Mel Simon: He Built America's First Megamall
The leader of a boisterous and productive family partnership sometimes called "the Marx Brothers of Malls," Mel Simon helped transform the way Americans shop.
Mr. Simon, who died Wednesday at 82, built shopping centers across the country, starting with strip malls and culminating in ambitious multi-use complexes such as the Mall of America, located outside of Minnesota's Twin Cities and the nation's largest mall.
Such structures sometimes drew flak for shuttering city centers. But consumers flocked there because the malls were convenient and featured marquee retailers as well as diversions like food courts and movie theaters. Mr. Simon liked to call the Mall of America, which includes an amusement park and a speedway, "the eighth wonder of the world."
The publicly owned Simon Property Group Inc. that Mr. Simon founded is today the largest owner of U.S. shopping malls with a portfolio of over 300, including Forum Shops at Caeser's Palace in Las Vegas and others across America, Europe and Asia. It was as a builder that Mr. Simon first made his mark.
The son of a tailor who grew up in the Bronx, Mr. Simon found himself stationed in northern Indiana during a stint in the Army. He supplemented his pay by selling encyclopedias and cookware door-to-door in Indianapolis, then took a job as a leasing agent for a local shopping-center owner. It was the late 1950s, and growing suburbs, a thriving economy and car culture created fertile ground for mall development.
In 1960, Mr. Simon and two brothers formed Melvin Simon & Associates, and that same year opened a shopping center in Bloomington, Ind. After developing strip malls for a few years, the company in 1964 opened its first enclosed mall, the University Mall in Fort Collins, Colo.
A top company executive, Thomas Domagala, once described to Forbes how the early malls were built: "You would go out, find a cornfield, and build a product that was cookie-cutter-type stuff." By the late 1960s, the company was building over one million square feet annually.
The early malls could be eyesores. A department-store executive once told Mr. Simon, "I can tell it's your mall because the plastic plants died." But the company later built more upscale complexes.
Melvin Simon & Associates was among the first of the mall-builders to establish a marketing department, and pioneered the concept of branding malls.
According to Arnold Aronson, CEO of Saks Inc. from 1979 to 1984, Mr. Simon excelled at "being able to take over raw real estate and have the vision to forecast that [the surrounding area] would grow into population centers that would support big and expensive shopping centers."
After leading the charge to the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Simon moved back into city centers with innovative developments including the St. Louis Center, which in 1985 linked two large department stores with a 21-story office building. He also built what is today called the Manhattan Mall, a so-called vertical mall located in the heart of New York's Herald Square.
Simon Associates was managing partner for the construction of the Mall of America, which opened in 1992. Later, the company grew more by acquisition than by development. It went public as the Simon Property Group in 1993 in an $840 million offering that was the largest-ever up to that time for a real estate investment trust.
In 1995, Mr. Simon's son, David Simon, was named CEO of the Simon Property Group.
Read entire article at The Wall Street Journal
Mr. Simon, who died Wednesday at 82, built shopping centers across the country, starting with strip malls and culminating in ambitious multi-use complexes such as the Mall of America, located outside of Minnesota's Twin Cities and the nation's largest mall.
Such structures sometimes drew flak for shuttering city centers. But consumers flocked there because the malls were convenient and featured marquee retailers as well as diversions like food courts and movie theaters. Mr. Simon liked to call the Mall of America, which includes an amusement park and a speedway, "the eighth wonder of the world."
The publicly owned Simon Property Group Inc. that Mr. Simon founded is today the largest owner of U.S. shopping malls with a portfolio of over 300, including Forum Shops at Caeser's Palace in Las Vegas and others across America, Europe and Asia. It was as a builder that Mr. Simon first made his mark.
The son of a tailor who grew up in the Bronx, Mr. Simon found himself stationed in northern Indiana during a stint in the Army. He supplemented his pay by selling encyclopedias and cookware door-to-door in Indianapolis, then took a job as a leasing agent for a local shopping-center owner. It was the late 1950s, and growing suburbs, a thriving economy and car culture created fertile ground for mall development.
In 1960, Mr. Simon and two brothers formed Melvin Simon & Associates, and that same year opened a shopping center in Bloomington, Ind. After developing strip malls for a few years, the company in 1964 opened its first enclosed mall, the University Mall in Fort Collins, Colo.
A top company executive, Thomas Domagala, once described to Forbes how the early malls were built: "You would go out, find a cornfield, and build a product that was cookie-cutter-type stuff." By the late 1960s, the company was building over one million square feet annually.
The early malls could be eyesores. A department-store executive once told Mr. Simon, "I can tell it's your mall because the plastic plants died." But the company later built more upscale complexes.
Melvin Simon & Associates was among the first of the mall-builders to establish a marketing department, and pioneered the concept of branding malls.
According to Arnold Aronson, CEO of Saks Inc. from 1979 to 1984, Mr. Simon excelled at "being able to take over raw real estate and have the vision to forecast that [the surrounding area] would grow into population centers that would support big and expensive shopping centers."
After leading the charge to the suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s, Mr. Simon moved back into city centers with innovative developments including the St. Louis Center, which in 1985 linked two large department stores with a 21-story office building. He also built what is today called the Manhattan Mall, a so-called vertical mall located in the heart of New York's Herald Square.
Simon Associates was managing partner for the construction of the Mall of America, which opened in 1992. Later, the company grew more by acquisition than by development. It went public as the Simon Property Group in 1993 in an $840 million offering that was the largest-ever up to that time for a real estate investment trust.
In 1995, Mr. Simon's son, David Simon, was named CEO of the Simon Property Group.