Oca’s client, real estate investment firm E8 Properties, has been buying empty Sears stores, dusting them off and converting them into “Elev8 Fun,” a massive indoor family entertainment park created in partnership with Primetime Amusements, a provider of video arcade machine.
The first one, designed by Oca and his team and housed in a 120,000-square-foot former Sears building attached to the Seminole Town Center Mall in Sanford, Florida, opened in January 2022…
To his point, increasingly, more malls are morphing into family entertainment destinations where shopping may not even be what draws shoppers in.
Industry analysts said research shows that adding entertainment experiences shifts more money to mall retailers and not away from them. Through the pandemic and coming out of it, the popularity of pickleball made its way into malls with courts popping up next to skating rinks. Indoor skydiving, Legoland theme parks, virtual golf and microbreweries are other concepts catching on.
Shopping can be its own kind of entertainment. It is not just about buying goods, whether they are necessary for life or not. It is about looking, considering, interacting with people you are with, seeing other people shopping, and participating in particular lifestyles.
But these entertainment centers are offering something else: games, competition, novelty, having fun with others.
Longer-term, does this mean hopping is less entertaining and more efficient when done online? Is shopping more often a private activity since it takes place online? Do people still want to have experiences around or near others, even if the forms of doing so have changed?
In consultant-speak, today’s juice is “experiential” retail. It means that people not only want something they haven’t seen before, but they want an experience to go along with their purchase. The Apple Store and the Starbucks Reserve Roastery further south on Michigan Avenue are examples of that — places where shoppers come to see and feel as well as to buy. A pop-up show called the “Dr. Seuss Experience” filled Macy’s former space in Water Tower Place this winter. Down the street, a “Museum of Ice Cream” is opening at the base of the newly renovated Tribune Tower this summer…
But she and her colleagues are already thinking big. A report titled “North Michigan Avenue: Strategies for a Vibrant Future” issued in March by a group of business and city leaders envisions a grand promenade running from the historic limestone Water Tower, past the Museum of Contemporary Art, to the lake along Chicago Avenue; and a soaring pedestrian bridge stretching from Michigan Avenue, over DuSable Lake Shore Drive, to Oak Street Beach. The bridge, modeled on a structure in Moscow, would make it possible to see and get to Lake Michigan from the Mag Mile without descending into dank tunnels under the beachfront drive.
Also in the report: a more run-of-the-mill property tax on landlords raising about three quarters of a million dollars passed the City Council this year; it will be used for cultural events like “Music on the Mile” and for security cameras. The city also awarded Bares’ group money from a federal grant to deploy a team of uniformed “ambassadors” — unarmed security personnel with radios to help tourists, assist the homeless and report criminal activity on the Mag Mile — starting in June.
But most of the report is focused on getting people excited about going downtown to enjoy attractions such as music, art and culture, and Water Tower Place recently scored its own big get on that front. In April, the world-renowned Hubbard Street Dance Chicago surprised everyone and moved from a temporary home on the North Side into the mall’s fourth floor.
For years, shopping in a lively context was enough “juice” to bring in both serious shoppers, curious shoppers, and other visitors. Shopping was one of the most popular activities for Americans and the glamor of a downtown mall plus at least a decent-sized crowd would make it feel exciting.
Now that shopping is decoupled from physical space, these former shopping spaces do not have enough “juice.” They need more experiences, ranging from music to arts to unusual sights to places where people can post intriguing social media images.
Can cities and communities be flexible enough to shift spaces and experiences? And how many experiential areas can there be? On the first question, communities need to open to how spaces might be used in different ways when conditions change. Shopping malls may have worked for decades and brought in significant revenue, but when they struggle, what is next? For the second question, Chicago already has some of these experiential spaces: Navy Pier, the Museum Campus, a Riverwalk, and other concentrations of interesting activity. Can these work together in that a visitor could access several of these in a single day or trip or at some point do they start competing against each other?
The decline of in-person shopping is a big deal and a shift that many communities are struggling to address. Those who find successful alternative uses for these shopping spaces and also develop a mindset of needing to refresh certain places may just come out ahead.
At the gym a few days ago, I saw this headline about the temporary location of a morning news show: “Live from Des Moines and Miami.” The Iowa caucuses on Monday and the Super Bowl today in Miami share some characteristics:
1. Weeks and months of hype. The Super Bowl does not get as much lead up since the participants have only been known for two weeks but both are highly anticipated events. The Iowa caucuses only happen every four years so the combination this year is not normal.
2. The media attention paid to both. Even as they come at different parts of their respective processes – the caucuses come after a lot of campaigning and debates and then kick off primary season while the game concludes a popular NFL year – they are great material for news reports, opinion leaders, and everyone else in the media who might not always care about politics or football.
3. Competition and winners and losers. A football game has a clear winner and loser (though more unusual circumstances might cast a doubt on the victors). The caucuses are not so clear as the outcome requires interpretation but everyone will be looking to name the winners and losers once the voting outcome is known.
4. The entertainment value of it all. The football game is more clearly entertainment – it is just a game after all – but politics is in this camp these days as well. Both events are exciting and at least this year relatively close. With all this tension building, why not locate a morning show to live work from Des Moines and Miami?
In sum, these events seem to go together: the largest American sporting event takes place tonight and the fate of the free world/the most important election of our time/the race to beat the incumbent president really takes off tomorrow. For those who will be watching and broadcasting, may they be entertaining and full of high ratings.
Schaumburg trustees Tuesday approved a $6.58 million offer to buy the two single-story office buildings just north of the village’s convention center and Renaissance Hotel to help develop a new entertainment district and reconfigure Thoreau Drive.
The 110,000-square-foot Woodfield Green Executive Centre lies on the north side of Thoreau Drive and just across Meacham Road from Zurich North America’s new headquarters…
The long-term plan is to hold the property to sell to one or more developers interested in building more restaurant and other entertainment venues near the southeast corner of Meacham and Algonquin roads.
This sounds like a typical suburban strategy today: take properties that are not doing well or even abandoned (see efforts to utilize closed grocery stores) and start generating revenues through new entertainment use. Stores come and go but theaters and restaurants can come together to create a vibrant distract that will generate property and sales tax revenues for years to come.
This did lead me to a question: within the Chicago metropolitan region, how many entertainment districts can the region support? If many suburbs are trying to pursue these goals, can most of them sustain successful districts? There are already a number of successful or established districts: Evanston, Arlington Heights, Schaumburg and Woodfield, Rosemont, Gurnee Mills, the Oak Brook-Yorktown corridor, Naperville, plenty of other downtowns with lively scenes and regular festivals and events (Geneva, Aurora, Elmhurst, etc.) and countless shopping centers that are transitioning to lifestyle centers. I assume there is a saturation point where these districts start losing people to each other. Of course, this might be mitigated by two factors: (1) continued population growth so that everyone can share from a growing spending pie and (2) specialization among entertainment districts that could help each remain competitive.
Another thought: how often do entertainment districts simply reproduce existing patterns of wealth and the distribution of higher-end commercial properties?
Evanston’s new public library director says that the city’s library should be the third most important place for citizens, after work and home, or school and home.
“The public library should be the third most important place for engagement and public discourse, for people to research topics of interest,” said Karen Danczak Lyons, who was appointed as next director of the library during a recent library board meeting…
Like most government entities, the library is faced with budget challenges as it looks to balance the need for revenue with the desire to tread lightly on public pocketbooks. Though she has not taken an in-depth look at the library’s current and projected budgets, Lyons said her first responsibility is to determine how to fund the library’s stated priorities.“Foremost in my mind is serving all areas of the community,” she said. “Where we begin the discussion is to look at what you’re paying right now for your public library and where that funding level is compared to other services. Let’s talk about the role of the library in your life, whether it’s a fair return on the investment or whether you want more.”
This argument reminded me of Ray Oldenburg’s idea of a “third place” where citizens could interact with each other between the spheres of home and work. Could the library really be the center of “engagement and public discourse”? Even though I love reading and learning, I can honestly say I’ve never been to a lecture or discussion at my public library. That isn’t to say that the library doesn’t hold such events – they do – but the events are rare and don’t look interesting enough. (Odd note: our library has been promoting more video game days/friendly competitions for kids. I understand that the library is a safe place and that you want kids around books but are video game competitions really the way to get kids to read?)
I wonder how many residents see the library as a center of civic discussion and engagement (or want to see it as such). I would think another viewpoint is more common, particularly among middle to upper-class Americans: the library is more like a free (or really cheap) bookstore or movie rental place. Many Americans don’t read regularly; I’ve seen different statistics that suggest somewhere around 50% of American adults don’t read one book a year (see some other 2009 statistics about reading from the National Endowment for the Arts here and read the full report “Reading on the Rise” here). And libraries have made this shift along with patrons: they now offer a wide range of electronic services. I understand providing computers – not everyone has access to the Internet and this is a very important feature. But I don’t quite understand the DVD (and to a lesser extend CD) craze as many of these don’t promote discussion and learning about civic issues. In the end, perhaps this is the mindset: I’m paying for the library through my taxes and since I want to be entertained, the library should have what I want.
I do think we need more “third places” in our society but I think libraries have a long way to go before they are truly the third most important place for “engagement and public discourse.”
We represent each song using a set of 23 different features that characterize the audio. Some are very simple features — such as how fast it is, how long the song is — and some are more complex features, such as how energetic the song is, how loud it is, how danceable and how stable the beat is throughout the song. We also took into account the highest rank that songs ever achieved on the chart.
The computer can combine a song’s features in an equation that can be used to score any given song.
We can then evaluate how accurately the computer scored it by seeing how well the song actually did.
Every single week now we’re updating our equation based on how recent releases have done on the chart. So the equation will continue to evolve, because music tastes will evolve as well.
As the researchers note, this equation is based mainly on the musical content and doesn’t factor in the content of the lyrics or budgeting for the song and music group. The equation seems mainly to be based on whatever musical styles and changes are already popular so I wonder how they account for changes in musical periods.
If this equation works well (and the interview doesn’t really say how accurate this formula is for new songs), this could be a big boon for the culture industries. The movie, music, and book industry all struggle with this: it is very difficult to predict which works will become popular. There are ways in which companies try to hedge their bets either by working with established stars/performers/authors, working with established stories and characters (more sequels, anyone?), and trying to read the cultural zeitgeist (more vampires!). But, in the end, the industries can survive because enough of the works become blockbusters and help subsidize the rest.
At the same time, haven’t people claimed they have cracked this code before? For example, you can quickly find people (like this and this) who claim they have it figured out. And yet, revenues and ticket sales were down in 2011. There is a disconnect here…
Did this sharing of genres simply come about because ESPN has been successful? Or have ESPN staffers made a name with sports and then branched out into other areas?
Media, whether playing in the background or designed explicitly as an infant educational tool, “have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years,” concluded the AAP’s report, released Oct. 18 at the Academy’s annual meeting in Boston and scheduled for November publication in the journal Pediatrics. “Although infant/toddler programming might be entertaining, it should not be marketed as or presumed by parents to be educational.”…
As screens proliferated, so did research. “There have been about 50 studies that have come out on media use by children in this age group between 1999 and now,” said Ari Brown, a pediatrician and member of the AAP committee that wrote the new report…
Three studies since 1999 have tracked educational television use and language development, and they found a link between increased TV time and developmental delays. Whether that’s a cause or effect — parents who leave kids in front of televisions might simply be poor teachers — isn’t clear, nor are the long-term effects, but the AAP called the findings “concerning.” In the same vein, there may also be a link to attention problems.
Several thoughts about this:
1. This article suggests researchers have found a correlation, not necessarily causation. But since researchers have not found any positive effects, they must feel confident in issuing this recommendation.
2. Does research suggest that television has some positive effects for children over two years old? Overall, are there studies that suggest television has positive effects for adults?
3. What does this do for children’s programs and videos? What about all of those “Baby Einstein” videos? Will new cottage industries spring up to fill this void?
The world before blogs may be difficult for many Internet users to remember. This list from 24/7 Wall Street lists the 25 most valuable blogs which was based on a number of factors including pageviews (as measured by multiple sources), revenue, and operating costs.
If you were looking for some insights into what is considered valuable on the Internet, take note that the top 10 are dominated by entertainment, news, and technology sites and the two news sites, the HuffingtonPost and the DrudgeReport, dabble in both news and entertainment.
Legally Sociable 