly modelled after the "lodge" look so popular ten years ago when Dark Meadows was built, and still six years ago when Flatiron Crossing opened. We didn't actually visit the food court--I make this judgement after merely seeing it from the window of my car as we drove around the mall later.

Let me back up a bit again. A few years ago, when they announced the renovation (funded partially with some sort of financial deal with the city--a TIF I suppose, or some such mechanism--our local media had a field day with a little racism scandal involving one of the mall's leasing agents. Recorded for posterity--and replayed endlessly on Denver news stations--the leasing agent told the potential tenant that they were aiming to remove the "young black consumer" (those may have not been the exact words, but that was the clear, unambiguous message of them). Oops.

Not only was the leasing agent fired--probably more for stupidity in letting herself get caught telling the truth than for racism, because we all know how companies like Simon think--but their plan to banish the "young black consumer" seems to have not worked. And that's as it should be--we can imagine what would happen to the "young black consumer" if he were so silly as to show his face at Cherry Creek. After all, this is America, and everyone--even the "young black consumer"--needs a place to practice consumption on the massive scale that American life demands.

Except, of course, for the tendency of the "young black consumer" to not have much in the way of money with which to buy things to fill up the massive closets in his non-existent McMansion.

At Dillard's--and at the remodeled and enlarged Foley's (to become Macy's on the 9th of September--they have a Macy's sign on the outside, covered in a temporary Foley's banner [in case you've been under a rock, the May Company is no more, having been bought by Federated, the parent of Macy's, last year])--I didn't see a whole lot of consuming going on. I saw attractive, new carpeting, elegant store fixtures, beautiful lighting, lots of nice new things to buy--and I saw a fair number of consumers--many young, many black or brown, most with young children. But I didn't see a lot of bags in their hands.

And I'd be willing to bet that even during the week before Christmas I won't (were I to drive all the way out there, which I won't again) see as many people buying things here as I would at Cherry Creek, Dark Meadows, or Flatiron (but see my posting from July 2005 as to why Flatiron's days are numbered). The demographics here don't support the old department store-anchored mall concept--this is Wal-Mart country.

Aurora Mall--did I mention it now sports the name "Town Center at Aurora," as though Aurora is capable of being a town, or of having a center (and what's with the "at"?--University of Colorado at Denver, sure, but Town Center at Aurora?--won't someone please call the language police?)--is dead. It just doesn't know it yet. The city has foolishly spent millions of dollars helping a wealthy real estate company prop up a mall that should have been torn down ten years ago and converted back into pasture land--or affordable housing. Dream on....