Brian Cabell Reports From Atlanta; Interview With Vickee Armstrong
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: In the midst of a slumping economy and uncertain markets, there is a fashion industry sponsored campaign today to try to restore consumer confidence and to raise money for the Twin Towers fund. It is called "Shop to Show Your Support." That coincides with a new shopping mall that just opened up outside of Atlanta. CNN's Brian Cabell joins us now from the Stonecrest Mall. You can start your Christmas shopping on time this year, Brian. Go to it.</s>BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A brand-new mall here, not the most ideal of conditions, though, Paula, to open a mall. To give you some idea, right after September 11th mall traffic nationwide dropped about 8 or 9 percent. It started picking up in early October, down only about 2 to 3 percent nationwide. But then with the anthrax scare, once again, it dropped down about 5 or 6 percent. That's what it's down nationwide. But Stonecrest, doing pretty well. They opened up yesterday amid a great deal of excitement, some big crowds, a fair amount of hoopla. This is not a megamall, but it is a good-sized mall, 1.3 million square feet, about 125 stores: 90-95 percent leased. And they expect those to be picked up in the next couple of months before Christmas. This area has traditionally been underserved, so a lot of pent-up demand for it. And so a lot of people excited about this particular mall, about 15 miles east of Atlanta. Now, let's talk to Vickee Armstrong. She's the director of marketing.</s>VICKEE ARMSTRONG, DIRECTOR OF MARKETING, STONECREST MALL: Good Morning.</s>CABELL: Good morning.</s>ARMSTRONG: How are you.</s>CABELL: Very well. Now how did the mall do yesterday?</s>ARMSTRONG: We did phenomenally well. We had, we think, more than 70,000 guests visit us here yesterday between the hours of 9:00 and 9:00. We had a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10:00 a.m. And at that time we knew there were more than 5,000 people already inside the mall prior to our ceremonial opening.</s>CABELL: Now we hear about an economy maybe in recession. We hear about the anthrax scare. Why are people coming out here? Is it just a local phenomenon?</s>ARMSTRONG: Well, we think here in southeast Atlanta that we've been very fortunate, because there was pent-up demand, and we've waited for this mall for more than 18 years. So the community continued to grow around it without the benefit of retail. When we opened the center, there was the pent-up demand, and we had the shoppers here, double-fisted shopping with lots of dollars to spend.</s>CABELL: Real quick, what are the merchants telling you? Were they buying yesterday?</s>ARMSTRONG: They were buying yesterday. I'll give you a prime example. One of our small shops was projected to do $2,000. They did $8,000. That's a 400 percent increase over their projected plans, and we're seeing that across the board with our merchants.</s>CABELL: What about security? Any extra precautions?</s>ARMSTRONG: We took some extra precautions. We did extra training with our personnel. Our corporate person was here for a week prior to our opening the mall, Vince Hill (ph). He walked us through several procedures. And we were prepared in the event of any occurrences to make sure that our shoppers and our guests had a safe environment.</s>CABELL: Vickee Armstrong, thank you very much.</s>ARMSTRONG: Thank you.</s>CABELL: So once again, a brand-new mall here for the folks in East Atlanta. Locally, it looks pretty good. Nationwide, again, Paula, it's kind of bleak at this point, but hopes that things will pick up as the holiday season approaches.</s>ZAHN: And Brian, you know, no doubt, that's the same message Mayor Giuliani has been spreading here, telling people from outside the country, to come to New York, spend money. We certainly need it for the redevelopment downtown. Thanks so much for that report. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com