Open-air strategy.

When it comes to offering black shoppers different options, some retail centers around the country have adjusted their mindsets with varying success. In Milwaukee, Midtown Center, formerly known as Capitol Court mall, has reinvented itself as an urban open-air market, complete with Starbucks, a major grocery store chain, Lowe's, Wal-Mart and three casual dining restaurants: International House of Pancakes, Applebee's and Culver's. It's a major turnaround for the mall, located in a neighborhood that is 75.5 percent black with a median income of $32,126, according to the 2000 Census. It had been in decline for nearly a decade--losing its movie theater, department stores and all but a few retailers by the mid-1990s.

The city's creation of a "Development Incentive Zone"--which allows certain developments to share the city's design aesthetic for such things as landscaping, signposts and pedestrian access--for the mall, along with a partnership between Milwaukee-based development company Boulder Venture and former basketball star Earvin "Magic" Johnson, helped turn Capitol Court into Midtown Center in 2004. It's the only mall available to people living in the city without the time or transportation available to make it to the larger malls in nearby suburbs.

Most people who remember the reputation Midtown had developed over the years--perceived level of violence and low qualities of available merchandise--still refer to it as Capitol Court, proving just how challenging it can be to polish up a tarnished image. Camille Brown, 37, who lives about five miles from the mall, said she shops regularly at Midtown "because it is located in an easily accessible area." Though she points out that she seldom shopped at Capitol Court "due to the unsavory atmosphere."

Prince George's County, Md., a black middle-class suburban area about half an hour from Washington, D.C., seems to have figured out the key to transformation.

According to a June 2006 Washington Post article, residents of the county--which is 40 percent black with a median income of $72,641, according to the 2000 Census--used to be unhappy with the dearth of quality retail options in their area. Along with business leaders and elected officials, they mobilized en masse to let retailers know what they wanted for their neighborhood. It paid off in a big way. Bowie Town Center, which opened in 2001 in Bowie, Md., brought high-end retailers like Ann Taylor Loft, Barnes and Noble, and assorted restaurants to the 684,000-square-foot mall. The mall also incorporated what it calls the "Main Street," or lifestyle environment, similar to the open-air feel that draws customers to places like Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, Ill.

Bowie Town Center, along with Boulevard at the Capital Centre in nearby Largo, Md., also started a retail explosion in the rest of the county. Restaurants, including a Gladys Knight and Ron Winans' Chicken and Waffles, and Cold Stone Creamery, a movie theater, bars, nightclubs and family-oriented options started popping up everywhere. But the growth hasn't stopped there. Multi-use commercial and residential properties are set to open within the next two years in Bowie and adjacent suburbs.

It's a trend that's growing, said Patrice Duker, spokeswoman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, in part because shoppers are changing how much time they spend at malls. "They are being efficient shoppers," she said. "Consumers still make about three trips [to the mall] per month ... but [in] shorter time frames." Lifestyle centers, of which Duker said there were 143 nationwide as of 2006, allow people to move in and out of any given store without walking around a huge enclosed mall for hours at a time.

The Milwaukee and Bowie developments are the kind that Lincoln Mall manager Tracy Munno looks forward to for south suburban Matteson. After returning from the International Council of Shopping Centers conference in June 2006, she said the village is an area "on retailers' radar." "They are embracing areas that are racially diverse and underserved," she said. "We're seeing a tide turn. But a redevelopment of this magnitude doesn't happen over night."

Still, Munno, is hopeful. She proudly reveals her mall's Web site as www.wereserious.com. "I think [Matteson] is a vanguard for this."