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Monmouth Mall can't stand still as times change(Asbury Park Press (NJ) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Aug. 17--EATONTOWN -- Walk through the halls of Monmouth Mall with Benjamin L. Levine and you soon realize you're not walking through a shopping center. You're walking through a large, ever-changing jigsaw puzzle. He points to Victoria's Secret, located near the escalators not far from Macy's. The women's lingerie chain wants a bigger store, so it's moving across the hall to a space formerly occupied by The Limited, a women's apparel company. Both stores are owned by Limited Brands. The Limited has moved temporarily to a spot on the bottom level previously occupied by Jimmy Jazz, a youth retailer that has since left the mall. Within a few months, The Limited will open in a permanent location on the upper level formerly occupied by Art Expo. Art Expo has moved to a location on the lower level that was once home to music store Sam Goody, which has closed. To round it all out, another tenant has been signed to fill the space currently occupied by Victoria's Secret, although mall officials can't reveal its name yet. Such juggling is par for the course of any healthy mall, says Levine, who has been general manager of the mall since 2003. The mall is Eatontown's biggest taxpayer, with the mall and its anchor stores pouring more than $4.5 million into public coffers in 2005, according to the borough's tax-collection office. "I think a town grows around a shopping center," Levine said. "A healthy mall indicates a vibrant community." Monmouth Mall's origins go back to 1960, when it was opened as a strip mall. It became part of the first generation of enclosed suburban malls when it put on a roof in 1975. Today it features four department stores -- Boscov's, JCPenney, Macy's and Lord & Taylor -- along with a 15-screen AMC Loews movie theater, a 700-seat food court and just under 1.45 million square feet of overall retail space in a bilevel, T-shaped mall. "We want a shopping experience that brings the customer back," said Levine, pointing out that a 2004 survey found the average customer spends 111 minutes at the mall, about 41 percent longer than the national average of 79 minutes. The mall is not as large as some of its newer brethren, but that's a selling point, said Carole Cufone, the mall's marketing director. "It's easy to shop," she said. "It's not overwhelming." Part of what brings customers back is constant reinvention, in order to keep things looking fresh, which tends to loosen purse strings. For example, store leases require retailers to redesign their interiors every five years or so, Levine said. He cited the example of Aldo, a shoe store that recently reopened after just such a redesign. "Their sales went up when the new store design opened," he said. "It's the same store." That need for reinvention also explains some of the store juggling that routinely goes on at the mall. Mall officials consciously try to cluster similar stores together -- for example, on the upper level you can find Gymboree, The Children's Place and Picture People (a portrait studio) within a few steps of one another, along with Friendly's, a family restaurant. "If you've got six kids in tow, you don't want to have to schlep from one end of the mall to the other," Cufone said. The strategy seems to work for some customers. Jennifer Compagni of Highlands was visiting the mall this week to take her daughter, Gabriela, and Gabriela's friend, Grace Molloy, to see the children's movie "The Ant Bully." As Compagni thought of some of the places she frequents when she comes to the mall, she mentioned both Picture People and Friendly's. "I love Friendly's!" Gabriela squealed, as she held her mother's hand and jumped up and down. Alas, no visit to the land of Happy Ending Sundaes was planned that day. The mall's inner reinvention, of course, extends to the mall itself. Ten years ago the mall saw its last major expansion, with a food court, movie theater and Nobody Beats the Wiz (today a Burlington Coat Factory) taking the place of the old Caldor store. The mall's physical footprint is pretty much limited now, Levine said, but plans are afoot to build additional freestanding stores on the property, such as restaurants, a bank and a sporting goods retailer. Inside, the mall's co-owners, the Paramus-based Vornado Realty Trust and Florham Park-based Kushner Cos., plan to replace the mall's main floor, which is over 20 years old and features '80s pastels, with an updated look of marbleized creams and browns. New paint schemes for the walls will be included. That's necessary to keep the mall competitive and bring in better retailers, Cufone said. While the mall has kept its vacancy rate low -- it's about 3 percent now -- the ever-changing nature of the retail industry, means that any mall that starts looking too dated or downscale will rapidly lose stores and customers. While the retail industry, particularly the anchor stores that are often the basis of a mall's success, has been upended by the growth of freestanding big-box retailers such as Target and Barnes & Noble, that hasn't cut too much into the mall's business, Levine said. "There's a specific mall shopper," Levine said. Mall shoppers like to browse through several stores, while those going to a big-box retailer are going to shop at one store, he said. "As long as this area is growing, there's enough business for all of us, so we're not cannibalizing each other's customers," Levine said. To see more of the Asbury Park Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.app.com Copyright (c) 2006, Asbury Park Press, N.J. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |