User-friendly is a term that generally applies to computers. But Fashion Place manager Douglas O'Brien will tell you the term also applies to his mall.
"Fashion Place is really a model of what a regional suburban mall should do," O'Brien says.In the past four years, the mall has undergone a complete facelift. The skylights flood the mall's wide corridors with natural light. The commons area is decorated with inviting tones.
Picnic Place, which O'Brien describes as "one giant restaurant with 13 different menus," is alive with neon and bright-colored banners. The commons area of the food court resembles a wooded park, with its wrought-iron tables and chairs and real trees and greenery.
O'Brien believes it pays to put one's best foot forward. "People are coming here instead of going straight downtown after seeing the change. Since we completed the remodel we've not had a month of less than 10 percent increase," he said.
The renovation also has paid off in attracting new businesses. Fashion Place scored a successful coup in landing the state's first Eddie Bauer retail store. The store opened earlier this month and O'Brien said sales have been 37 percent above projections.
Victoria's Secret, a lingerie shop that has stores at Crossroads Plaza and Cottonwood Mall, opened a store at Fashion Place Nov. 12. The Copper Rivet, an upscale jeans and T-shirts outlet, experienced a 20 percent increase in back-to-school sales over 1988.
And the leasing gods have been kind. The mall is nearly 100 percent occupied, O'Brien said.
But Fashion Place isn't resting on its laurels. To be competitive in the 1990s, shopping malls must service their customers. Ideally, the mall should serve as bank, restaurant, entertainment center and of course, shopping center.
Fashion Place is developing a customer service booth in the center of the mall that will provide customers with strollers, wheelchairs, courtesy diapers and general information.
The booth, expected to open this week, also will feature an automatic teller machine and fax and photocopying machines.
Automated doors and rampways have been cut into the mall's entryways to make Fashion Place more wheelchair accessible.
Part of preparing for the '90s means developing better ways of serving the mall tenants. One service under consideration is opening a day care center at Fashion Place for children of mall employees.
"The tenants are my customers. The better the tenants do, the better I look," he said.
O'Brien said his goal is to maintain an environment that fosters the contined growth of the mall's anchor stores such as Nordstrom, Weinstock and ZCMI II as well as regional and local ventures.
"In our mall, there's room for the local people, regional people as well as the nationals," O'Brien said.