As retail sales across the nation's stores continue to drop from last year's holiday shopping season, some of Utah's malls are bucking the national trend.
At Ogden's Newgate Mall, General Manager Brent Parkin reports an overall 10 percent increase in sales from specialty and anchor stores, including stores like Merle Norman and Kiddie Kandids.
"The Ogden City Mall is closed, so we are obviously getting traffic that was going there. We are the only shopping mall in town," Parkin said Thursday.
With more than 100 stores and a 93 percent occupancy rate, Newgate doesn't seem to be feeling the effects of a national recession.
That isn't the case in other areas, where specialty stores nationally showed a third week of declining sales over last year's shopping season.
From Dec. 10 through Dec. 16, the International Council of Shopping Centers, which tracks sales in more than 4,000 specialty stores in 80 regional malls across the country, reported a 0.6 percent decrease in sales over the same period last year.
For the season to date, from Nov. 23 through Dec. 16, sales were down 3 percent.
Sarah Darke, marketing director for Crossroads Plaza in Salt Lake City, said Crossroads' 145 stores, excluding the food court, have experienced a decrease in sales over last year's shopping season, although foot traffic has remained steady.
"I think it is pretty much in line with what is happening nationally," she said. "I think that's really not had anything necessarily to do with Sept. 11 or The Gateway opening in November. It has really just been a general trend that we have seen from March onwards."
For stand-alone discount stores like Target, specializing in general merchandise retailing, sales are on the rise.
"I think for us we have trend product at a very good price," said Val Dunaway, store team leader for the Sandy South Towne Super Target.
Target Corp., a Minneapolis-based company, reported a 19.4 percent increase to $3.9 billion in net retail sales for the four weeks ended Dec. 1.
And at University Mall in Orem, sales over last year are mixed, with anchor and specialty clothing stores seeing more sluggish sales, according to Dean L. Offret, marketing director.
"A lot of the specialty clothing stores are down 3 to 5 percent," Offret said, adding that niche-market stores catering to items like knives, watches and jewelry are showing increased sales.
Sales traffic is high at University Mall, partly in response to an aggressive remodeling and expansion campaign. In the past six months, the mall has remodeled seven stores and seen three new openings — Journeys, Anchor Blue and Maurice's.
The anticipated grand opening of Nordstrom on March 29 will bring the mall's total square-footage to 1.4 million square feet with 186 permanent stores.
"It qualifies us for a super-regional mall," Offret said, adding that it will be the largest mall in the state in terms of square footage.
E-MAIL: danderton@desnews.com