While on the shopping mall theme, I thought it was interesting to look at the newer metaphor to shopping mall design, the Mills designs.

The Mills designs are shopping centers that bring three things to the marketplace:

• They are indoor, but have outdoor access to their larger stores.
• They are family friendly.
• They use a neighborhood motif inside the malls.

My first exposure to the Mills approach was the mall Arundel Mills while on vacation a couple of years ago. Arundel Mills was attractive and large and it was where I was first exposed to the neighborhood approach to malls.

In each of the Mills' malls the areas of the malls are designated by neighborhoods. It helps with finding out where you are and where parking the car makes the most sense.

I liked Arundel Mills and enjoyed shopping there. It had a nice mix of stores, but most importantly, the outer parcels were filled with all sorts of restaurants and retailers such as WalMart and Costco.

The Mills moved into Cincinnati and I had the pleasure of visiting there. The Cincinnati Mills is open and has a nice store selection. They also feature two different movie theaters. One shows new movies at normal prices and the other shows older movies at a discount. Their food court is one of the most impressive I've seen.

Both Arundel Mills and Cincinnati Mills were nice, but they were more like traditional malls. Since my family primarily shops on price, the mall experience needs to bring more to life that just stores. Arundel had a few close out stores and Cincinnati had the movie theaters, so we could find something for everyone.

When the announcement was made that the Mills was coming to St. Louis, I was very interested. I've visited the Mills twice and it soured me on the Mills. St. Louis Mills has none of the charm or unique offerings that the other two Mills' malls had when I visited. It's a sterile environment devoid of any attraction or endearing features. The food court is boring and pedestrian. They couldn't have made a more boring mall if they tried. I mean how do you screw up a food court?

After the two journies to St. Louis Mills, I had pretty much given up on the "Mills Experience." I chalked it up to a fad and that was that, until I went on vacation this year.

This summer we rented a lake house on Virginia's Lake Anna. We spent the night in Quantico, VA and checked out a little after Noon and couldn't take possession of the rental property until 4pm. We had about four hours to kill and the family decided we'd go to the Potomac Mills to spend the afternoon. Needless to say, I was less than excited.

After we parked we walked in and I could tell this wasn't a normal mall. Looking at the directory I could tell it was huge, but more importantly, they had a great store mix. As we walked through the mall we did something we don't normally do, we bought stuff. A ton of stuff. I didn't get much, but the rest of the family loaded up. Potomac Mills had hit the sweet spot of store mix, pricing and ambiance.

Potomac Mills was packed that Sunday. It was more packed that the local malls in St. Louis are at Christmas time. You can tell how packed a mall is by the seating in the food court. We had to wait for a seat.

We left the Mills around 4pm and thoroughly enjoyed our time. We had such a good experience visiting Potomac Mills that we decided to come back during the week when the forecast called for rain.

Thursday was rain day, so we headed for Potomac Mills. We arrived a little after 1pm and ended up staying in the area until midnight. Understand this is for a family that doesn't like malls.

Why did the Potomac Mills succeed when the others had failed to keep our attention? I thought about this during the drive back home and came up with the following reasons:

• Store Mix: Potomac Mills featured not only normal stores, but close out and outlet stores as well.
• Decor: Potomac Mills is undergoing a retro fit to open it up and make it more airy. This made a difference as the natural light was relaxing and recharging.
• Food Court: Probably the best food court I've ever been to, it offered a wide array of places to eat at reasonable prices.
• Ease of Access: It was easy to recognize which neighborhood you were pulling up to in the car.
• Outer Parcel Shopping: We spent time shopping at the outer parcels as well including my first trip to an Ikea and a really big dollar store.

It's a funny thing. As a family that doesn't traditionally shop at malls, we'd go out of our way to shop at Potomac Mills if we lived in the Washington DC area. In St. Louis, I am pretty sure we'd never revisit the St. Louis Mills.

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