New Supermall Braces For Incredible Store, Traffic -- Giant Shopping Center To Debut In Auburn With Huge Electronics Store

AUBURN - The battle plans are being drawn: Extra police officers will be on the streets; security guards will provide a second line of defense; they're even talking about setting up barricades to control the crowds.

No, the city isn't preparing for war.

It's girding for the opening of the first store in the mother of all discount shopping centers: the Supermall of the Great Northwest.

Work crews already have erected the shell of Tandy's Incredible Universe at the junction of Highways 18 and 167. The electronics superstore is expected to open sometime around the second week of November.

The remainder of the mall should be completed this time next year, along with 14 or 15 peripheral developments, including Wal-Mart.

A year after that, the mall may be expanded by an additional 300,000 square feet. At 1.3 million square feet, the mall will be comparable to Southcenter and about twice the size of SeaTac Mall.

Store and city officials said they will meet this week to agree on a strategy to deal with the traffic the 185,000-square-foot Incredible Universe is expected to bring.

Incredible Universe General Manager Terry Perrone said the store's security unit will deal with traffic in the parking lot. He said he will ask local and state police to control traffic as it comes off the West Valley Highway at 15th Street Southwest, the main entrance to the mall and various intersections around the mall.

Think they're overreacting?

Two years ago, when the first Incredible Universe opened in Wilsonville, Ore., near Portland, cars were backed up two miles in both directions on Interstate 5.

That opening weekend, more than 50,000 people visited the store, which sells 340 types of televisions, 181 models of refrigerators, more than 50 kinds of computers and 75 types of boomboxes.

Although the company learned its lesson and devised a plan to deal with opening-weekend traffic, crowds at the newest Incredible Universe, which opened last month in Hollywood, Fla., got so backed up that store officials rented six golf cars to shuttle people from checkout lines to their cars, said General Manager Carson Hettinger.

But, according to mall officials, traffic won't be as bad when the other 159 stores open in the mall next year.

The Hapsmith Co., a Beverly Hills, Calif., firm developing the mall, said it is spending $10 million for traffic improvements, such as widening and/or adding extra traffic signals to C, O and 15th streets. Eastbound and westbound ramps to Highway 18 at C Street are also being widened, parts of Highway 167 are being improved and an elevated ramp is being built to divert some traffic from 15th.

Also, 15th Street has been widened throughout the length of the mall, and a computerized signal system was installed to speed up traffic as it enters and exits the mall's parking lot.

Mall officials contend there are a couple of reasons local residents won't be terribly inconvenienced in the long term.

One, there are no residential neighborhoods adjacent to the mall. The only major presence nearby are The Boeing Co.'s offices. And they said the mall's peak hours won't overlap with key commute times for Boeing workers.

In addition, mall officials said people don't visit a discount and outlet malls as frequently as traditional malls like Southcenter or SeaTac. However, when they do, they stay longer, spend more money and shop in large groups.

"People intrinsically think of SeaTac and Southcenter when they think what'll happen to this area," said mall spokesman Mark Hancock. "But that's not the case. Yes, there will be high foot traffic, but car traffic will be less (on any given day)."

Though that's generally true of discount or outlet malls, Dawn Frankfort, a consumer-marketing director for Value Retail News trade magazine in Clearwater, Fla., said it's not necessarily the case. She said these types of malls "actually get quite a lot of car traffic."

Discount malls house well-known stores that aren't found elsewhere in the region, Frankfort said, and they attract people who might not plan on shopping but do so once they see the mall while driving by.

"At this point, it's impossible to know what the exact impact of the mall will be," said Auburn Mayor Charles Booth. "We'll have to wait and see."

The Auburn Police Department, though, doesn't want to be caught off-guard. The department will request city funding to hire five officers and a sergeant to deal with the mall. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Supermall of the Great Northwest

-- What: A 1.3 million-square-foot indoor discount/outlet mall with 160 stores. 80 percent of the spaces now leased. -- When: The Incredible Universe will open in three to four weeks. The remainder of the mall will open in October or November 1995. About 300,000 square feet may be added the following year. -- Anchor stores include: Nordstrom Rack; Burlington Coat Factory; Marshall's; Bed, Bath and Beyond; Oshman's; and SuperSports USA. -- Development cost: $150 million. -- Jobs: the equivalent of 4,200 full-time positions. -- Annual payroll: $69.7 million.