- By Dan Veaner
- Around Town
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With Triphammer Road torn up you would expect shoppers to avoid the malls. Pyramid Mall's Marketing Director Linn Redder sees the road construction as a challenge. "I always say, 'You can always pull a positive from a negative,'" she says. "Yes, it's going to be an inconvenience for a lot of people. Will it stop our shoppers? No. Will it make them think twice about coming to the mall? Yes, but we're just going to have to give them more reason to get here. It will be difficult for a while, but we'll all get used to it."
While they were in the mall many of them shopped. Redder, energetic and enthusiastic, sees her job as getting people into the mall, and then she says it is up to the stores to entice them in to shop. "We need to have music here, we need to have events here. It's can't just be about shopping," she says. Permanent entertainment is as important as special events. "Going to the stadium seating theaters is a big first step."
Construction is starting on the new Regal Cinemas
Here's what it will look like when completed.
Regal is taking over the old Ames store, where the company is building 14 stadium-seating movie theaters that will seat a total of nearly 3,000 movie-goers. The entrance will be at the rear of the mall, near Sears. "It's going to be so wonderful," enthuses Redder. "It's going to be so modernized, and an eye catcher." She says that the new theaters should be opening early in 2007.
What will become of the current movie theater space? At this point Redder isn't sure, but she says that Pyramid would like to create a women's lifestyle section and a men's lifestyle section. Each would have stores that would attract its own market. And defining the markets within the overall Ithaca market is a challenge, because people here are so diverse. On top of that there is some catching up to do.
"Our market is so unique," Redder says. "If you compare Burlington, Vermont and Ithaca, New York and see the shopping they have in Burlington and the shopping that we don't have here in Ithaca -- it's amazing. You ask why? We have Cornell University, we have Ithaca College, we have professors... The women and men working -- the percentages are about even. You don't find that everywhere."
Redder thinks this phenomenon will help attract stores that people want, but she says the mall needs customers' help to bring them here. She wants customers to tell the mall staff what stores they want. "It's kind of hard," she says. "We've done some surveys. We need the community's voice to be able to reach that. If people can write in to us, do something, e-mail us, we save it. We put it in a file. We want to be able say to our leasing person, 'Look, we just received 150 letters from people requesting a Macy's. We want a Macy's.'"
Redder (left) with 'Famous in the Fingerlakes' MC Chris Allinger
In a time when the larger malls consider themselves destinations, the varied populations here require some creativity and flexibility. "A destination can mean many different things. It can be a shopping hub destination. It could be a tourism destination. There are different definitions. We want to be a little bit of everything," Redder says. She notes that the challenge is to attract students and their parents who are used to having stores in their malls at home that aren't here yet. This mall also serves professors and full time residents of all sorts. It also serves tourists, especially in summer. "When they're up here at the lake and they're going to the wineries we want this to be a stop for them. If it's for dinner, that's great. If it's to walk and shop we want that to be a destination for them," she says. Seasonal residents are another.
Redder also says she would like to see more sit-down restaurants. While she notes that Friendy's offers seating for families, she would like to also see choices where working professionals could go for a meal and perhaps a beer. "You like to go for a nice dinner sometimes and sit down and have a nice glass of wine. This is the only mall I've been in where you can't get that."
The Pyramid Mall has come a long way from the years when, despite being located in a college town, it didn't even have a book store. While the road construction presents a challenge this year, Redder says it will be worth it when it's going to be done. "I think it's going to be awesome. It's long overdue." You get the feeling she sees the future of the mall when she says that.
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