Another new mall! Woo-hoo!

Certainly a full Woo, and maybe a Woo and a half. Stony Point Mall (excuse me, "Stony Point Fashion Park") opened a couple of weeks ago, the second new mall to open in the Richmond area in September. They had the misfortune to schedule its opening for the day that Isabel hit - they were actually open for about 2 hours before they shut the place down due to the approaching hurricane - and were without power and water during their entire Grand Opening weekend. Not that this stopped loads of people from checking out the mall then, and watching the Grand Opening entertainment.

Another mall with the new concept of "open air" malls (well, okay, perhaps not so new, after all: When the Seven Corners shopping center opened in Falls Church, Va., in the mid-1950's, it was open air, but covered. Once you got into the area with a roof, you weren't going to be rained on. They enclosed the walkways sometime later, perhaps during the 1970's, to keep up with the newer malls, like Tyson's Corner), this one seems to implement the concept better than Richmond's other new mall, Short Pump. Perhaps it's because the mall is only one level, and perhaps it's because the walkway between the shops looks more like a small town shopping district, with paving stones and park benches, but you do get more of a feeling that this is something other than a shopping mall.

The stores are shopping mall stores, nothing terribly special. Like Short Pump, this mall has some first-time-in-Richmond stores. Also like Short Pump, the restaurants will be the mall's saving grace. P.F. Chang's for chinese food, Fleming's steakhouse and wine bar (which passes my quick-and-dirty wine quality test by having Cakebread on their wine list), a "cheesecake bistro" (which sounds like fun), Champp's, Brio's Tuscan Grill, among others. (Not all of them are open yet.) And there seems to be a good connection between the parking lots and the nearby highway.

On the other hand, the open-air design has flaws, in that you can't walk between stores without exposing yourself to the elements. There's no continuous awning or other covering that would allow you to walk the length of a "block" of stores, let alone the entire length of the mall. Fine, if it's a nice day; lousy, if it's raining, or it's 97 degrees, or 24 degrees. Do mall designers not understand that people would fill in this blank - "It's cold and rainy. I think I'll go ______" - with "to the mall and shop" means "shopping at a mall where I can get out of the elements" and not "shopping at a mall where I can revel in the elements"? Apparently, they don't. And I'll take off points because the mall doesn't have a movie theater, either with it or nearby.

Summary: High points: Actual character in the design and implementation of the shopping center; good restaurants. Low points: Incomplete implementation, such that you wouldn't want to shop there if it's raining, snowing, too hot, or too cold. No movie theaters.