By Paul SchwartzmanMarch 3, 2002
Once, it was a sweet spot in a sleepy burg, the place to buy a cocktail dress or a designer tux, eat ice cream sundaes and see slick new Hollywood flicks like "Smokey... View MoreBy Paul SchwartzmanMarch 3, 2002
Once, it was a sweet spot in a sleepy burg, the place to buy a cocktail dress or a designer tux, eat ice cream sundaes and see slick new Hollywood flicks like "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Which Way Is Up?"
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Velvia Grantham remembers the hustle and bustle when she walks Landover Mall's cavernous halls for exercise three mornings a week. But the memories also serve as a sad reminder of how far Landover has fallen.
Every day, it seems, another store closes, its oversize windows shrouded in black plastic. "Everything Must Go!" and "Closing This Location" signs hang in many of the shops that remain. The sprawling parking lot, once teeming with cars, is vacant.
Even as Landover's owner, Lerner Corp., refuses to disclose its intentions, the inevitable seems to encroach with each new empty storefront: the death of a mall that for better or worse has been a Prince George's County landmark for three decades.
"You're going to see buckets of tears when we have to leave," said Grantham, 63, among dozens of black residents exercising at the mall on a recent morning. "This is our place."
Landover's long downward spiral inspires nostalgia for the days when it was a thriving shopper's paradise, a regional attraction at the center of Prince George's, just inside the Capital Beltway.
But Landover's decline also provokes anger among those who view it as a symbol of the county's struggle to become a suburban nirvana, a place replete with the kind of quality restaurants and shops found in Montgomery and Fairfax counties.
And that sentiment has become more pronounced in recent months with the opening of another major mall in Prince George's, this one a 15-minute drive away in Bowie, a city well beyond the Beltway on the Anne Arundel County line.
Landover's demise and the rise of Bowie Town Center suggest a larger truth about Prince George's: that it's a county split between two worlds, one overwhelmingly black and older, working- and middle-class communities inside the Beltway, the other a mix of whites and blacks in newer, more affluent pockets beyond.
"It reinforces the idea of a county divided," said the Rev. Robert Clemetson, lead organizer of the Interfaith Action Committee, a coalition of Prince George's churches. "It's clear that there's not an equitable distribution of goods and services and investment."
The divide touches on race and class and is also about residents' sense of history and geography. County Executive Wayne K. Curry (D) rarely misses the chance to tout the new Bowie mall -- a Main Street-style plaza that includes Hecht's, Sears and a Barnes & Noble -- as evidence of growing prosperity in Prince George's.
"It represents progress. Our trajectory is sound," Curry said at the recent opening of a Safeway at the Bowie mall, while waiters served free Starbucks coffee to guests.
Yet some Prince George's blacks, particularly longtime residents, still view Bowie as almost foreign terrain, even as the new mall draws an integrated crowd. The city is 40 percent African American, according to the most recent census, but its history as a white enclave is indelible.
"Bowie? It feels like I'm in Pennsylvania," said Barbara Hales Pegram, a black computer operator who lives in Kettering, just outside the Beltway. She paused while browsing the sales racks at Avenue, a clothing store at Landover that shut down a few days later.
"This is personal. This is our mall. It's been a landmark for us for a long time," she said. "People have always made wise remarks about it. Someone will ask me, 'Where'd you get that dress?' and I'll say Landover, and they'll squint and pinch up their nose and say, 'At Landover?' I'm proud to shop here."
Here's a place where generations of teenagers spent weekend hours, where community leaders still meet regularly, where older blacks exercise and participate in a weekly dance class, stopping afterward at the Burger King on the main floor to drink coffee and gossip. "Blacks are comfortable at this mall. It's been here a long time," said James Briscoe, 62, a retired naval intelligence officer who lives in Upper Marlboro.
To black civic leaders and residents, Landover's fall is part of a broader Prince George's story, the refusal of high-end retailers and restaurateurs to open in the central part of the county, despite evidence of a solid middle class. The average household income around the mall is $63,374, according to Claritas Inc., a market research company. (The average near Bowie Town Center is $101,374.)
Yet location is retail's holy grail, and the Landover Mall is walking distance from crime-addled, low-income housing that has tarnished the neighborhood's reputation. A mile away, developer David Cordish plans to build an $82 million shopping plaza on the site of US Airways Arena. Where Landover failed, Cordish predicts that his Capital Centre will thrive because of one key difference: It will be just outside the Beltway.
"The Beltway is a huge dividing line in the tenants' minds," Cordish said. "The neighborhoods around us are terrific -- they're single-family homes with people who have money and educations. You take a tenant through there, and they salute. If you're on the outside of the Beltway, they consider that a different world."
The split was not so clearly defined when Landover opened in 1972 and two-thirds of the county's population lived inside the Beltway. Prince George's was a largely rural county then, 85 percent white and devoid of showcase attractions.
Landover was the region's largest indoor mall, with 1.2 million square feet of retail stripped across two floors decorated with fountains and potted palms. At either end were major department stores -- Garfinckel's and Woodward & Lothrop, Hecht's and Sears -- and 130 shops in between.
Fashion shows strutted on a three-ringed modular stage in the center concourse, and gospel singers and jazz bands performed. There were movie theaters, a Chinese restaurant and an Irish pub, and a Farrell's that served 50 flavors of ice cream. "It was hopping," said Russell Lease, a former president of the mall's merchants association and a co-owner of Pants Plus, which closed in December after 29 years. "It was always crowded, day and night. Weekends were incredible."
In those years, retailers nurtured grand hopes for Landover's potential, in part because developer Theodore Lerner had a reputation for building successful malls such as Tysons Corner Center.
Landover's promise was also founded on the expectation that the county's population would grow and that prosperous enclaves would pop up in undeveloped areas beyond the Beltway, places such as Woodmore and Mitchellville.
For a decade, the crowds came to Landover. But by the early 1980s, the mall's image was tattered by a slew of high-profile crimes, including a hostage siege and a shootout in the parking lot. Then five people were slain execution-style at an apartment complex across the street.
"If you have a mall where it's dark and people are afraid to go to their cars, you're dead," said Bill Nickels, a marketing professor at the University of Maryland.
As damaging as the front-page headlines, retailers say, were the routine shoplifting and theft at the department stores. Soon, the stores downgraded the quality of their merchandise, and more affluent customers stopped coming to Landover. Garfinckel's shut down in 1990, and Woodies closed five years later. The Gap and other chains were replaced by discount outlets such as the Dollar Store.
In the mid-1990s, the Redskins agreed to build FedEx Field across Landover Road, and Curry hoped the development would draw projects to an area known for ragged strip malls and other blight. But the results have been limited. "It's a harder sell," said Jalal Greene, executive director of the Redevelopment Authority, a quasi-public agency Curry created to help spur growth. "We have some really good, stable communities inside the Beltway, but there are others that have some issues. It's a challenge to get developers to come in."
Bowie, by contrast, has been a hot spot for developers. In recent years, two shopping centers have opened, along with a string of family-friendly chain restaurants on Route 301. Bowie Town Center, long in the planning stages, opened last year.
David Harrington, the mayor of Bladensburg and the Redevelopment Authority's chairman, has mixed emotions when he walks the new mall, where light jazz trickles from outdoor speakers and crowds pack Panera to munch on portobello and mozzarella sandwiches.
"You want to see a Bowie Town Center in Landover, in a central community," said Harrington, who is African American. "It tells the community that it's thriving. Instead, it's another indication of there being deep economic struggles. It means that the community can't sustain its businesses."
Landover Mall also provokes anger, primarily at Lerner Corp., which according to community leaders could have invested more in upkeep to attract top-of-the-market national chains. At one time, Theodore Lerner was known to send letters admonishing his tenants to clean up their storefronts. Those warnings, retailers say, ceased years ago.
"Landover symbolizes disrespect for the people of Prince George's," said Arthur Turner, a Kettering civic activist. "It has been a blight on our community. I'd rather they blow up the building and start something new."
It's unclear what Lerner Corp. plans to do with the mall, where some of the remaining proprietors have received notices to vacate by mid-May. For years, Lerner executives have refused to speak publicly, a silence that infuriates community leaders.
"It's an insult -- you've made money off us for years, and now you're not going to tell us what you're going to do?" said James Matthews, a dentist and deacon at nearby First Baptist Church of Glenarden. "This place isn't just for shopping. When you take it out of the neighborhood, it's a part of the community that's dying."
The mourning has begun. Three times a week, the mall walkers descend, power striding barren concourses where once an International House of Pancakes, a Hot Shoppes, a barbershop, a tuxedo store stood. Sears, which owns its property, remains, but Hecht's recently closed its doors.
"When the mall opened, you felt like you were part of the world," said Mary Payne, 78, of Palmer Park, who helps run the mall-walking program. She frets about where she and her exercise partners will go when Landover closes.
"It won't be the same," she said.
Nearby, Marie Carroway, 70, stared through Hecht's windows, past the yellow caution tape and the empty glass booths once stocked with perfume and jewelry.
"This used to be the place," she said, shaking her head. "It just makes me sad."
Landover Mall in Prince George's County is slowly going out of business. Some store owners say their landlord has given them until mid-May to vacate.Prince George's activists blame crime and the owner's neglect for the wide-open spaces and loss of business at Landover Mall.Business is brisk at Bowie Town Center, which opened last year in an affluent area 15 miles from Landover and attracted an array of upscale retailers.
Sources - https://www.washingtonpost.com/
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