I picked Pacific City mall in Huntington beach as my site because it is only 10 minutes from my house. The site is taken from the old name of Huntington beach city, which was an ocean front village. It sits across from the Huntington Beach pier and offers a mixture of restaurants, gym, coffee shops, and shopping stores.
Force 1: Retail-tainment
As we can see the old type of malls, which only offer shopping stores like Macys, Jcpenny, are slowly dying and out of favor. There is a rise for a new future type of mall, called retail-tainment.
This new type of mall offers its guests with entertainment, shopping, and locals event options. Shoppers come here not only for shopping, but can also enjoy the food, spending time socializing with others while enjoying the amazing views of the beach. It is a whole new experience that people are rapidly embracing.
Force 2: Green building
The Pacific City mall is built as a green construction. This natural environment can be observed throughout their landscaping, to accent outdoor decor. Mixing between shopping stores and restaurants, there are beautiful green arrangments, wooden walkways with plant pots, give people the relax feeling while visiting. Additionally, the usage of natural materials like wood is very prominent through the complex.
Force 3: Location
Sitting just across from the beach is a prime spot not a lot of places can beat this location. You can sit from the restaurant, enjoy the sunset while having your fish taco, or hanging outside drinking coffee, where there is plenty of outdoor furniture provided that help you relax and enjoy the scenery.
Force 4: Environmental awareness
The building has trash can everywhere, which also has fun signs to remind people to keep the place clean. They also offer priority parking for electric vehicles as an incentive. We can see how they embrace the environmental awareness.
Force 5: Local
Since the outdoor mall is in the beach city, we can see there is an influence of the ocean vibe everywhere, from the deco design to how the local dress up. From the photo, we can see the design of the lights was inspired by ocean waves.
The local people are all in relaxed, chill outfits, taking their time drining their coffee, enjoying the sights of nature.
Final map:
Hi Annie, I am studying your map and have some observations and insights to share. At first I thought Pacific City was the name of the city, only later realizing it was an area within Huntington Beach. My first thought was, this place is amazing! It’s got all those trees signifying green buildings, and the environmental awareness areas I thought must mean they are teaching environments that help people learn. I saw the road and thought that must mean vehicle traffic, but I wondered if that meant people traffic, or how they would get across the street if so. The starfish for “local” I took to mean people who are sunbathing, which I love, but I was also a little confused about the scale of these and I think that’s why I got to thinking about people walking on the high traffic road area. The retail-tainment I took to mean shopping that is meant to be entertaining, and imagined surf clothing shops, bikini stores, and other thematic shopping that would complete the image of “Pacific City”. Lastly, in your inviting blue water, I thought the waves were just waves, and in looking at the legend, I’m not sure what to take from their meaning as “location”. Perhaps its a reference to our continents place in the huge Pacific Ocean?
Hi Tara,
– That’s a good observation. From the perspective of a first-time visitor, it’s hard to understand the context if I put the name of the map as Pacific City. I will make a change to the name of the map.
– By putting the road on the map, my goal was to provide more geographical context so I can highlight the location force.
– The starfish represent the local force, which are things that have beach vibe such as how local people dress up around the area, or how the deco inside the building was designed to fit with the way the building is. I actually had a hard time looking for an icon which can represent this force. At first I chose sunglasses as the icon for location force, then the umbrella. At the end I chose starfish since I think the coral red will balance the color of the map.
– Retailtainment is the industry term, you can find more detail by looking at below link:
https://www.globalrealestateexperts.com/2018/05/retailtainment-the-convergence-of-leisure-entertainment-and-retail/
– To address your last point, I used the ocean as part of the location force to emphasize the uniqueness of this property.
Hi Annie,
I enjoyed your post. I especially liked how you had called out “location” as your force. Looking at the respective map for location, I can see how breathtaking it must be to sit and watch the sunrise while sipping coffee in the morning.
Amazing post Annie. Thanks for providing us with an introduction about the place. I have not been to this mall, and your introduction and the photo of the mall helped me a lot in having a concept of what you are going to talk about.
Thank you. I really like the mall, and part of it because I can enjoy some decent food there with the spectacular ocean view without the exuberant amount of money.
Hi Annie,
I like your concept of retailment, which actually plays really well with the open outdoor space of your map and the decline of the traditional mall. Working in the retail industry myself, we’ve done a lot of strategy work to understand why people prefer outdoor shopping centers more broadly focused on both entertainment as well as shopping. I think what you described here hits this on the head and this is a prime example of why these open concepts are much preferred to malls.
Thanks,
Alex
Hi Annie,
I fell in love with this mall the first time I stumbled upon it in Huntington. I like the point you made about “Retail-tainment” becoming the next big thing after traditional malls. It’s nice that these type of places are catering to the community and offering us a place we can just sit down and relax without feeling the pressure to necessarily buy anything. I can’t help but wonder if the businesses are profiting as much as before with this newer model though. What do you think drives businesses to want to provide free amenities for people?
In addition, I am very interested to see how you portray the style of decor and building in your map. Your last force “locals” is also something that I am fascinated by. I feel that there are so many ways to depict locals and it may be hard to narrow it down to be containable, so I’m intrigued to see what approach you take in depicting them.
Great post, Annie and I can’t wait to see your map. I also picked a retail area and I really like your comment about it being more “retailtainment”. I think it will be interesting to see if we find any similarities. I like that you captured the ocean waves on the lights and connected it to the beach vibe. To John’s question about how to depict retailtainment, I wonder if it will present itself as part of the spacial mapping.
Hi Kathy,
Thank you for your comment. When I am working on this post, I was really curious about how retail areas in different states have evolved. I know in Orange County, there are many retail areas which were reconstructed to fit with the current lifestyle trend.
Regarding your question on how to depict retailtainment, since all the stores and restaurants are all connected, they will be highlighted as a group in the same color.
Hi Annie!
I think a big challenge that you will have is how to map out your “local” force. “Local force” permeates through many aspects of your chosen space and may even overlap with other portions of your forces. Is it found more in some areas than others? How specific do you think will you have to be in this charting (I feel like it would be rather tedious to map out every wave light)?
It will be really interesting to see how you are able to map this idea out!
Hi Christine,
That is a valid point you made. I think the way I framed local force, it is not black and white. It is the vibe of the beach lifestyle you can feel when you are there. It is definitely a challenge if I am trying to map every single wave light. I am planning to highlight the areas that have the stronger vibe local force.
Hi Annie,
I see on your post that you have identified retail-tainment as one of your forces. I have a similar situation, with Macy’s, JCP and Sears all closing their stores in a neighborhood mall already going through re-development to the retail-tainment model. I have identified transformation as my force to recognize this.
My question is how will you show retail-tainment as a force within a map. Is the site evolving still with developments underway or is the site static and considered complete?
Do you show the transformations as what they are? Or do you show the future to be? I guess that would be up to us and how we plan to represent our spaces.
Hi John, I am curious how you map transformation on your force. The retail area construction is complete, however, I still see on the google map the big area behind is still in development. In the next couple year, I am pretty sure there will be more happening around that area.
I am planning to show the present map. I think just like other maps, if there will be any transformation in the future, there should be an updated map.
Hi Annie,
You’ve done a good job for your post of the Pacific City Mall of Huntington Beach. I’ve been there a couple of times and really liked it too. Your observation of the site is spot on. I think the attractions/forces you have described, such as the settings of the non-traditional retail stores, the ocean vibe, and the green building are part of the key attributes of the unique concept of the Mall. I very much enjoyed its beautiful design and amazing atmosphere when I visited there.
Thank you! I am glad you enjoy the mall just like I do. Do you think there will be malls with the same set up in the future?