Shopping and Services

shopping center, a concentration of retail, service, and entertainment enterprises designed to serve the surrounding region. The modern shopping center differs from its antecedents—bazaars and marketplaces—in that the shops are usually amalgamated into one encompassing structure. The first modern shopping center, the Country Club Plaza, opened in Kansas City, Mo., in 1922. By 1956, when the first enclosed mall, designed by Victor Gruen, opened in Edina, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, about 2,000 shopping centers had been built. The so-called malling of America peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when approximately 60 large malls were built annually; over 100 were built annually in some years during that period. In comparison, only about 30 large malls were built in 1998. Shopping centers accounted for about 76% of all nonautomotive retail sales in the United States in 2003.