Phoenix gets malled

Not too long ago, my spouse and I took our friend Caitlyn out to celebrate her seventh birthday. Our plan was to have a little lunch at Scottsdale Fashion Square (7014 E. Camelback Rd., Scottsdale, www.fashionsquare.com) and then let her go nuts in the Missy section of one of the better department stores.

Todd and I kept exchanging glances over our little friend's shiny blond head, old-fogy glances that said, "Remember when kids could eat peanut butter without being rushed to the hospital?" and "Remember when this was a big mall?"

It's not, anymore. Fashion Square doesn't have a water feature, or a laser light show, or a 30-foot wall onto which Nike commercials are projected. It has anchor stores, which in the olden days meant that at key places in the mall, one could find a department store or a food court. It has a seating area and an escalator, old-timey amenities that today seem quaint when compared to Westgate City Center (9400 W. Hanna Lane, Glendale, www.westgateaz.com), a mall so huge it has its own $180 million, 18,000-seat arena and two hotels; or the northeast Valley's colossal Desert Ridge Marketplace (21001 N. Tatum Blvd., www.shopdesertridge.com), which at 1.2 million square feet apparently isn't large enough, because it's just launched an expansion that will nearly double its size.

Malls are no longer just one-stop shopping hubs or good places to dump off the kids for a couple of hours on Saturday. They are, according to architect Mark Tweed, "lifestyle centers, with a main street that ends in a village green with its own theater and a restaurant. And sometimes a hotel."

Tweed is the founder and president of the Beverly Hills-based HTH Architects, the firm responsible for designing both Tempe Marketplace and Desert Ridge. One day, he says, all malls will be anchored not by JCPenney but by hotels and housing, an arrangement that will bring more people to the mall because they live there. Tweed is an affable fellow who likes to think of his malls as "towns"; a guy who, when he's discussing the shopping megalopolises he's designed (right now he's working on another monster-sized one in Tucson), refers to "lifestyle amoebas" (by which he means central areas where people gather when they're not shopping) and "lifestyle tenants," which, when I was young, we used to call stores.

"It's all about sequential space," Tweed told me. "In the amoeba, spaces open up into larger spaces with fireplaces and living rooms. With this design, I'm forcing people to be together."

But, I explained, when I go shopping I don't want to be with people. I want to buy stuff and go home. When I want to be with people, I host a cocktail party.

"Then think of the mall as a transformed town," Tweed tried. "In my designs, there's a main street, and there are things that appeal to 15-year-olds, because they're the average shopper. So there's media and technology on every street in this town, because if you don't have those in the 21st century, you've missed the boat."

I don't want multimedia shopping. I don't want to, as Tweed says, "stable my car" in a parking lot so vast it has its own "district." I don't mind an Orange Julius stand, but one that beams a synchronized laser show 1,000 feet away onto a revolving stage atop a parapet wall makes me want to flee.