Mall in Columbia
From Free net encyclopedia
The Mall in Columbia or Columbia Mall in the planned community of Columbia, Maryland is a large regional shopping mall with five anchor department stores (Sears, JC Penney, Nordstrom, Hecht's, and Lord & Taylor) and over 200 specialty stores. It also contains a 14-screen AMC movie theater and one of the few L. L. Bean retail stores outside of Maine. The Mall is located in the Town Center area of the city. It opened in 1971 with two major anchor stores: Hochschild Kohn's and Woodward & Lothrop (a.k.a. Woodies, which closed in late 1995 and was replaced by J.C. Penney), as well as a McCrory's and Lerner's, which were minor anchors. The Mall has undergone two major expansions since its opening: the Sears wing opened in the early 1980s, and the Lord & Taylor and Nordstrom wings (along with a renovation of the entire Mall and parking lots) opened in the late 1990s. A Cheesecake Factory restaurant opened on the Mall property near the movie theater in late 2005. The mall is operated by General Growth Properties, which acquired it with the Rouse Company in 2004.
In the summer of 2005, it was announced that the Hecht's will become Macy's in 2006.
On June 15, 2002, Andrea Albright, a 24-year-old JC Penney employee who lived in Columbia, was critically injured while riding the store's escalator from the first to the second level. She somehow got her head caught between the escalator rail and a low ceiling. Albright died 10 days later of massive injuries to the brain from lack of oxygen. In 2005, her parents sued the property manager, two design firms, and the escalator company for $5 million.