The area that is now the hard pumping
heart of commerce was only farmland in the
1920s. But the post-World War II economic boom changed all that,
and the rapid urbanization in Queens commenced. Of course, rapid growth
also causes some civic stretch marks – like traffic, parking and a
crisis-like lack of open land. That forced malls out to the suburbs. It was becoming the norm for Queensites
to have to ride into Manhattan’s shopping districts or trek out to the
borough’ hinterlands in Long Island to visit their favorite retail
centers. That’s why, when the people at the
Taubman Company – a shopping center giant – got it in their heads to
build a big mall right in the middle of Queens, there were a lot of
excited shoppers. The Queens Tribune described it as a “vertical regional shopping center at the heart of the borough of Queens.” The big draw at the time were two department stores, Abraham & Strauss and Ohrbach’s. Times change, though, and the names of those two retailers are now only whispers in Queens shopping history.
Alfred
Taubman, who is still chairman of
the Taubman Company’s board, was quoted in the Tribune as
saying “This mall represents an innovation in urban retail design that
may inspire other cities. It shows an ability to condense retail
facilities and provide a wide range of shopping around a lively,
enclosed plaza at the very center of an enormous urban market.” The Queens Center Mall business plan has
flourished and, as Taubman predicted, other urban malls have been
inspired by the Queens Center. While the mall was certainly booming, by
those standards, Macerich Co., a developer out of Santa Monica, CA, saw
even bigger dollar signs over the Queens Boulevard horizon. It bought
the mall in 1995 with big plans of an expansion. By 1995, there was demand for big growth,
and Macerich began meeting with the community to lay out an aggressive
project to put the mall back on the cutting edge of urban shopping. At the end of May 2003, the Queens County
Overall Economic Development Corporation (QCOEDC) released a study that
put annual sales at the Queens Center Mall at $920 per square foot –
the highest in the nation, according to QCOEDC. And even as its sales success was being
reported, Macerich was doing extensive roadwork in the area to mitigate
some of the nasty traffic problems – a side-effect of the center’s
expansive construction. Macerich is adding 2,000 parking spaces and
building more than 300,000 square feet of additional of retail space.
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