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Dominating the News -- a NEW MALL!
By
Bill Zahren
(Posted 08/05/04)
The Big News here in Iowa, land of sweet
corn street vendors, is we got a new mall.
Behold the Mighty Jordan
Creek Town Center. It's a great big sucker. It cost $200
million to make and sits on 200 acres of former cornfield
on the edge of tony West Des Moines.
Even as I type, suburban women are mashed
up against the mall's doors, their tears slowly dampening
the glass as they imagine the rapture of getting inside even
five minutes ahead of official opening time.
The mall opened for the first time at 10
a.m. yesterday (Aug. 4), and a couple thousand people who
had been waiting for HOURSbum rushed the place.
The honorable mayor of West Des Moines,
Eugene Meyer, who helped open the doors, almost got crushed.
Hizzhonor should know better than to stand between psychotic
shoppers and their quasi-designer merchandise. Babies were
fighting other babies for position. Young women in low-rider
jeans threw elbows, screamed "let go of my Pottery Barn
Kids bag, BEEEE-YOTCH" and risked getting their belly
rings tangled up. It was a shopping hockey scrum.
Yesterday's storming o' the mall just adds
weight to my theory that Iowans have a lot of pent-up desire
for structures that aren't glorified Morton buildings.
No offense to the maker of Morton
buildings, which are quite familiar to us small-town Iowans.
They're basically large, rectangular enclosures made of a
lumber frame and clad in ridged aluminum that looks kind of
like corduroy. A lot of us old schoolers call them "machine
sheds" because they were generally used as huge garages for
tractors, combines and other farm machinery.
The beauty of Morton buildings is they last
forever and they're relatively cheap and quick to construct.
That's great for on the farm, where it's all about function
and durability and not so much about style. But it's not so
hot for public structures.
OK, contrary to our hayseed reputation,
the typical Iowa public structure isn't literally a still-skinned
building. We have brick structures here. We use all the modern
construction techniques. But the last time anyone poured the
equivalent of $200 million into something that didn't charge
a $50 admission fee around here was sometime in the late 19th
Century.
Since the average Iowan makes a whopping
$10 an hour, most of our public structures end up being huge
rectangular things. Enormously practical and unbelievably
boring. Architectural inspiration will cost you extra, and
when it comes to buildings we tend to be a low-bidder state.
Oh, there are some exceptions to the rule,
but almost every new project I read about is always struggling
to cut something to stay within its shrinking budget. So,
when something grandiose does come along, we flock to it like
ants to a picnic. According to the Mighty Des
Moines Register, which has covered the opening of Jordan
Creek Mall as if the first astronauts to Mars were returning
to earth there, an estimated 134,000 people rushed the mall
on opening day. There are only about 350,000 people in the
entire metro area.
The resulting consumer spending orgy made
Republicans bawl tears of joy. In true Iowan form, the biggest
(and only, as far as I can tell) complaint was lack of rest
room capacity. (We're an extremely practical people. We care
a lot about where we can park and where we can pee.)
For some reason, Iowans don't seem to think
they deserve such grand structures. Every time we get a chance
to make some public building, we invariably get all practical
and hyper efficient and get 75,000 square feet of ultra boring,
but very utilitarian space. It's always "nice" but never "oh-my-God"
inspiring. The new mall is supposedly at least interesting
to look at. That's a start. Of course I probably can't afford
a lot of stuff that's in the mall, but still. When I get the
urge to breathe hyper-processed air and behold the wonderment
of boundless commercialization and beautiful people maxing
out their credit cards, I'M THERE!
For now, since I'm adverse to large crowds,
it will probably be a few weeks before I get out to the Town
Center. It's a mall, after all, not a monument to the risen
Lord or something. I mean, we can show some restraint. One
good thing about the development of the New Mall is that it
has kicked the Old Malls in the butt and forced them to upgrade
their facilities to compete.
Valley
West Mall, the former Queen of the Malls in this town,
has been renovating pretty much constantly since Jordan Creek
got the green light. Another mall further east also plans
major upgrades.
Well God Bless Free Enterprise. There are few forces more
powerful than how people choose to spend their money. If they
start going to stores that are something more than four walls,
a ceiling and a dirt floor, maybe this is beginning of the
end of the popular love afair with HUGE rectangular buildings
made of cheap-yet-durable material. Plus, the new restaurants
out there may mean I won't have to wait an hour for a table
on weekend nights elsewhere.
I'll probably go spend a few hundred at Jordan Creek just
to do my part to encourage such behavior -- in a few weeks.
For now, I'll just drive by (it's just 15 blocks from my house)
and scream "SPEND, SPEND, SPEND" out the window
then tune in for the eight-minute update LIVE from the mall
on the local TV stations.
© 2004 Bill Zahren
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