Mall

Two underground cable failures in Columbia's Town Center knocked out electrical service yesterday to 248 customers, including part of The Mall in Columbia.Service was restored by 4:09 p.m. to all of the commercial and residential customers affected by the outage, said Darcel Guy, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.The outage, which occurred at 1:31 p.m., cut electrical service to Hecht's and the shops along the two-level section of the mall leading to the department store, said Rodney Renner, the mall's general manager.

HOLLYWOOD -- Director Paul Mazursky may have lined u Woody Allen and Bette Midler as the leads in "Scenes From a Mall," but it sounds like the Stamford (Conn.) Town Center, where most of the filming will take place, is the real star.The dramatic comedy, revolving around the 16th anniversary of a lawyer and his psychologist wife, takes place in one day at the mall.Co-producer and production designer Pato Guzman, Mazursky's longtime collaborator, selected the Stamford Town Center from "over 100" possibilities around the United States for its multilevel "futuristic look," including 900,000 square feet of mirrored escalators, atriums and 132 shops.

Severna Park Mall's transformation from mall to strip shopping center has begun, after months of delays.Workers are landscaping, expanding the parking lot and improving access into the center, said Kevin McCarthy, president of Capitol Management and Consultants, property managers.If the owner, Severna Park Mall Associates, obtains financing, workers will break ground by fall on a $4 million reconstruction, McCarthy said."We're trying to meet the needs of the tenants and the community," he said.

SOWETO, South Africa -- The Dobsonville Shopping Center rises in glorious incongruity from among the rows of matchbox shanties that crawl up and down the rolling hills of Soweto, once one of the the bloodiest battlegrounds in the struggle against apartheid.Now, the presence of the brand-new 68-store mall in this huge black township is evidence that more than the government is changing in the new South Africa.The fact that Soweto's estimated 4 million people have never had a shopping mall is just one of apartheid's many legacies.

Slowly but surely, shopping malls in the Baltimore metropolitan area are boarding the anti-smoking bandwagon. Some have been required by government edict, as in Howard and Anne Arundel counties, while Cranberry Mall in Carroll County and Towson Town Center in Baltimore County have voluntarily erected "No Smoking" signs.Now Baltimore County's seven other major malls have agreed to back a County Council bill that would revoke their exemption from the jurisdiction's anti-smoking laws.This is a wise move by the mall operators.

The Rouse Co. is investing roughly $300 million to expand 13 of its regional malls as part of an effort to boost tenant sales and rental income, company officials told shareholders attending Rouse's annual meeting yesterday."

Business is back to usual at the Harford Mall in Bel Air after an explosion in the mall's electrical room Tuesday afternoon forced the closing of some shops.The mall was evacuated and then closed shortly after the explosion at about 5:30 p.m., said Edward Hopkins, publicinformation officer for the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Co.Firefighters were called to the mall at about 5:15 p.m. to investigate the odor of smoke in the Carpet Fair store, Hopkins said.While firefighters were at the scene, switch-gear equipment in the mall's electric meter room exploded, filling the room with fire and heavysmoke, Hopkins said.

Nearly a year after J. C. Penney opened as Marley Station Mall's third anchor, another national department store has arrived.Sears, Roebuck and Co. began building a two-level, 197,000-square-foot store and automotive center this week. It will be the fourth anchor and the second department store built at the mall since Marley Station opened in 1987. Macy's and Hecht's are the other anchors.Marley Station "has a very strong family orientation, and we want that to continue," said Ed Ladd, general manager.

I'm going to break some new ground today with a hearty recommendation of a carry-out restaurant located in, of all places, a mall. Mazagrill, in the old Annapolis Mall -- which is now know as Westfield Shoppingtown -- was both a surprise and a delight. The small eatery is sandwiched between a Japanese place and a McDonald's in the sprawling mall's food court. Its menu offers a familiar sample of Mediterranean-style skewers and pita dishes, as well as a handful of appetizers. The cook prepared the grilled entrees over an open flame at one end of the kitchen, and the staff had our large order ready promptly.

A summertime trip to the beach often includes an outlet shopping excursion, and the first stop for many travelers has historically been just across the Bay Bridge -- a halfway reprieve spot for those headed to Ocean City or Rehoboth Beach, Del., from Baltimore or Washington. But the shopping landscape on the "Upper Shore" has changed drastically in the last decade. Evolving traffic patterns and highway expansions have hurt retail on both sides of the bridge, leaving whole developments desolate.