There’s a big shop around the corner

The next time you need to imagine a couple million of something, think about the Bangor Mall area, which has 2,336,388 square feet of retail shopping space, with another 219,464 square feet of space for offices and 106,183 for restaurants.

Even with 233,000 square feet of construction added in just the last couple of years, the city’s land use plan says that still leaves about 1.5 million square feet of dirt, grass and trees to turn into asphalt, sidewalks and linoleum. Much of that space, however, is already accounted for by three new projects, totaling 980,000 square feet.

Former state planning director Evan Richert wrote not long ago, “The way society uses its land is the best reflection of the values it holds dear,” which sounds exactly right, and is why I don’t think when that last 520,000 square feet is used up the mall will cease to grow. We are a nation not only of shopkeepers but of shoppers. It is our national sport, outshining baseball and NASCAR, with our season opening on Presidents’ Day, ending with the playoffs beginning the day after Thanksgiving and thence to the All-Star

Smart Shopper Game of January.

But does that mean, you might ask, as I did, that the number of stores in and around the mall can grow infinitely, with boundless rows of sweatshirts and engagement rings, dinner plates and sneakers, pizzas and fishing rods? The simple answer is, yes, it does mean that; the longer answer is, that’s the wrong question.

“This would be easier if it followed simple needed supply and demand, but it doesn’t,” says developer Kevin Kane of Widewaters Group, which is planning a development near the mall. “The shopping-center industry is constantly reinventing itself. Twenty years ago, everybody was trying to build super enclosed shopping centers of one to two million feet because that’s what people wanted. After that, in the early ’90s, it was power centers” – one parent store, such as Kmart, and its subsidiaries, such as Borders and Builders Square, clumped together. “Now they aren’t being built that big other than in places that are really growing, such as Phoenix or in Florida. You might see smaller centers now that cater to more affluent shoppers.”

Developers talk about saturation points, when the reach of a shopping center has captured all of a kind of shopper. But there are many and ever-shifting kinds of shoppers – from dollar-store thrifty types to comfortable retirees looking to furnish a summer home – and the reach of a shopping center grows as the number of stores increases. “There are computer programs with every square foot of shopping in the United States,” says state economist Michael Montagna. “When you look at the programs even if Maine looks saturated, it is less saturated than other places, like New Jersey.”

Jim McConnon, a business and economics specialist at the University of Maine, points out that the typical shopping center in a city the size of Bangor has a pull factor of 1.9.

A pull factor is the multiple of people a shopping center draws compared with a city’s population. The Bangor Mall area pull factor is 3.4, meaning that the overwhelming amount of retail business in Bangor comes from outside the immediate region. It’s worth noting, too, that as much as Bangor’s shopping area has grown in the last decade or so, neighboring Brewer actually has grown faster, an average of 10.8 percent per year over the last five years.

Then there is the length of time spent shopping. James Gerety, the general manager of the Bangor Mall, says the average visit for the 5 million customers who enter the mall proper each year is between 60 and 70 minutes and is growing. “I always look at competition as not only other stores but your time – if I can create an environment where you want to spend time, that’s my objective.”

Finally, we’re getting wealthier, or at least those who shop are. In 1970, the per capita personal income in Maine was $15,198, adjusted to 2000 dollars; in 2000, the number was $25,544. Women entering the work force account for a lot of this, but during that time Maine incomes also rose from about 80 percent of the national average to 92 percent. Imagine how much more shopping we could do if our incomes were only average.

All kinds of things happen as a mall grows – jobs shift and are created, national patterns of, for instance, dress and consumption spread more evenly across the landscape, the way we arrive at and experience what it means to be in a small city is altered. Another obvious effect can be found in city downtowns and in rural regions surrounding a city. They once held small grocery stores and maybe a five-and-dime. But of course they do less and less often now because shoppers made a choice: They looked in at Mom and Pop’s store, appreciated its history and homey-ness, and then went shopping at the mall.

The way we use the land reflects our values. Tastes change, new shopping demographics emerge and the mall is ready for them, with a new store, the right price and plenty of free parking.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.