The intent of this speech was to present information to an audience on a topic which would be considered a confrontation (i.e. the audience is heavily against my position). The goal was to make the position sound as positive as possible and to handle questions in a tactful manner with the hopes of swaying some opinions or at least making them feel better about the situation.
SPEAKER - Mr. Laurence Siegel, Chairman and CEO of The Mills Corporation.
Mr. Siegel was recently named the Real Estate and Construction Entrepreneur of the Year®. Today, Mr. Siegel will be holding a town hall meeting to discuss the recently approved purchase of a large parcel of Intergraph property to build a mega mall project.
WELCOME ROCKET MILLS!
Tennessee Valley Urban Development Committee
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The Mills Corporation’s
pursuit of creativity and ingenuity has redefined the retail and entertainment experience in the United States. With big and innovative ideas, Mills created "destination shopping" that benefits retailers, entertainment operators and consumers. Today, Mills continues to drive the evolution of success in these retail and entertainment projects.Per square foot, Mills’ projects are more productive in sales than any other type of shopping format in existence. Each Mills has a variety of 200 or more stores in an average of 1.5 million square feet of Gross Leasable Area, including five to six times as many anchor stores as super-regional malls. Mills customers travel from a much greater distance and shop longer. Stores, dining opportunities, and entertainment—all under one roof—reflect the stimulating environment of cutting-edge architecture and design.
The Mills Corporation is founded on the creative thinking that yields results for our tenants and consumers. Talk to people in the industry, and you will find that no other mall succeeds like a Mills. We invite you to share our unique perspective on retail and entertainment and be a part of the experience.
COMPANY VISION
Our vision is to become the industry leader in partnership marketing, corporate sponsorships and co-branding among retail-based properties. We are aggressively seeking partnerships that allow other brands to communicate and interact with our customers.
The goal of our Partnership Marketing Program is to:
 | Achieve your business objectives; |
| Enhance the shopping experience for customers; |
| Drive incremental traffic to Mills locations. |
Mill Corporation KEYS to Success
1. C
reativity and Ingenuity2. Redefinition of the retail and entertainment
3. Destination shopping
4. Most sales productive shopping format in existence
5. Variety of 200 or more stores in an average of 1.5 million square feet of Gross Leasable Area
6. Customers travel from a much greater distance and shop longer
7. Stores, dining opportunities, and entertainment are all under one roof
8. Stimulating environment of cutting-edge architecture and design
9. Partnership Marketing Program
The following are existing Mills locations:
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Combined Mills properties average 18 million visitors per site annually.
Source: Mills Market Research Group; MLB and NFL include all league teams; Disney figure includes Disneyland and all Disney World Attractions; Sources: SVP, Inc., Amusement Business.
MAJOR STORES & ENTERTAINMENT
ATHLETIC GOODS & APPARELBOOKS/ CARDS/ GIFTS
CHILDREN'S APPAREL
ELECTRONICS - MUSIC - PHOTO
THE STOCKYARDS FOOD COURT
FOOD - RESTAURANTS
FOOD - SPECIALTY
FOOTWEAR
HEALTH & BEAUTY
HANDBAGS - LUGGAGE
HOME FURNISHINGS
JEWELRY - EYEWEAR - ACCESSORIES
MEN'S APPAREL
MEN'S, WOMEN'S, & CHILDREN'S APPAREL
SPECIALTY
TOYS
WOMEN'S APPAREL
Rainforest Café
(http://www.rainforestcafe.com)
RAINFOREST CAFE, A WILD PLACE TO SHOP AND EAT
is a dynamic restaurant and retail environment which recreates a tropical rainforest. Imagine a tropical wonderland with cool mists that permeate through cascading waterfalls; crescendos of thunder and lightening; continuous tropical rain storms; huge mushroom canopies; animation featuring Tracy the Talking Tree; whimsical butterflies, crocodiles, snakes and frogs, trumpeting elephants and entertaining gorillas; all moving within surroundings of larger than life banyan trees, with the sounds and aromas of a tropical rainforest.
STORES WITH A LOCAL FLAVOR
INTERGRAPH COMPANY STORE
- SOFTWARE, VOODOO CARDS, CLOTHES, GIFTS
ROCKET CITY BAR AND GRILLE
- SOUTHERN BISTRO ATTIRED IN A LOCAL DECORUM
COTTON ROW CAFÉ
- COUNTRY COOKING IN A FAMILY ATMOSPHERE
SPORTS QUADPLEX:
- CLOTHING, GIFT AND SPORTS SUPPLIES FOR YOUR FAVORITE TEAM
| WAR EAGLE PLAINS - Auburn University |
| ROLL TIDE PRIDE - Univ. of Alabama |
| CHARGER BLUE - UAH |
| BULLDOG CAGE - Alabama A&M |
WHEELER REFUGE SCIENCE STORE
- OFFERING YOUR FAVORITE SCIENCE SUPPLIES AS WELL AND ANIMAL-THEMED GIFTS. (Ten percent of all proceeds go to help fund the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge)
THE MALL, THE MERRIER
MEGA CENTERS LIKE ONTARIO MILLS ARE THE LATEST FASHION IN MALLS--LOTS OF OUTLET SHOPS, LOTS OF ENTERTAINMENT
BY Adam Zagorin - Ontario, CA and Rick Rickman for TIME
Roseanne Barr, domestic goddess, pulled off the interstate not long ago into a huge swath of suburbia 40 miles east of Los Angeles. She was not heading for Disneyland, not the nearby stock-car track, but an expanse of desert called Ontario Mills. It's the latest fashion in malls, boasting two tyrannosaurian movieplexes totaling 54 screens, as well as glitzy entertainment and retail hot spots like Off Rodeo Drive that sell designer duds at hoi polloi prices. Roseanne sat down for a bite in celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck's cafe-in-a-mall. But she realized her baby Buck needed a changing table. No changing table on this menu. So Roseanne let loose a blue streak and headed off to boogie at the Virgin Megastore.
Hollywood may be going to the mall these days because the most successful malls are going Hollywood. Roseanne is one of the 20 million people this year who are expected to drive, sometimes for hours, to shop at Ontario Mills, the size of 38 football fields, set in the shadow of the San Bernardino Mountains. On a weekday afternoon scores of patrons are driving on the virtual-reality car track or teeing off on the virtual-reality driving range at Dave & Buster's, an eats-and-entertainment emporium at Ontario. Tens of thousands of shoppers, many off tour buses and from as far away as South Korea, march through 10 color-coordinated "neighborhoods"--themed retail zones catering to tastes ranging from upscale dresses to sporting and adolescent attire. Overhead, 65 giant TV screens run an endless series of commercials produced in the mall's studios. The imagination behind Ontario belongs to Larry ("I hate to shop") Siegel, CEO of the Mills Corp. in Arlington, Va. He has fashioned perhaps the only hot trend in mass retail: value megamalls, or outlet centers with huge doses of entertainment. This concept has made Mills, which operates as a real estate investment trust, the nation's fastest-growing, publicly traded mall developer.
The three-year-old company has been expanding at a Planet Hollywood-like pace. This week Mills opens a $188 million mall in Tempe, Ariz., its seventh location, and just last month it completed a new mall in Dallas. Siegel has unveiled plans for a huge new project at the site of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn., along with new malls near Huntsville, Alabama, Boston and Honolulu. And the concept has been catchy: rival Glimcher Realty Trust recently opened a Mills-like Great Mall of the Great Plains near Kansas City, Kans.
The Mills recipe rejects mainline, multistory department stores in favor of a ground-level, oval floor plan anchored by off-price retailers like Saks' off 5th, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls. Throw in a couple hundred specialty stores. Add a giant Marriott-managed food court as well as theme eateries such as Puck's and Rainforest Cafe. Stir in razzmatazz such as Ogden Entertainment's American Wilderness Experience, a combination restaurant, retail outlet and enviro-amusement park; or GameWorks, the virtual-reality video-game arcade created by Sega, DreamWorks SKG and Universal Studios. "To win in this business you must offer vibrancy and value to fight the pervasive boredom of shopping," says Ian Duffell, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which counts Ontario Mills as its first mall location.
The success of the Mills approach is all the more striking because America would seem to need another mall like Main Street needs another Starbucks. The U.S. already has more than 42,000, from strip malls on rural interstates to the gaudy Forum Shops in Las Vegas. That's 20 sq. ft. of shopping-center space for every man, woman and child in the nation. "We just don't need any more traditional shopping, period," says Craig Schmidt, a retail-industry analyst at Merrill Lynch.
Retailers have always considered entertainment essential to the shopping experience, but in the new malls diversions have taken on a life of their own. The American Wilderness Experience at Ontario features 70 species of live animals, including roadrunners, bats, sea otters and even a giant yellow banana slug, together with a simulator ride and video and interactive nature displays. Billed as "edutainment," the fun and games lead into a store peddling environmental knickknacks and a restaurant called the Wilderness Grill. "If we capture just 3% of the [20 million] people passing through the mall, we'll be doing great," says Ogden Entertainment senior vice president Jonathan Stern, who helped develop Grizzly Park, a 90-acre complex near Yellowstone National Park.
Another Mills Corp. venture is Sawgrass Mills, 26 miles from Miami International Airport, which boasts annual sales of $450 per sq. ft., almost twice the U.S. average. Two Palm Beach, Fla., women recently made headlines by choppering in for a binge. Now plans are being drawn up for a "Shopper Chopper" to ferry patrons from Miami and Bal Harbour. Nearly half the 19 million people who showed up at Sawgrass last year were foreigners: a Saudi princess arrived with two limos trailed by rental trucks to transport the day's haul.
Sawgrass's success is spurring local imitators: Dolphin Mall, a quick taxi ride from the airport, plans to open in 1999 with a roller coaster and other attractions. A Dolphin developer marveled that American Airlines has had to bring in extra cargo planes at times to carry the overflow goods of booty-laden visitors flying home after visits to Sawgrass.
Twelve states rank malls among their top three tourist attractions, including Minnesota (Mall of America), Virginia (Potomac Mills) and Colorado (Denver's Cherry Creek Mall).