Oklahoma-born Gerri Von Frellick reached Denver 16 years ago with a $2 bill and $643,000 in debts, the wreckage of his overextended Texas construction company. Since then, Von Frellick, 51, has amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune by becoming one of the nation's more venturesome developers of shopping centers (two in Denver, one each in Dallas, San Antonio, Amarillo, Texas, and Boulder, Colo.). Last week, in the Denver suburb of Englewood, more than 5,000 workmen labored in three shifts around the clock to finish his latest and largest creation, 75-acre, $50 million Englewood-Cinderella City, in time for its scheduled March 7 opening. On the other side of town, Perl-Mack Construction Co., Denver's largest builder of tract homes, was putting the final touches on 73-acre, $20 million Northglenn Mall, due to open a week later.
Though Northglenn will be the Denver area's fourth major new shopping center in two years, that splurge only symbolizes the vast change that has overtaken retailing. In the past ten years the number of shopping centers in the U.S. and Canada has quadrupled to 10,900. Last year they accounted for an estimated 39% of retail sales. And shopping-center experts predict that nearly 80% of North America's new retail space will go into the 650 shopping centers being built and the thousands more being expanded this year at a cost of $4.3 billion.
Zoos & Pumpkins. By combining glamour and one-stop convenience, the shopping centers have become the focus not only of retailing activity but of much community culture and recreational life. In addition to restaurants, banks, a post office, movie theaters, skating rinks and often a free auditorium for club meetings or amateur plays, the centers entice auto-borne families with a busy schedule of attractions. There are fashion shows and symphony concerts, pumpkin-judging contests and senior proms, reptile-club snake exhibits and "petting zoos" (for animals tame enough for tots to touch). Porpoises sometimes frolic in the 80-ft. pool at the King of Prussia Plaza near Valley Forge, Pa., and esprit runs so high that clerks don antique costumes and vie for prizes at the annual summer "sidewalk" sale.
Much of that country-fair atmosphere originated with the trend toward enclosed, generally glass-roofed malls. Inside, developers plant tropical gardens dotted with benches, fountains and even aviaries. New Jersey's Delaware Township even changed its name to Cherry Hill, after that of its shopping center, whose verdant mall draws sightseers and customers from cities 100 miles away.