ROSEANNE BARR DOMESTIC GODDESS, pulled off the interstate not long ago into a huge swath of suburbia 65 km east of Los Angeles,. She was heading for California s top tourist attraction:not Disneyland, not the nearby stock-car track, but an expanse of concrete and steel splayed across 18.5 hectares of desert called Ontario Mills. It's the latest fashion in malls, boasting two tyrannosaurian movieplexes totaling 54 screens, as well as glitzy entertainment and retail hot spots like Off Rodeo Drive that sell designer duds at hoi polloi prices. Roseanne sat down for a bite in celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck's cafe-in-a-mall. But she realized her baby Buck needed a changing table. No changing table on this menu. So Roseanne let loose a blue streak and headed off to boogie at the Virgin Megastore.
Hollywood may be going to the mall these days because the most successful malls are going Hollywood. Roseanne is one of the 20 million people this year who are expected to drive, sometimes for hours, to shop at Ontario Mills, the size of 38 football fields, set in the shadow of the San Bernardino Mountains. On a weekday afternoon scores of patrons are driving on the virtual-reality car track or teeing off on the virtual-reality driving range at Dave & Buster's, an eatsand-entertainment emporium at Ontario. Tens of thousands of shoppers, many off tour buses and from as far away as South Korea, march through 10 color-coordinated "neighborhoods"-themed retail zones catering to tastes ranging from upscale dresses to sporting and adolescent attire. Overhead, 65 giant TV screens run an endless series of commercials produced in the mall's studios.
The imagination behind Ontario belongs to Larry ("I hate to shop") Siegel, CEO of the Mills Corp. in Arlington, Va. He has fashioned perhaps the only hot trend in mass retail: value megamalls, or outlet centers with huge doses of entertainment.
This concept has made Mills, which operates as a real estate investment trust, the nation's fastest-growing publicly traded mall developer.
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