GRAPEVINE, Texas--Dec. 9--The Gameworks virtual reality arcade at the new Grapevine Mills megamall feels like a 21st century music video.
The pounding surround-sound rock beat is, by design, just a bit louder than the synthesized chorus of explosions and crashes. The staff wear headsets. Flashes of color illuminate the fierce grimaces of techno-consumers skiing virtual slopes, fly-casting for virtual bass and gunning down armies of virtual enemies. A few of the funkier games were designed by Steven Spielberg.
Grapevine Mills represents the new direction in American shopping -- the mall as entertainment district. The hip Rainforest Cafe here serves lunch amid the roaring and shaking of electronically animated alligators and elephants. The American Wildlife Experience, coming next year, will be part zoo, part museum, part amusement park. Visitors to the Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World, coming in 1999, will be able to play-test fishing rods, golf clubs, even hunting rifles.
Of course, they also will be able to buy stuff -- mostly high-end products at outlet prices.
This lucrative mix of commerce and fun, which has come to be called 'shoppertainment,' is revolutionizing the way Americans spend their dwindling leisure time. Grapevine Mills, located in this suburb halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth, expects 16 million visitors annually. Ontario Mills, a similar Mills Corporation megamall in Southern California, attracted more visitors than Disneyland in its first year. Mills even plans to raze Nashville's beloved Opryland theme park to build a shoppertainment mecca.
Mills now has seven malls open and eight in development, not including its recent proposal for a $220 million project at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station -- a mall that, if it wins approval, won't open until 2000 at the earliest. Shoppertainment is also in vogue at rival malls, from a laser-tag operation at the Mall of America in Minneapolis to a Ferris wheel at Palisades Center in West Nyack, N.Y. In this era of sensory overload, a mere shopping spree is apparently no longer enough.
'There's a certain boredom factor out there; people are tired of going to the same old malls,' said Jim Dausch, executive vice president of development for the Virginia-based Mills Corporation. 'This is obviously something different.'
The average visitor spends nearly four hours at a Mills mall, three times the average stay at regular malls. Of course, the longer they stay, the more money they spend. And shoppertainment is designed to attract entire families. So while mom buys golf clubs at The Sports Authority, dad can take the kids to the wilderness simulator. Then they can all grab dinner at Dick Clark's American Bandstand theme restaurant, catch a movie at the 30-screen cineplex, and maybe hit Gameworks, a partnership among Sega, Universal Studios, and Spielberg's Dreamworks SKG.
'This is the best mall I've ever seen,' said Brock Brogdon, 27, a delivery man from Irving who regularly drops $20 at Gameworks during his lunch hour. 'Definitely awesome -- oh, wow, he caught a good'n!'
Brock's focus had switched to his friend Tom, who had just caught a 12-pound virtual bass.
Not everyone is thrilled about these innovations in the national consumer culture. Already there are 42,000 malls in America, and social critics have long complained about their effects. They kill vibrant downtown retail districts. They accelerate suburban sprawl. They create a cookie-cutter nation where everyone shops at the Gap. They replace the civic life of the old public square with pure commercialism.
Mills executives say their new malls could revive the farmers market concept, bringing communities together under one roof. But critics say these modern gathering places, where political activity is banned and security forces are so pervasive as to seem almost Orwellian, have nothing to do with community. And where the farmers market featured local stores, local products and local character, Mills malls rely almost exclusively on national chains.
'These malls are replacing the public square, but they serve no public purpose,' said Gordon Silverstein, a professor of political science and law at the University of Minnesota. 'You can drive there in your Suburban, then drive back to your gated community without getting exposed to any social activity.'
Grapevine Mills, at 1.8 million square feet the largest retail project in America this year, looks like every other Mills project: a one-story monolith covering 34 football fields. The Weymouth plan, which calls for 1.5 million square feet, would use the same generic mall style. Mills also is considering projects in Japan, Canada, Germany, and Brazil.
Even Dausch, the Mills executive who complained about mall homogeneity, admits that 'a big box is a big box, no matter what kind of facade you put on it.' But there is a bit of regional flavor at Grapevine. The six entrances are graced with giant sculptures of Texas icons, including a football, a tornado and a bluebonnet. Each leads to a 'neighborhood' with a Texas theme, one featuring the Dallas and Fort Worth skylines, one a sports motif. The food court evokes a rodeo, with giant cowboy hats and belt buckles alongside hokey quotations like 'That's tellin' 'em how the cow ate the cabbage!'
In general, the mall is designed to provide a constant assault on the senses, highlighted by 28 overhead screens projecting a steady stream of 'Mills TV' entertainment and promotions. Each neighborhood has its own color, music, and design scheme; the 'entertainment zone' changes from blue to pink to green every few seconds, thanks to disco-style automated lighting. There is always something to look at, just as there is always something to do.
The new look seems to be working. Grapevine opened to 100,000 visitors Oct. 30; the crowd hit 200,000 the day after Thanksgiving. The Off Rodeo Drive boutique is running out of marked-down Giorgio Armani and Hugo Boss suits. Diners are waiting as long as three hours to brave the Rainforest Cafe's artificial thunderstorms. Sing 'n' Snore Ernies are predictably flying off the shelf at K B Toys, but the same goes for $329 12-gauge shotguns at The Sports Authority and $24.95 slabs of Texas Stadium sod at the Dallas Cowboys Shop. The Bible Factory Outlet also has been overwhelmed.
'We're an oasis in the mall; we don't buy into the commercialization of Christmas,' said the Bible outlet's district manager, Nancy Evans. 'But sure, we're very glad to have lines going out the door. We think of it as a real blessing.'
Mills executives try, but it's hard to spin a mall as an engine of social progress. It's mostly full of frantic shoppers, plus world-weary video enthusiasts like Jimmy Blankenship and Jason Huck. Huck, 18, just quit his job at Taco Bell; his parents are divorced, and he hasn't applied to college yet. Blankenship, 16, is a good student who hates school; his parents are getting divorced, and he's fighting with his dad. These days, they spend most of their time and money at Gameworks, riding virtual skateboards on a game called Top Skater. They talk about applying for two of the mall's 4,000 jobs, but they haven't gotten around to it yet.
'I could never get bored of this place,' said Huck, a skinny kid with stringy blond hair and a Nike cap on backward. 'I can smoke, I can sulk, I can spend money, and nobody's going to bother me. I can stay here all night.'
Grapevine is supposed to be smoke-free, but no matter. A minute later, Blankenship stepped off Top Skater and broke some bad news: 'Dude, we're broke.'
'Aw, man,' his buddy replied. 'I guess we're outta here.'
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