Central Arkansas retail centers McCain Mall and Park Plaza on Wednesday announced their plans to reopen.
McCain Mall in North Little Rock, which has been closed since March 18 in reaction to the spread of the coronavirus, is scheduled to reopen Friday morning.
Lisa Meyer, manager of McCain Mall, said the property's new hours will be 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
"They're ready and excited to come back," Meyer said of the mall's approximately 90 tenants.
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McCain Mall is owned by Simon Property Group, which is the biggest operator of malls in the United States. The company outlined its plan to reopen 49 shopping centers across 10 states starting Friday in a memo obtained Tuesday by The New York Times.
The majority of the reopening Simon malls are in Texas, Indiana, Georgia and Missouri. Properties in Tennessee, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Alaska and Mississippi also will be reopened.
Park Plaza in Little Rock also will reopen Friday, with some restrictions. Like McCain Mall, Park Plaza will be open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 6 p.m. on Sundays, a spokeswoman for CBL Properties, owner of the mall, said.
Dillard's said it will open its stores Tuesday at Park Plaza in Little Rock, McCain Mall in North Little Rock and Pinnacle Hills Plaza in Rogers.
"We are monitoring the easing of government restrictions across all our markets and are opening as soon as practicable," a Dillard's spokeswoman said.
Park Plaza said the mall will follow the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That includes canceling or postponing mall events, no seating in food courts where restaurants will be serving to-go orders only, and prohibiting groups of more than 10 in common areas. Retailers are being encouraged to provide employees with masks.
The Simon Property Group's memo said security officers and employees will "actively remind and encourage shoppers" to maintain a proper distance from others and to refrain from shopping in groups. Food court seating will be spaced to encourage social distancing, and reusable trays will be banished. Play areas and drinking fountains will be temporarily closed, mall-provided strollers won't be available and, in restrooms, every other sink and urinal will be taped off. Regular audio announcements will be made "to remind shoppers of their part in maintaining a safe environment for everyone."
The memo provides a glimpse of how the broader American shopping experience is likely to look as the country begins to slowly reopen. But the success of such an approach depends largely on whether retailers also will decide to quickly reopen stores and whether the public will feel comfortable going to malls when tests for the virus remain difficult to get.
The memo was accompanied by a 47-slide presentation of "illustrative examples" of messaging that shoppers will see. They include signs welcoming them back to the malls and detailing safety precautions that have been taken, and directional decals for floors. Also part of the presentation was a depiction of a taped-off urinal, and maps for common areas that showed where hand sanitizer and seating might be placed and where "Temporarily Closed" signs could appear.
Simon Property, which is based in Indianapolis and at the end of last year owned more than 200 properties in 37 states and Puerto Rico, did not respond to requests for comment.
Simon Property's employees, contractors and vendors will be required to take their temperatures before work, and stay home if they have a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher or exhibit flu-like symptoms, the documents said. They also will wear masks and aim to stay 6 feet away from others. The mall operator said it would provide free temperature testing, masks and sanitizing wipe packets to shoppers upon request, and that they would be "encouraged" to wear masks and wash their hands frequently.
"I think of this as a tightrope act," said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University's medical school. "On the one side are all the medical issues and on the other are all the financial, economic and social issues. If one gets out of balance we fall."
Schaffner said he thought shopping malls should require temperature checks for customers, as has been mandated in parts of Asia. He also thinks masks should be required of customers, not simply provided to them on request. And that hand sanitizer dispensers should be accessible for both the public and employees in every store.
Information for this article was contributed by Stephen Steed of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and by Sapna Maheshwari and Michael Corkery of The New York Times.
Business on 04/30/2020