Shopping still stopping retailers from dropping.

• Position: As North Carolina shoppers rein in spending

North Carolina shoppers pinched pennies in 2000. Retail sales for the fiscal year ended in June were $128.5 billion, a 1.8% increase, essentially flat considering inflation and population growth. The number paled before the previous year's 8%.

Much happened to dampen shoppers' enthusiasm. Gas prices rose, the Fed raised interest rates six times since June 1999, and the stock market slipped. Bad weather rocked the state. In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd flooded a part of Eastern North Carolina bigger than Connecticut. Shopping? Survival? Not a difficult choice. The following January, nearly 20 inches of snow in the Triangle and to the northeast left retailers dead in their sleds until roads and parking lots were cleared.

Economist James Kleckley, associate director of planning and institutional research at East Carolina University in Greenville, says Floyd affected retail sales across the state during last year's holiday season. "A lot of people in, say, Charlotte are still kin to people down east," he says. He thinks they were less inclined to blow it out when relatives were struggling.

Retailers can breathe easier, he says. "We're really back on track. Now we're back to the pace we saw over most of the '90s." However, by late in the year, whether North Carolina retailers would weather an uncertain retail environment better than those nationwide was uncertain. The National Retail Federation says sales were off 0.5% at malls and 3.8% at department stores for the first 16 days of the Christmas shopping season, and stores were offering discounts of up to 50% during the week before Christmas.

Kleckley, on the other hand, based his optimism on a state unemployment rate of 3.2%, more than 1.5 percentage points below the national average, an influx of jobs and a hurricane season that passed without harm to North Carolina.

Store construction was under way across the state, some of it to accommodate new retailers. Seattle-based Nordstrom Inc. announced it would continue its march into the Southeast. In Durham, it will anchor Streets at Southpoint mall, a 1.3 million-square-foot center to open late this year along Interstate 40. In October, the Charlotte City Council approved plans to enlarge SouthPark Mall by 50% for high-end retailers Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue and about 40 other stores. SouthPark will grow from 1.3 million square feet to 2 million square feet.

The Charlotte market already had proved it could support new shopping. Concord...