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On the front lines of a mall frenzy
By MARK ALBRIGHT, Times Staff Writer ST. PETERSBURG -- The mall's Santa was in a foul mood over a late paycheck as he prepared for another 11-hour day on the throne. Somebody stole a car from the parking lot the night before. But Scott Rolston's priority was clear: fixing a broken printer that had brought certificate sales at Tyrone Square Mall to a halt for a day and a half. "We're losing a ton of money," said the 40-year-old mall manager who had to air-freight two replacement printers in from Ohio before he got one to work on Saturday morning. When the printer lurched to life, clerks and waiting customers broke into applause. A line of shoppers 30 deep formed immediately to buy gift certificates, and the queue stayed that long for hours. As manager of one of the Tampa Bay area's most prosperous malls, Rolston works the front lines of a holiday shopping season that's critical to more than 200 stores, kiosks and pushcart vendors. Retailers get up to a third of their annual sales and half their profits in the final two months of the year. Because rent is tied to sales, the prosperity of mall owner Simon Property Group is influenced by Tyrone Square's holiday performance. So are Rolston's bonuses. Rolston's goal of selling $95,000 worth of gift certificates Saturday and $1.9-million for the season was dashed by the hobbled printer. He's hardly alone in facing a cliffhanger of a season. Stuck with a season six days shorter than last year, many retailers endured sluggish sales going into the final weekend. They were counting on a big finish to make their year, and they were happy with the rush they saw over the weekend. "It's been soft," said Jack Weaver, owner of Avery Ashley Collectibles and the Deck the Walls store at the St. Petersburg mall. "But these final days are just going to be humongous." "I thought the morning crowd was light, so I checked my office computer," which tracks sales by the hour, said Tom Eutzler, a JCPenney store manager. "Let me tell you, people are buying." On Saturday, tracking devices at the 16 entrances to the Tyrone mall counted 2,000 shoppers between 7 and 9 a.m. By 1 p.m. 27,000 had come through, and 3,200 more arrived every 30 minutes. By closing time on Sunday evening, an estimated 117,000 shoppers had visited the mall over two days, only about 4,000 more than the season's closing weekend last year. For Rolston, Sunday was his 23rd straight day without a day off. He had found time to help put up a Christmas tree for his wife, Diane, and son, Matthew, at their Westchase home, but not the outdoor lighting display. Most of his year is spent marketing the mall, handling customer complaints, enforcing leasing rules, negotiating tenant disputes and filling kiosks, push carts and storefronts that are available for short-term leasing. "But the final weekend before Christmas," he said, "I just go from crisis to crisis." A native of suburban Chicago, Rolston got hooked on marketing as a teenager, when he made promotional tours for an amusement park dressed up as Bugs Bunny. He moved to Florida at age 20, borrowing his uncle's condo in Sanibel. Then he earned a business degree from the University of South Florida in Tampa while managing a Fowler Avenue record store. He managed Ybor Square and headed the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce in Tampa before landing the top job at Tyrone in 1997. Depending on their experience, mall managers in the Tampa Bay area earn from $70,000 to as much as $135,000 a year. Up to a third of it comes from bonuses for meeting goals such as mall profitability, local tenant leasing, gift certificate sales and selling sponsorships. "Scott's got a job that I would not want to have the weekend before Christmas," said Louis Karamanos, owner of Louie K's Restaurant, a mall deli. Like most area malls, Tyrone is recovering from a down year. But with annual sales of more than $300-million, the 30-year-old mall remains the bulwark of retailing in south Pinellas County. A tourism slump, a weak economy and new competition from International Plaza in Tampa combined to pull down the property's nondepartment store sales to a pace of $368 a square foot through the first 11 months of this year. That's a decline of $12 a square foot. Rolston had been hoping a big Christmas could propel sales to about $400 a square foot. "We met our occupancy goals and leased every kiosk and cart here for the holidays," he said. "We've been showing positive sales numbers since September, but it appears even with a good Christmas we are going to be a little short of $400 for the year." Over the weekend, Rolston's staff of 68 security, clerical and clean-up people fought an uphill battle to stay ahead of a mess created by a mob of milling shoppers that, if they had arrived at once, would be too big to fit into Raymond James Stadium. Two workers do nothing but clean up spills in the vast hallways. Two others do nothing but empty trash cans while two more clean bathrooms. Six people keep the food court clean. Rolston pitches in, bending over to pick up trash shoppers drop on the tile floor or a Chiquita banana sticker somebody slapped on a vending machine. In a typical day he walks the three-quarter mile length of the mall six to eight times. A new wrinkle this year: free combination strollers and shopping carts offered at Burdines and Sears. The mall is still figuring out how to prod the stores to retrieve them. Shoppers leave them scattered in parking lots. Inside Dillard's, a manager was spotted wheeling a Sears cart back toward where it belonged. Another shopper had abandoned a Burdines cart by a Dillard's escalator. "These carts have become a nightmare," Rolston said. Mall security patrols cover a parking lot that was gridlocked by 2 p.m. Saturday. About 5,400 of the 5,600 spaces were filled. Patrols are supposed to maintain order but spend a lot of their day driving shoppers around in search of lost cars. "I personally will handle 15 to 20 of them, but we've got three other guys just as busy," said Joe Burkes, a security supervisor. "People are so embarrassed they'll swear somebody moved their car." Retailers say shoppers have been more patient since the terrorist attacks of 2001. But rude behavior seemed as common as ever in the Tyrone parking lot over the weekend. A pedestrian on a cell phone stood in the middle of a parking place, attempting to hold it while barking directions on how to find him to a friend stuck in traffic somewhere on Tyrone Boulevard. A woman motorist flipped an obscene salute to a driver who cut her off. An SUV with no handicapped parking sticker was parked astride two handicapped parking spaces. Inside the mall in these final days before Christmas Eve shoppers act differently than they do the rest of the year. Their pace is faster. Their stride more purposeful. Their eyes dart about for gift-giving inspiration as they move from store to store. "Panic is setting in. They're on a mission," Rolston said. "There is no lollygagging the final days." But Rolston has yet to start his own Christmas shopping. "I do it all the last day," he said. -- Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.
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