Observation

On Saturday I got up early to go do some Observations and to conduct a survey at the Fayette Mall. I arrived at about 12PM and the mall was packed. It took me a good 5 minutes of driving around just to find a parking spot in the lot of over 5800 parking spots. I walked in through Sears which is about the center of the mall. Everyone has to walk through this store to get from one side of the mall to the other. As I walked around and wrote down everything I noticed I caught on to a few trends. There was at least 2/3rds of the people shopping were females. Also you could tell a difference in who had money and who didn’t by where they shopped. The people walking out of Abercrombie and Arden B were distinctively wealthier looking then the people that were in stores like Aeropostale. Also I noticed a lot of the people there were younger. (Under 35-40) I only saw a few older people the whole time I was at the mall. This got me to wondering if I go downtown to corner store will I see a trend of elderly people and very few young people. So I conducted my survey and left to go downtown. I asked about 15-20 people about their opinion on if building malls and big stores is good for the community. Over 75% of them all said that it was good. They all said something like “It expands the town and creates jobs.” Or “it keeps us modernized and with the fashion trends of the rest of America.” So after that I left and headed downtown with a local of Lexington. Me and her went to some small self-owned business down town and asked the workers there opinions. They tended to say that for the city it was a good thing because the malls helped spread out the people instead of having them all in one spot but it caused majority of the small businesses to close do to everyone starting to shop elsewhere and they felt that it caused Lexington to be like every other big city and not its own different city. I guess you could say it lost its local culture. Also my hypotenuse was right I did see a lot more older people (age 40+) downtown then I did see at the mall. So after spending a couple hours running around town I have got different out looks on the impact a mall creates on a city.

Research Facts-

The Fayette mall was developed by Richard E. in 1971. The mall contained only a few stores such as Sears, Shillito's and Stewart Dry Goods. In 1982 they argued to expand the mall but it took a total of 5 years to finally get the go ahead on the expansion. In 2001 the mall was brought by CBL & Associates Properties Inc. Fayette Mall's sales for $492 per square foot and is the second-highest among CBL's properties. As of 2007 Fayette Mall featured 1,074,922 square feet of gross leasable area, 111 in-line stores and 5,704 parking spaces on 86.6 acres. There is no room for the mall to expand anymore so for a new store to come in they have to buy a old one out. This accrued because all the land around the mall was quickly brought up and developed into shopping centers. When they first built the mall there was nothing around it all. The road at which it is located on was just a gravel road and if you stood in front of the mall and looked either way you could barely see anything that resembled town at all. This was a big problem at first because everyone was mad that they were tarring down farm land to build a big mall in the middle of nowhere, but in return it became one of the smartest moves Lexington has ever done. It caused people to branch out of the downtown area and go to different parts of town. Due to all the new traffic on the road it ended up causing Lexington to grow tremendously fast because all the land between the mall and downtown Lexington was getting bought up by developers to build new stores and neighborhoods.

Introduction

I’m investigating the Fayette Mall, It has really helped Lexington, Kentucky modernize and grow into a major city in the Bluegrass Region. Being from Frankfort, I would always come to Lexington a lot. We would come to go shopping because of the large selection of stores. Fayette Mall was the main one. Everyone from Frankfort would go to the Fayette mall to buy school cloths and stuff for school dances. After doing a few minutes of research I’ve found out quite a bit about the place. It was built on a 2 lane gravel road back in the early 1970’s. Everyone at the time complained that no one would ever go out there to go to the mall and shop but now its became a huge part of town. A lot of other shopping centers have centered there selves around the mall. There are many perspectives that I can talk about in this paper because there was a lot of conflict caused by tearing down farm land to build a huge building, also there a lot of different opinions about the property as of today about it causing “mom and pop” shops to close. I’m going to interview members of the community and ask them what they think of the existence of the mall and if they think it hurts or helps the community here in Lexington, Kentucky. My goal is to find out more about the history of the Fayette mall and how it has helped mold Lexington in to the great city it is today.

info on the mall-
wikipedia
Fayette Mall website-
Fayette Mall