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The Australian owners of three area malls want name recognition, so get ready for Westfield Shoppingtown Citrus Park, Brandon and Countryside.
By MARK ALBRIGHT and CHRISTINA K. COSDON
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 8, 2002
Three of the Tampa Bay area's largest malls have new Australian owners. Now they're getting new names.
Westfield Group, which this week completed its purchase of Brandon TownCenter, Citrus Park Town Center and Countryside Mall, is adding "shoppingtown" to those names.
"We've called our properties in Australia 'shoppingtowns' since the 1960s," said Stephen Fluhr, general manager of newly renamed Westfield Shoppingtown Brandon. "In Australia, a mall is a shoppingtown."
Work crews this week began sticking the new names on doors and customer service booths at the malls, whose new names include Westfield Shoppingtown Citrus Park and Westfield Shoppingtown Countryside. Eventually pylon signs at mall entrances will be changed to match the rest of the company's portfolio of 61 U.S. malls and shopping centers.
Not everybody's a fan of the new names. "My wife just called and said people are up in arms," said Clearwater Mayor Brian Aungst, "The mall is not moving out of Countryside, is it? To me, Countryside Mall is a perfect name. This is a dumb idea."
"It reminds me of Searstown, which doesn't sound very upscale to me," said Mike Meidel, president of the Clearwater Regional Chamber of Commerce.
The name changes mark the latest attempt by mall owners to use their real estate holdings to promote their corporate brand. The effort spread once the companies became publicly traded stocks.
Simon Property Group of Indianapolis has plastered its name all over the parking lots and doors of its Tyrone Square, Gulf View Square and Crystal River malls. Prime Retail Inc. of Baltimore added the name at its Prime Outlets Ellenton property. Mills Corp. of Arlington, Va., which owns Sawgrass Mills in Broward County, puts its corporate monicker in all of its outlet mall names.
Westfield, which is traded on the Australian Stock Exchange, acquired the Tampa Bay malls along with 11 others from Rodamco North America, a Dutch real estate company. The $2.5-billion transaction was completed Monday.
Locally, Westfield is changing more than the names. Mall management teams are being shuffled. Westfield added free red balloons for kids, strollers that look like fire trucks and red vests for its mall customer service workers.
-- Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.