A change of Seasons
Michelle Jarboe reports today on Four Seasons Town Center's efforts to burnish its image with new stores and a stronger community focus, including a partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
The mall also has increased its security force.
The initiative follows shootings over the last year at the mall that cast a shadow over it as unsafe.
My experience does not bear that out. The mall appears to me any less safe or safer than other shopping venues in town. But it is a teen magnet, which is a turn-off to some shoppers. (Heck, I don't care; it is the mall.)
That said, Four Seasons has lost its luster to the open-air shopping centers that are back in vogue and have attracted more buzz and more upscale stores.
These things are cyclical. The tide probably will turn again.
On another note: All of these new, village-style centers have gone wacky-crazy with their Disneyesque design featuring spires and turrets.
The look strikes me as contrived, overdone and tacky. Somebody make them stop.
Comments (5)
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I once heard the poet Robert Pinsky say that a mall is somehow as old as Stonehenge. That seems right to me. I like malls because they have public space. Christmas shopping at Friendly Center just isn't right somehow. Is there even a Santa Claus there?
I've never found anything wrong with Four Seasons either--except that their virtual ride on the 3rd floor never works, which irritates my kids.
Posted on May 31, 2007 2:53 PM
Oh yes, Friendly has a Santa: A real one and a very tall fake one who waves to passing traffic.
Posted on May 31, 2007 2:59 PM
I think they're both fake. The real Santa is at the mall.
Posted on May 31, 2007 3:22 PM
I don't know about Stonehenge, but I think Allen's right on "Target" about the ridiculous faux Camelots that sprng up to help suck money out of our wallets and put dents in our credit. It has become so rampant that you can go anywhere USA and see people bedazzled by the throwaway fashion. The huge bulk of it made in sweatshops in Asia. We are a nation of ad-addled lemmings with a penchant for silly gee-gaws in our houses and on our buildings. It's hardly Carpenter Gothic, either...it's the New Gilded Age, a concoction of Victorian fru-fru and Edwardian excess. It reeks of the Titanic...before the iceberg.
Posted on June 1, 2007 12:39 PM
you need to take a look at the archives in or around may 13th 2005. there's a few hundred free porn sites listed...
Posted on June 2, 2007 3:59 PM