Associated Press
Animal care technician Brian Hargraves feeds a harbor seal
at the American Wilderness Experience's Pacific Shore exhibit
at the Ontario Mills shopping center in Ontario, Calif. The mall
has attracted 14 million visitors so far in 1997.
New S. Calif. megamall
attracts millions
The owner of Ontario Mills
By Sue Manning
also plans to build a huge
shopping center in Kapolei
Associated PressONTARIO, Calif. -- A trip to this mighty mall can strip you of your dollars and sense. You can touch a sea cucumber, listen to the stars, smell like Elizabeth Taylor, watch a movie in 54 places, or eat as fast or fancy as you please. No-nonsense folks can pound the pavement at the Ontario Mills Mall for incense, bath scents or a fishing license.
"This place is a do," said Ryan Hartstein, 17, of Big Bear, Calif., on his first trip to the year-old mall they call regional, outlet, interactive, mega and super.
During the first 10 months of 1997, the mall drew 14 million visitors. Disneyland drew a record 14.2 million people in 12 months in 1995, according to Amusement Business Magazine.
Mall sales put $4.3 million in sales tax revenue in Ontario's coffers and $42.3 million in the state's. About 7,300 people work at the mall.
Some say the best and the wildest is yet to come since this will be the mall's first real Christmas -- only a few stores were open in time last year. Now, there are no vacancies. And 4 million people are expected to visit the mall's 237 retailers between now and New Year's.
Ontario Mills was the largest retail complex completed in the United States in 1996, with 2 million square feet of buildable area on 165 acres, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles.
Mills Corp. in Arlington, Va., operates six other mighty malls -- in Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Texas and Arizona -- in addition to 11 community shopping centers across the country.
(Last month, the company announced plans to build a 40-acre shopping and entertainment mall in Kapolei. The company said Kapolei Mills will have more than 200 stores, including outlets, off-price shops and movie theaters.)
Other super malls on the drawing boards include two more in California, another in Texas, and in New Jersey, North Carolina and Tennessee.
"People were getting bored with malls," said Ontario Mills General Manager Jim Mance. "We were not overmalled. I think we were overcopied. You can't keep copying, cookie-cutting or rubber-stamping malls. You have to come up with something different."
The average visitor to the Mills mall spends more than three hours -- because it is different, he said.
There are manufacturer's outlets like Mikasa Factory Store, specialty store outlets like Group USA, department stores like J.C. Penney, super-savings stores and off-price retailers like Marshalls. For bargain-binging upper crusters, there is a Saks Fifth Avenue Outlet and Off Rodeo Drive Beverly Hills, with the likes of Bernini, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Gianni Versace, Hugo Boss, Moschino, and Shauna Stein.
For weary or nonshoppers, there is the 30-screen AMC theater or the iWERKS four-story screen. Or, within walking distance, but just off mall property is the 22-screen Edwards theater complex. Edwards also runs an IMAX theater.
Or you can enter another zone in magic motion machines, in racers or rockets or on skates, watercraft, skis, skateboards, motorcycles or prop cycles.
At places like Dave & Buster's, the American Wilderness Experience and Gameworks by Sega, the hours and the money go fast.
Television screens, loud music, singing animals, dancing plants and light shows keep the enclosed mall jumping.
The mall hosts 200 tour buses a month and even has a director of tourism.
Japanese tourists are so profitable for the mall that the 14-member management staff took Japanese lessons and Sunday mall hours were expanded to catch tour buses headed from Los Angeles International Airport to Las Vegas.
