Reviving Main Street: some retailers and developers are seeking to escape urban sprawl, and return to the days when people could gather in a community location, window shop, wave to their neighbors, and generally feel good about the place they’d chosen to live.

Examining the shopping center industry’s response after the 9/11 attacks. Many centers chose to forego Halloween celebrations, while most others proceeded with caution.

As part of its grand re-opening, Willow Grove Park aided charity by auctioning tabletop-sized carousel horses that were decorated by celebrities. The horses were replicas of the mall’s new carousel, a key attraction and visual focal point of the renovation. The event saw sales rise 40% over the previous year, food merchants reported an average sales increase of 90%, and more than $26,000 was raised to benefit cancer prevention.

Livingston Mall’s “Science Circus” and “Stargazer” events showed kids how fun science could be, helping to increase its club membership by 350 people.

Southglenn Mall became a sponsor of Freedom Dogs, a non-profit agency that rescues dogs from shelters and trains them to assist the physically disabled in their day-to-day lives.

Southgate Shopping Centre collected women’s business outfits that they no longer needed, and donated them to others seeking to enter the workforce. The center also arranged for haircuts, manicures, and facials.

Oxford Valley Mall’s 31-member teen board set up a haunted house in a vacant space, in order to raise money and food for the Salvation Army.

Grand Teton Mall implemented a computer logging system to track items lost by shoppers.

The American Cancer Society and St. Charles Towne Center recently partnered to better educate the public about the disease and raise money for the organization’s research.

Celebrating Canada Day 1995, Queen’s Quay Terminal and a custom-design T-shirt store launched “Starworks for Kids” to benefit Kids Help Phone.