Marketing Anchorage's Malls.

• Author: SMITH, DAWNELL
• Position: Malls try new approaches to increase occupancy and usage - Industry Overview

Some are doing well, some are dying. But all hope to entice businesses to lease space and have plans in place to do such.

At the Dimond Center, crowds mingle outside the cinema, children slice ice at the skating rink and teen-agers meander through the Old Navy with carts full of fashionable garb. The cavernous mall feels roomy, action packed and fully loaded.

Just 10 minutes north, the University Center feels like a ghost town. Though an occasional passerby nibbles at an ice-cream cone or chocolate chip cookie; most scurry to Habitat or Animal House, then hurry to their cars as if escaping the echo of lost sales and broken dreams.

The opening of the Natural Pantry and Gottshalks last month will give the center a boost, but it still wallows in the wake of the big box store invasion of the 1990s. Back then, Wal-Mart, K-Mart; Costco and other giants advanced into Anchorage, leaving the city with far more retail space than it can support.

"When the box stores come in, some thing's going to give," said Linda Boggs, a consultant for the Mall at Sears. "To some extent University (Center) might be the one that gave."

But University is not alone The Boniface Mall floundered too which prompted the owners to turn it into a community mall with things like al karate school, library, travel agency, hair salon, pull-tab outlet, WIC office and the Wayland Baptist University. No one at the mall's business office, H and R Management Inc., returned phone calls, but the mall still has space for lease.

For Boniface, staying alive meant making a dramatic change, but even owners of thriving shopping centers had to rework and adjust their strategies when the box stores arrived.

As case in point, consider the Mall at Sears, a middle-sized complex in the same neighborhood as the struggling University Center. When CarrGottstein Properties learned that Wal-Mart was moving in across the street, they formulated a game plan. Instead of competing head-to-head, they decided to build a tenant mix that included independent, specialized stores like Salsa Vita and Roscoe's Skyline Restaurant, said Boggs.

After an initial drop in business, the people at the Mall at Sears discovered that the addition of Wal-Mart and Barnes and Noble to the neighborhood turned the whole area into a strong retail cluster, said Boggs. Today, the mall is virtually full with about 30 tenants, half of which are local.

"We actually found out that it's better to have them (box stores) across the street...