(Excerpt) A. Alfred Taubman, now 80, put a lot of thought into making shopping centers easier to get around. And that’s a good thing, given that he’s the one that made them a lot bigger in the first place.When The Taubman Co. opened the 2 million-square-foot Woodfield Mall, in Schaumburg, Ill., in September 1971, it was billed as the world’s largest enclosed, multilevel shopping center. (Today Woodfield measures 2.7 million square feet.) Considered by many to be the first super-regional mall, the Chicago-area project cost $90 million ($414 million, in today’s dollars).
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I agree with Cora on the Gap and cringe at the thought that Taubman boasts about helping them to be apart of the mall staple. And Banana Republic, another place where the clothes are neither cheap nor interesting. But from that aside, clothes were always a reason for me to go to the mall especially mid-grade, reasonable and nice clothing places like Jean Nicole and Lerner. Now it's the choice of the department store misses which almost always looks like over priced old lady wear or crappy cheap "youthful" places with clothes that ellude taste and sophistication. And don't even get me started on some of those overpriced chain boutiques (Bebe, Cache, etc) I have seen at upscale malls like Old Orchard.
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