Commerce

The South Shore's megamall

by Laura A. Siegel

After almost three years of controversy over a proposed mall in South Weymouth, its developers finally filed an environmental-notification form with the state last week. Next comes a month of public review, which won't be pretty. Neighbors are worried about the usual questions: how much traffic will it bring? How much pollution will it cause? What kind of jobs will it create?

A better question might be: what is this thing?

The developer doesn't call it a mall at all. The proposed Boston Mills is a Shoppertainment(TM) destination -- which, in English, seems to mean a
1.1-million-square-foot mall with a publicity campaign befitting an amusement park.

The Mills Corporation markets its malls, which are sprawled across the country, as all-day destinations -- with not only movie theaters, restaurants, day camps, and mall-walking clubs, but also activities such as NASCAR-simulation games and indoor fishing ponds stocked with live bass.

The Mills Corporation's real strength, though, may be in attracting tourists. In Chicago, for example, it buses visitors from hotels to the nearby Gurnee Mills mall, whereas other hotel buses go straight to the airport. The results have been startling: the company claims that Potomac Mills in Virginia is now the top tourist attraction in the state, ahead of Colonial Williamsburg, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Arlington National Cemetery. In Florida, the Sawgrass Mills mall, near Fort Lauderdale, is supposedly second only to Disney World in attendance. Here in Massachusetts, the company's new mall would attract an estimated 18 million visitors a year -- which is more than Fenway Park would attract if it were open every day of the year.

So the mall's potential neighbors aren't simply voicing knee-jerk resistance to a new development plan. They're concerned about how the already clogged Route 3 will be affected by a new tourist destination. And they've got good reason to worry. In Southern California, a region famous for its traffic jams, the Ontario Mills mall is the biggest cause of congestion on I-5.

And the new mall should worry more than its neighbors. It will aim to capture the same Boston tourists who would otherwise spend their money along the Freedom Trail and in the Back Bay.

"The Newbury Street Merchants' Association should be up in arms about this," says Seth Kaplan of the Conservation Law Foundation. "This is their market -- tourists who shop."