Threshold Resistance by A. Alfred Taubman Read Free Book Online Page A

shoppers, and the biggest buyers of men’s clothing. So when I use the word her or the pronoun she, I’m just reflecting the reality of our customer mix.)
    Because of the need to cross streets, the shops on the north and south sides of Main may not get an equal shot at our customer. The busy vehicular traffic along Main stands in the way of “cross-shopping” both sides of the street. Threshold resistance in the form of a moatlike barrier of flowing cars, buses, and trucks stands in the way of the merchants’ sales opportunities. Over time, this serious impediment will diminish sales significantly, leading to lower rents and lower tax revenues. It’s expensive and complicated for a city to improve this situation. You could construct another parking deck a few blocks away to create more 100 percent locations. You could attract a second department store to town—if the existing department store management is not powerful enough to block it. You could close off a few blocks of Main Street to vehicular traffic. But these remedies are far from perfect; each requires millions of taxpayer dollars.
    Now imagine you had a blank sheet of paper and open space relatively unencumbered by existing street grids, buildings, and political resistance. That’s what we had in the 1960s with our big mall sites. Wehad the ability to make improvements and design a more effective shopping district. When I was interviewed by Business Week in 1971, I told the reporter that “with Woodfield we are not competing against other centers or suburban business districts. We are competing against downtown Chicago. So we must come as close as we can to the strength and depth of selection you find in Chicago’s core area.”
    Like the typical downtown retail district, our plans included anchor department stores—ideally, at least two; three, four, or five is even better. We call them “anchors” because they anchor the property from both a physical and business point of view. The anchor brands defined the center in the eyes of the customer and provided the promotional impact to draw traffic. Pick up any major-market daily newspaper and you will find heavy advertising for the area’s department stores. These powerful, well-defined merchants actively attract shoppers to their stores—and thus, to the mall—day in and day out. For decades, they were also the only retailers to offer credit to customers. So department stores act as “people pumps,” and mall developers compete aggressively to secure their participation.
    Years ago, a senior Taubman Company marketing executive asked me what I thought would be the most effective print advertisement for one of our shopping centers. Never passing up a chance to doodle, I sketched an ad with a bold headline that read, “Sale Today at Bloomingdale’s.”
    A bit confused (and probably disappointed) the executive asked, “But, Mr. Taubman, aren’t you going to mention the name of the center?” “Look closer,” I said. “The center is listed as one of the Bloomingdale’s locations in the New York metropolitan region. Shoppers in our trade area will see the ad and come to our Bloomingdale’s. If we’ve done our job right, they’ll be drawn into the mall, and every tenant will have the opportunity to benefit from the Bloomingdale’s ad I just sketched.”
    The smaller tenants thrive on the traffic in the mall between theanchors, as shoppers comparison shop the center (the same way people shop the stores between the department store and parking location downtown).
    In thinking about the interior design of malls, I was heavily influenced by a small but powerful book called Townscape, by the British architect and editor Gordon Cullen. First published in 1961, it should be required reading for every developer, architect, urban planner, and zoning official. Cullen introduced me to the importance of