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Shopping Centers Today -> June 2003
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MILITARY TOWNS FEEL WAR PINCH
But ’91 hit harder, malls say
BY BENNETT VOYLES
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| Soldiers, families shop at MacArthur Center, Norfolk, Va. |
Shopping centers in military towns usually suffer during a war. When their customers in khaki ship out, their families typically leave too, and sales sink. But the impact of the war and occupation in Iraq has been lighter than in past conflicts, executives say.
“I hear tell of the town being a ghost town [during the Gulf War],” said Stacie Dickerson, CMD, a marketing manager and assistant general manager at the Jacksonville (N.C.) Mall, near Camp Lejeune, the country’s second-largest Marine Corps installation. “Everybody left, things were slow, businesses shut down.”
Not this time. Sales were down by 7.8 percent in March, Dickerson said, but she attributed that to the weather, not the war, even though more than 27,000 Marines shipped out of this 150,000-person community. Dickerson said she had heard anecdotally from tenants and anchors, including Belk, J.C. Penney and Sears, that Camp Lejeune’s deployments have not hurt business yet at the 460,000-square-foot mall.
Meanwhile, other managers in malls normally affected by military deployments reported the same trend, though they cautioned that their post-deployment sales reports were not yet complete. At Cross Creek Mall, Fayetteville, N.C., a 1.2 million-square-foot super-regional near Pope Air Force Base and Fort Bragg, headquarters of the Army’s Special Operations, the absence of more than 20,000 local residents in this community of 130,000 had also yet to affect sales appreciably in April and May, according to a mall official.
“Overall, there has been a slight impact, but I’m not hearing, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re down 50 percent,’” said Bunni Oslund-Fisk, Cross Creek’s marketing manager and assistant general manage. The center is owned by Faison Corp., and its anchors include Belk, Hecht’s, J.C. Penney and Sears. “We’re not hearing any of that.”
Mall managers and U.S. Defense Department officials have several theories as to why the Iraqi war hasn’t been a perfect Desert Storm when it comes to mall sales. First, the calling up of 220,000 reservists helped keep some of the regular troops home. Second, more military families seem to be sticking around this time than was the case in 1991. Last, mall marketers seem to have hit on a variety of creative approaches to pry military households away from their TVs and back out to their shops.
The most important factor is that the families of deployed soldiers seem to be staying in their communities, instead of leaving the area and moving back in with mom.
“We’ve always said we want the families to stay put, but it’s not been until the last few years that the families actually have been staying put,” said Holly E. Gifford, deployment readiness program manager of the U.S. Army Community and Family Services Support Center, Alexandria, Va.
Some military officials say that the frequency of deployments during this past decade may have made a wartime assignment less of a shock than it once was, encouraging families to stay in place despite the absent spouse.
“For better or worse, people have gotten used to deployment as sort of a normal way that we do business,” said one Army spokesman. “People are just gone from home more.”
In addition, the Army launched a program about six years ago to encourage the families of deployed soldiers to stay near the base. Families are given regular lectures to let them know what to expect about life during deployment, and the Army now provides special assistance for families when a major deployment is under way. That assistance includes counseling, up-to-date information about their soldier’s whereabouts and practical help negotiating Army bureaucracy and getting medical and other benefits.
The theory, Gifford says, is based on the Army’s observation that the families of deployed soldiers are happier staying near base than returning to their hometowns, and those positive feelings can lead to higher levels of re-enlistment. “If they’re happy with the services they got while the soldier was deployed and things went well, or they were able to at least resolve those issues that came up, then they’re going to support that soldier staying in,” she said.
Still, staying in town is not the same thing as spending money at the mall, and shopping center marketers have used various tactics to draw families. In Killeen, Texas, home of the gargantuan 45,000-soldier Fort Hood, the 600,000-square-foot Killeen Mall is using gift-with-purchase (including greeting card sets to correspond with deployed soldiers) and weekend entertainment promotions to give families “a little distraction, a little diversion,” said Hal Schiffman, CSM, the mall’s general manager. Sears and J.C. Penney are Killeen Mall’s anchors.
At Jacksonville Mall Dickerson is trying to appeal to the strongly pro-Marine local sentiment. The mall flies semper fidelis banners and also gave away 800 yards of yellow ribbon to mall visitors in a promotion with a local radio station called “Tie One on for the Troops.” Dickerson says she is also trying to reach the area’s many suddenly single mothers. In May the mall offered a promotion that will enable shoppers to trade $50 in receipts for an hour of child care, as part of a “Parent Perks” promotion the mall is undertaking along with the local Chamber of Commerce and a community service agency.
At the Cross Creek Mall, meanwhile, an animatronic orchestra that plays Christmas carols during the holidays has been enlisted for more patriotic duties. The 17-piece Leonard Bearstein orchestra (model bears “play” the instruments) performs a 16-minute salute to all five branches of the armed forces every half-hour. The program includes the traditional song of each and “God Bless America.” The flags of each service are on display, Oslund-Fisk says, and a large American flag rises behind the orchestra during the program.
Oslund-Fisk says families enjoy the display, which was created by Charlotte, N.C.-based Media Advertising and Design, and that she likes to observe their reactions. But she stays away when the ensemble plays “Proud to Be an American,” she said, because “it just makes me teary-eyed.” Her husband is serving overseas.
Though most of the fighting is over, the occupation continues, of course. Some families may yet decide to return home this summer, especially after school gets out, says Ed Ladd, general manager of MacArthur Center, a 1 million square foot mall in Norfolk, Va., owned by Taubman Centers and anchored by Nordstrom and Dillard’s. But the impact will be reduced, he says, thanks to Norfolk’s increasingly diverse economy.
“If this particular event continues for an extended period of time, whatever that means, the story can change,” he said. “But, to date, our business is good.”
 | Current Issue August 2008 |