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PREMIUMS LEAST OF OWNERS’ WORRIES IN ISRAEL

By Susan Thorne

With terrorist bombings and killings a frequent event in Israel, customers entering shopping centers are subject to personal searches and close inspections of their bags. Some centers are patrolled by the country’s Civilian Guard.

Mall owners griping about the cost and burden of security should try standing in the shoes of their Israeli counterparts. Because Israel’s shopping centers and retailers confront the threat of terrorism every day, they have of necessity become experts on security, maintaining a high standard of precaution and emergency planning.

This alertness has proven effective. As of press time, at least, there has never been a successful terrorist attack inside an Israeli enclosed shopping center, despite the fact that such centers are primary targets for terrorism.

Many of the terrorist acts directed at Israeli civilians in a retail or shopping environment have taken place in Israel’s largest cities, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, but shopping centers elsewhere are on alert too, as can be seen at Rothschild Center in Rishon Le Zion, a town 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) south of Tel Aviv. The five-year-old, three-story enclosed center has 15,000 square meters (161,430 square feet) of gross leasable area, anchored by a quadriplex cinema, a Superpharm drugstore and a Namco video game entertainment facility.

Rishon Le Zion had been spared from terrorist attacks until this spring’s wave of suicide bombings, when there were two incidents in the town: a suicide killer’s detonation of explosives about 300 meters from Rothschild Center and a second, aborted attack by a female suicide bomber who changed her mind about carrying out the attack and was arrested. Though both events took place near Rothschild Center, the presence of armed guards at center entrances likely deterred the terrorists from trying to get into the mall.

“We have seen from our experience that terrorists don’t want to try it if there are guards there and they are armed,” said Shelef Baruch, vice president of Neot Dovrat, Tel Aviv, the owner of Rothschild Center. “The most important thing is to be able to control every entrance and every door.”

Israeli law requires all shopping centers to have guards at each entrance. At Rothschild Center, guards look into every customer’s handbag, shopping bag or briefcase for firearms or other dangerous items; they also check customers with a metal-detector wand, as is done in airports. Many people in Israel now carry guns for protection, Baruch said, and if someone brings a firearm into the center, entrance guards will check that individual’s gun license.

In addition, special security guards are assigned to carry out searches inside the center. At times of high alert or when army intelligence has received a special warning, the police and even the army may also assign their own guards to patrol inside shopping centers.

All guards hired by Rothschild Center are equipped with guns, though in many cases the weapons fire tear gas rather than bullets. Interestingly, explained Baruch, most shopping center security guards in Israel do not carry regular guns.

Besides professional security staff, Rothschild Center has a dedicated station in the mall for a unit of the Civilian Guard, a volunteer auxiliary police force in Israel whose members are certified to make arrests. The presence of these uniformed guards contributes to customers’ sense of security, said Baruch. As an extra incentive to circulate in the center, Civilian Guard personnel get free meals in the food court.

The trunk and passenger area of every vehicle entering the enclosed parking lot above Rothschild Center’s retail areas are checked by a guard, with particular attention to parcels and containers. Delivery trucks from suppliers are checked as well, and the driver’s documentation is thoroughly reviewed if he or she is not known to center staff.

As in sizable malls elsewhere in the world, there is a control center on the premises that is staffed 24 hours a day. Systems and entrances are checked, and staff monitor the surveillance cameras. This area is also the center of operations for any emergencies, which are handled according to a comprehensive contingency plan. Every shopping center employee is trained on how and where to direct customers in case of an emergency, and they are drilled regularly in these procedures.

Arik Arad of Ofer Bros., which owns the Renanim mall in Raanana, Israel (above), says centers in other countries would do well to adapt some of the security measures used at Israeli malls.

Rothschild Center’s stringent security measures carry a price tag, of course. Given the tighter precautions resulting from the increased terrorist attacks of the past 18 months, Baruch estimates that security expenses now account for 7 percent to 8 percent of the center’s total budget, or about $1.50 per square meter (11 square feet) per month. That works out to $1.64 per square foot on an annual basis. By comparison, in 2000 (the latest year for which figures are available) security in a center-owned, nonanchor area of a U.S. enclosed mall cost a median $1.15 per square foot annually, according to the 2002 edition of The Score: ICSC’s Handbook of Shopping Center Operations, Revenues & Expenses.

That level of cost and the inconvenience to customers would not be appropriate or acceptable in most other countries, yet some of the same operative principles apply to security in any shopping center.

“Use the same measures, but try to adapt them according to your circumstances,” suggests Arik Arad, CEO of Ofer Bros. Real Estate, a developer of shopping centers in Israel and Europe. Arad, presently head of the security committee of an Israeli shopping center council, is a retired colonel in the Israeli army and a former head of security at El Al, Israel’s airlines.

He regards the human factor as a primary concern in any security system, because motivation and pay levels are generally low for security guards. Most Israeli shopping centers hire guards from private security firms. “Like in Canada and America, we don’t always have the best-qualified people,” Arad said. “They are not all Harvard grads, so we have to invest in training them.”

Random checks and tests are used in Israel to maintain security staff vigilance. Police regularly check the security fitness of malls. They might attempt to smuggle a fake bomb into a shopping center, for example. The results of these tests are published in the newspapers, and centers whose security is deficient may be fined or threatened with closure.

Keeping abreast of any possible threats is yet another watch point. Israeli malls work closely with the police and the secret service, Arad said, and upgrade their security precautions based on the latest intelligence. “We have constant training about new bombs that the Palestinians are inventing,” he observed. As for centers elsewhere, he recommends active cooperation with appropriate law enforcers such as the FBI in the United States.

The awareness and local expertise of shopping center staff is a valuable security resource, observed Henry Topas, executive vice president of Montreal-based Canpro Investments. Canpro is the North American affiliate of Canit, Israel’s largest shopping center developer, which owns five major centers there.

“A good, seasoned mall operator will know his or her marketplace and the kind of people in it, what is going on in the area, the client base and the passers-by who go by regularly,” Topas said. “That plus good common sense is often the best preparation.” Being aware of the situation is important in any shopping center, he noted, “but in Israel a greater level of awareness and knowledge of one’s territory is required.”

Rothschild Center’s Baruch recommends regular assessment of potential problems, including the effects of security measures themselves. Israeli shopping centers have learned that the crowds of shoppers waiting at peak shopping times outside the mall security checkpoint are a tempting target for terrorists. This was demonstrated on a Friday (the busiest shopping day of the week in Israel) in May 2001 at Jerusalem Mall, in the coastal city of Natanya, when a suicide bomber detonated explosives that killed five people and injured 100 outside the center. Like other malls, Rothschild Center posts two guards at the mall’s entrances when the shopper lineup gets long, one to admit shoppers to the mall and a second to stand at the end of the customer line watching for suspicious persons.

A visible security presence and show of force are valuable deterrents in Israel’s retail environment. This approach can be adapted by shopping centers with very different security needs, Topas noted. Some U.S. and Canadian shopping centers, for example, such as Place du Royaume in Chicoutimi, Québec, have police department substations within their premises to provide some reassurance to shoppers.

Improving security, however, isn’t as simple as just adding guards, points out Mena Bacharach, senior security adviser at I. C. International Consultants in Hod Hasharon, Israel, which advises private companies and government on security issues. Centers should understand the risks they face and the kinds of attacks that are likely, and develop a security plan to fit, he said. Bacharach cautions that many of today’s terrorists are quite sophisticated and can spot weak or ineffective security measures.

“Just putting someone in uniform isn’t enough,” he said. “It’s foolish to have someone on a guard post who doesn’t know what to look for or what to do.” Bacharach, who formerly provided airline security consultation to officials at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, says the terrorists who masterminded the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, decided to target a Pan Am flight because they knew the airline’s security was weak.

Collectively, shopping centers can play a significant part in setting a high standard for security preparations. Arad’s Security Committee of the Israeli ICSC, for instance, meets quarterly with the security directors of Israeli malls, visits all the country’s malls regularly and distributes directives about new security developments.

Retail sales in Israel suffer both directly and indirectly from terrorism. Foot traffic at Rothschild Center is down from the early 1990s, a drop Baruch attributes to the overall economic situation.

“We have had a very, very deep recession for the last four to five years, partly because of terrorism’s effects,” he said. Yet shoppers rebound with surprising speed from incidents of terror in their communities. Shopper traffic at Rothschild Center decreased just after the terrorist attacks in Rishon Le Zion in the spring, Baruch said, “but after one or two weeks, the volume had returned to normal. People get used to terrorism and go shopping again.”

He noted that in the current climate, shopping centers have a competitive advantage over Main Street retail venues because many people feel more secure in an enclosed mall.

“Stand-alone stores and businesses like restaurants and coffee shops are suffering a lot,” he said. In the past several months, some of these retailers have resorted to a special security charge to customers to cover the expense of hiring guards.

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