Workers in Aurora Mall said they weren’t surprised to see less business Wednesday after the fatal shooting the night before.
While they’re hopeful customers will return to the mall soon, merchants conceded that the deadly scuffle once again leaves everyone with a financial stake in the retail center scrambling to polish its image. A $100 million renovation of the mall – supported by $15 million in Aurora tax breaks – is expected to be complete in August.
“There are a lot of shootings everywhere, but I can understand people feeling sketchy about coming here,” said Kelly Boudreau, a sales assistant at the Colorado Hat Co.
“The people involved were caught, so we can all move on and know that it wasn’t the Aurora Mall itself that caused this,” said Kim Snyder, an assistant manager of Amy’s Hallmark. “This could have happened anywhere.”
Indeed, fatal shootings have plagued other malls throughout the years – including Denver’s tony Cherry Creek Mall in 1995 – without leaving much of a negative mark. But Aurora Mall has had a much tougher time combating its rough-and-tumble image – even though police report crime there has dropped 23.5 percent since 2002.
The shooting was an “isolated incident” with no connection to the mall’s redevelopment, general manager Tish Glenn Taylor said. “We’re moving ahead and are very excited by the changes taking place here.”
Yet some shoppers do sense a connection. And they say not even the renovation – featuring a new food court, at least five new retailers and a couple of store expansions – will be enough to win their business.
“It’s just not a happy environment where you want to take your kids,” said Suzanne Duke, a Colorado native visiting relatives in Aurora this week.
The mall long has been bedeviled by complaints of unsupervised teenagers, gang activity and customers’ generally rowdy behavior.
A former leasing agent for the mall’s Indianapolis owner, Simon Property Group, delivered another blow to the center’s image in August 2004 when she was caught on tape saying that the mall’s redevelopment would be aimed at attracting more white customers instead of “the young, black customer.”
The comments sparked meetings among mall executives, government officials and minority civic leaders. From those meetings emerged greater police protection, the hiring of a black mall manager and the hiring of more minority contractors to handle the mall’s redevelopment. In November, the mall launched a new “Moms and Dads Program” that pays adults to monitor the shopping center on Friday and Saturday nights.
Simon Property Group would be smart to set up another round of public meetings with city leaders, said Alan Alexander, a Scottsdale, Ariz., retail management and leasing consultant who teaches professional development courses for the International Council of Shopping Centers.
“The only thing they can do is sit down and talk about what’s going on,” he said. “They have got to find ways for all shoppers to co-exist and to reduce the perception that the place is unsafe. That’s going to require them to do a lot of listening.
“And potential tenants and customers have to understand that what happened could happen anywhere.”
Staff writer Jim Hughes contributed to this report.
Staff writer Christine Tatum can be reached at 303-820-1015 or ctatum@denverpost.com.
