Mall Filling Up In Old World Village

Mall Filling Up In Old World Village

By Dan McLEISTER

Business-Labor Reporter

One hundred fifty down and 78 to go.

A new breed of retailer is filling up the spaces fast in the Old world Village Mall, which is scheduled to open early next month. Some more-established businesses are also settling into the former Rinks store in the Westgate Shopping Center on Ann Arbor's west side. 

Since the mall will only be open during peak evening and weekend hours, persons who have never dared open their own store are trying their hands at running their own businesses.

The president of the small enterprise told The News that 90 per cent of the persons who have leased space hold other jobs. "We are tickled to have people who have not been in business before," President Michael Woodrow said.

Creating a place for a relatively few small shops has been done before, the president of the Lansing based operation said. But the problem  is that 20 or 30 shops don't offer enough diversity, according to Woodrow. A figure of 150 is an ideal, the developer said.

It will be possible for Woodrow to include 228 shops in the vacant store here, which is spread over 70,000 square feet, because most of them will take up only about 300 to 400 square feet of space. The largest store will be 1,800 square feet and the next largest in the 600 square foot range. Having individual stores any larger would ruin the entire concept, according to Woodrow.

That concept involves turning back the clock and giving people an interesting variety of small shops with an old world flavor, the developer said.

Even this type of mall with small shops much have clothing stores and a sporting goods store people would not come back to shop, Woodrow said. "So we go after these types of stores." But the sporting goods store will be 1,500 square feet instead of the 20,000 square feet it might contain in a shopping center or free standing store. And the clothing store which might have 2,000 to 3,000 square feet in another location, will have 600 to 700 square feet in the Old World Village Mall.

For parents who want to shop without the children, the mall will provide a movie theatre showing cartoons. The charge for the hour show, designed for children five to 12 years old, will be 25 cents. Another mall feature will be two kiosks, one with live musicians and the other with play equipment for children.

When asked why an established retailer might want to located in his mall, Woodrow said, "We offer them a high traffic volume and fixed, low overhead costs. Labor costs are also low and fixed since the store will be open only during the 30 most productive hour of the week."

Woodrow contends that marketing studies show most buying is done from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday.

"That's exactly when the Old World Village Mall will be open. That's it-there are no other shopping hours, none of the conventional 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. stuff."

Limiting the hours also enables people to hold another job or operate another store in another location, the developer said. The situation in Old World Village Mall is ideal for the small businessman, according to Woodrow. The individual thinking about going into the retail business is faced with spending a lot of money on advertising. But at Woodrow's mall the individual only pays $30 dollars a month into an advertising pool which can amount to $80,000 a year.

"The way this thing is progressing here we probably will open full next month. We have received a tremendous reception in Ann Arbor," Woodrow said.

His firm, Colony Development of East Lansing, specifically chose Ann Arbor because it is a university town. The Old World Village Mall is the type of place which appeals to people who are involved in arts and crafts, Woodrow said. A university community appreciates more the one-to-one relationship between the owner and the customer in the small shop, according to the developer.

His company has opened the same type of malls in East Lansing and Grand Rapids earlier this year. Woodrow, who is originally from New York City, expanded on the small shop mall concept after he saw it on Long Island. "We were impressed because event though it was January, there were so many people walking around. We thought this concept was worthy of expansion and growth," said the businessman, who also has been involved in building apartments. Other businessmen have picked up the concept too, Woodrow noted. 

At this point in the company's growth, Woodrow said vacant stores are being sought to build Old World Village malls. In the future the company might construct a new building but right now there is a glut of large vacant stores on the market, he said.

Woodrow had his choice of vacant stores in Ann Arbor. He said the former Rinks store on the west side of the city in the Westgate Shopping Center was a greatly superior location to the former Topps store on the southeast side of the city in the center at the corner of Packard and Carpenter. He said the Kroger store in Westgate and the nearby Bill Knapps restaurant were among the best in the state for their respective chains in the amount of customer. The intersection of Jackson Road and Maple Road is one of the busiest in Ann Arbor, the developer noted. 

Downtown Ann Arbor was not considered since the only store vacant at the time, Woolworth's, was not large enough, according to Woodrow. He also cited the problem of downtown parking.

How will the Old World Village Mall stack up against Briarwood, the largest shopping mall in Ann Arbor? Woodrow contended that the number of shoppers passing by shops in his mall will compare favorably to the amount of traffic in any shop in Briarwood because people do not usually visit every store in Briarwood.

Walls Go Up for Individual Shops In The Old World Village Mall