Shopping center
[4][5][page needed] In Canada, underground passages in Montreal and Toronto link large adjacent downtown retail spaces.
According to author Richard Longstreth, before the 1920s–1930s, the term "shopping center" in the U.S. was loosely applied to any group of adjacent retail businesses.
By the 1940s, the term "shopping center" implied — if not always a single owner — at least, a place sharing comprehensive design planning, including layout, signs, exterior lighting, and parking; and shared business planning that covered the target market, types of stores and store mix.
These have three or more anchors, mass and varied merchant trade and serves as the dominant venue for the region (25 miles or 40 km) in which it is located.
[17] Note that ICSC defines indoor centers above 800,000 square feet (74,000 m2) net leasable area in Asia-Pacific as mega-malls.
[7] Car-dependent centres in the U.K. and Europe, if larger than 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) can be termed a small retail park, while in the U.S. and some other countries it is known as a neighborhood shopping center.
Other stores in outlet centres are operated by retailers selling returned goods and discontinued products, often at heavily reduced prices.
Belz Enterprises opened the first enclosed factory outlet center in 1979, in Lakeland, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis.
In Russia, centuries-old shopping centres the size of regional malls still operate, consisting of multiple arcades.
They developed from previous so-called "trading rows", which were essentially markets where traders could obtain space to sell their goods.
Examples are the former main post office of Amsterdam, now Magna Plaza; the Stadsfeestzaal [nl] in Antwerp, Belgium, a former exhibition "palace"; the former Sears warehouse, now Ponce City Market in Atlanta; the former Emporium-Capwell department store in San Francisco, now San Francisco Centre; Georgetown Park in Washington, D.C., and the Abasto de Buenos Aires, formerly the city's wholesale produce market.
Trajan's Market was probably built around 100–110 AD by Apollodorus of Damascus, and it is thought to be the world's oldest shopping center.
Dating back at least to the 13th century, these covered walkways housed shops, with storage and accommodation for traders on various levels.
[28] The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, Italy followed in the 1870s and is closer to large modern malls in spaciousness.
Two sides of the arcade had 1,600 panes of glass set in iron framing and is a prime example of Victorian architecture.
Shopping Centers built before the 20th century; Notes: *based on current ICSC shopping center type definitions, **center opened in 1926 without department store, which was added in 1930 Early examples of "stores under one roof" include the nine-building shopping arcade Dayton Arcade in Dayton, Ohio (1902–1904), primarily built to rehouse the public food markets in more sanitary conditions, but which added retail clothing and household goods stores.
[32] In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the suburb and automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping center was created away from downtown.
[33] Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square, Lake Forest, Illinois (1916), and Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri, 55 acres (220,000 m2), opened 1923.
Uniquely for the time, it had multiple national grocery store tenants Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, and the A&P Tea Company.
The first was a center in Ardmore, Pennsylvania later named Suburban Square, when the Philadelphia department store Strawbridge & Clothier opened a four-story, 50,000 sq ft (4,600 m2)[45] branch there on May 12, 1930.
[46][47] A much larger example would be the 550,000-square-foot (51,000 m2) Broadway-Crenshaw Center in Los Angeles built in 1947, anchored by a five-story Broadway and a May Company California.
[48] Two of the largest shopping centers at the time were both in the San Fernando Valley, a suburban area of Los Angeles.
[55] The idea of a regionally-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen.
[57][58] For pioneering the soon-to-be enormously popular mall concept in this form, Gruen has been called the "most influential architect of the twentieth century" by Malcolm Gladwell.
This formula (enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile) became a popular way to build retail across the world.
Gruen himself came to abhor this effect of his new design; he decried the creation of enormous "land wasting seas of parking" and the spread of suburban sprawl.
American commercial real estate developers built far more shopping centers and malls than could be justified by the country's population, retail sales, or any other economic indicator.
It was designed for Eaton's by John Graham, Jr. as an enclosed mall with a department store anchor and subterranean parking which opened in downtown London, Ontario, on August 11, 1960.
The program was created to reverse the tide of small business leaving downtowns for larger sites surrounding the city.
