Supermall Day Is Friday In Auburn -- But Some Say It's The Beginning Of The End For Life As They Know It

AUBURN - Ron Boothe was born and reared here when there were only two or three stoplights and everyone walked to school. To him, this week is the beginning of the end.

The SuperMall of the Great Northwest is coming.

Opening Friday, the SuperMall is the state's largest collection of off-price outlet stores. It's shaped like a 7/8th-mile horse-racing track and comes with a large model of Mount Rainier that is supposed to erupt during the grand opening. Its builders say the mall is sure to become a Northwest icon as popular as the real mountain, the Space Needle or the Pike Place Market.

"Everybody wants value, and this is where 14 million people a year will get it," said mall spokeswoman Sheila Lynch.

But for Boothe and some other longtime Auburn residents, the mall's looming pastel-colored facades on the west edge of the city are signs of something more than the coming of the Nordstrom Rack and Ann Taylor Loft. The mall may mark the end of a way of life, they say.

It's not just that traffic will be bad, residents say - though the mall on its busier days is expected to draw as many as 50,000 people to a city with only 35,000 residents. For the opening this weekend, the mall - situated near the intersection of highways 18 and 167 - has hired 20 Auburn Police officers just to direct traffic.

And it's not that people object to the arrival of discount shopping. Many people who say they oppose the mall concede they are looking forward to the bargains. The mall will feature 160 discount stores, all of which have pledged to sell their wares at 30 percent or more under retail prices.

The real threat, residents say, is the cultural influence the mall may have on a small, conservative city where the course of life for as long as anyone can remember has been to get a high-school diploma, a good-paying job at The Boeing Co. and a modest, farm-style house within walking distance of downtown.

At stake is the identity of a city where, as one merchant says, you could announce there was going to be a parade but forget to say where, and everyone instinctively would know to gather on Main Street.

`Those things overrun a town'

"I wish the mall wasn't coming. I wish it wasn't happening like this," said Boothe, 63. "Those things overrun a town and make them all look the same. Nobody knows one another at a mall."

"People here are nervous that we'll now be known simply as `Auburn: The Mall,' " said Don Gardner, owner of Green River Music on Main Street. "Like Tukwila. I couldn't tell you where or what Tukwila really is, because it seems the same as Southcenter.

"Where would they hold a parade in Tukwila?"

That the area's first Wal-Mart store is opening next to the SuperMall in October has only heightened community fears.

Mall managers insist the SuperMall will alter Puget Sound's retail landscape permanently. But they also say the shopping center is designed specifically to blend in and augment the Auburn community, not overrun it.

Besides stores, the 1.2 million-square-foot oval features a community meeting room, classrooms for Green River Community College and a police station. It has adopted "education" as its theme, which managers say will be fulfilled by events such as a recycling exhibit, historical displays on Washington trains and planes, and talks in the mall foyer by zoo keepers, park rangers, and health and fitness experts.

The mall is creating a club for kids called Superkids. It is paying $191,000 over five years to boost the city's downtown, as well as running a daily shuttle from the mall to Main Street a mile away.

Central to one of the main entrances will be an information kiosk where tourists can receive "a printout telling you what's going on around the Northwest, not just at the mall," said marketing manager Lynn Beck.

"We are coming up with unique ways to be a part of the community," said Lynch, the mall spokeswoman.

But a sociologist who studies the culture of malls says mall managers often try to create an illusion of community for marketing purposes, even while they stack the deck against its actual formation.

Malls are designed to keep people moving from one shop to another, not to bring them together, says George Lewis, a professor at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif. Security guards discourage loiterers. Seats in public areas are unpadded, and uncomfortable if they're sat in too long. Both the music and architecture are uniform and don't encourage lingering.

Shoppers tend to hurry along, intent upon their business, rarely talking or interacting with other shoppers, said Lewis, who recently studied the formation of social groups in a New England mall.

The only people managing to forge social ties in malls are the ones who go there for purposes other than shopping, like teenagers hanging out and senior citizens who walk the mall for morning exercise before the stores open, Lewis said.

Mall managers say the SuperMall will be different, partly because some of its stores have facilities designed to entertain, such as Tandy's Incredible Universe, which features a karaoke studio, children's play area and free video games.

"The whole idea behind . . . the SuperMall is that shopping should be more than just picking out an item, paying for it and heading for home," said Stan Tabb, vice president of mall developer the Hapsmith Co. of Beverly Hills.

"It's OK with us if people would just come down here and people-watch," Lynch said.

Some Auburn residents also wonder about what finally sold the mall to city officials: its promise of 3,000 to 4,000 jobs. On the day it opens, the SuperMall will be Auburn's second-largest employer, three times larger than the former No. 2, the Auburn School District. More than 1,000 work in the town's school system, while the top employer, Boeing, has 11,000 jobs in the city.

Boom is coming, backers counter

But most mall jobs pay only $5 to $8 an hour, are part-time and include minimal benefits, according to listings at the Auburn job-placement center. Contrast that with the manufacturing jobs at Boeing that always have dominated Auburn, routinely paying upward of $15 an hour.

It's hard to imagine a SuperMall salary supporting a family or making the down payment on a home, many residents say.

The mall's backers counter that an economic boom of sorts is coming to an already poor city hurt recently by Boeing layoffs. Shoppers are expected to spend about $250 million annually, as much money as will be gambled at the city's new horse-racing track and nearby tribal casino combined.

Not necessarily the `best jobs'

"They aren't necessarily the best jobs, but they are desperately needed jobs here," said Pat Burns, a lawyer and city councilman. "If we didn't allow the mall, the land probably would have been used for a warehouse-distribution center, and we already have plenty of those.

"The mall is not a panacea, but there will be a lot less poor people in town because of it."

Cheryl Jackson runs a handcrafted-gifts store on Main Street. To her, the mall will make Auburn a regional tourism and business center for the first time. "People will come here and see what a nice place it is," she said. "It will be good for business, and I don't think it will really change what Auburn is all about."

Although the downtown JC Penney store is closing, most merchants are expecting a boost in sales when the mall opens. Stores such as the city's 90-year-old hardware store, Cavanaugh's, survived when a Fred Meyer opened six years ago and should weather a Wal-Mart as well, said Gardner, who also serves as president of the Auburn Downtown Association.

City planners also expect downtown to survive because there's not much room around the mall for a huge sprawl of development like Southcenter brought to Tukwila.

As for whether Auburn can preserve its small-town identity in the face of all this growth, supporters of the mall say they are depending on the same forces that always have bound the community.

"We've been here for 100 years, and we've developed a town character," Burns said. "What matters is that our institutions - the churches, the schools, the downtown, the government, the families - are all so deeply rooted and well-established here.

"I honestly don't think a mall is going to make any of that go away."