The decision on whether to grant a zoning change and site plan for a developer to build a shopping center at Riggs Road and Arizona Avenue was postponed Monday.

East Valley mall owners are in a tough position. The days of freewheeling consumerism are gone. Shoppers are dodging high-end department stores, in favor of marked-down discount shops. As a result, mall vacancy rates spiked. Many retail chains shuttered stores or fell into bankruptcy, leaving mall owners without rent and looking to fill empty retail space.

Aimlessly wandering the mall once seemed the exclusive pastime of the American teenager. So closely intertwined were adolescents with their local shopping centers, a subculture soon emerged, eventually gaining mainstream society’s attention with movies like the 1995 comedy “Mallrats.”

December 3, 2004

Mesa’s Riverview at Dobson project and the Tempe Marketplace cannot exist side by side, a major accounting firm has concluded.

Team Orthodontics and Jungle Roots Children’s Dentistry have joined forces to open a new location offering coordinated, one-stop pediatric and orthodontic care for patients 18 months to 18 years old. The new location, opening Sept. 15, will be in the San Tan Village mall in Gilbert. Dr. Ken Danyluk of Team Orthodontics and Dr. John Culp of Jungle Roots both operate separate Ahwatukee practices and will continue to do so after opening the San Tan Village location.

As the holidays — that’s Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa — approach, and we haven’t spent enough money for gifts, decor, party clothing and whatever else we need to celebrate properly, East Valley retailers are gearing up to accommodate the last-minute shopping frenzy.

Bass Pro Shops is refuting claims by developers it signed a letter of intent to anchor the planned $172 million Riverview at Dobson project in Mesa.

October 13, 2004

John Parsons was in line at the Target store near Gilbert Road and Baseline Avenue in Mesa before 5 a.m. Friday. "We were at Best Buy before this, and there were already 300 people waiting in line. We counted them. People had beds set up, and there were people sitting in patio chairs they had set up in circles.

No, you don’t have to look twice.

December 6, 2004

Darlene Justus wants business to come back to her north Tempe neighborhood. The North Tempe Revitalization Committee chairwoman is hoping a new look for Sun Plaza, near McKellips and Scottsdale roads, will help.

Santa Monica, Calif.-based Macerich Co. is buying Fiesta Mall in Mesa for $135 million, giving its Phoenix-based Westcor division ownership of every traditional regional mall in the East Valley.

Seven years after selling its minority interest and management of Metrocenter to Simon Property Group, Westcor is back in charge of west Phoenix’s regional mall.

The enclosed, climate-controlled shopping mall has become a quintessential icon of American culture on par with baseball or McDonald’s golden arches.

Developers of the planned Tempe Marketplace say they are on track to break ground on the 200-acre outdoor shopping center early next year in spite of landowners who are refusing to give any ground.

August 30, 2004