Mixing Marts and Theme Parks : Knott’s Berry Farm plans to open a Camp Snoopy in a $600-million enclosed shopping mall.

Well, it had to happen.

Two of America’s most popular institutions have finally gotten together--shopping malls and theme parks. And they’re doing it in a major way.

The largest enclosed shopping mall in the United States will be mated with Knott’s Camp Snoopy, the nation’s largest enclosed theme park. The $600-million project, called Mall of America, will total 4.2 million square feet--about the size of 78 football fields--when its first phase opens in the fall of 1992.

The project, in Bloomington, Minn., represents the first outside venture for Knott’s Berry Farm, the privately owned theme park in Buena Park. If successful, Camp Snoopy could become the first of several similar projects across America for Knott’s.

Camp Snoopy also marks the first major combination of entertainment and retail concepts in this country--a show-biz approach that many developers believe represents the new generation of malls.

“You’re really changing the shopping center into a community center,” said Bill Dawson, president of Resort Parks International, a Los Angeles-based leisure development firm. “It’s fulfilling the needs of the consumer. And the more needs you fulfill, the longer people stay.” And shop.

When it comes to fulfilling needs, Mall of America has everything but an undertaker. The project--which plans a ground-breaking ceremony today for Flag Day--will have eight anchor stores, up to 800 shops, a health club, 100 restaurants and nightclubs, an ice rink and miniature golf, 18 theaters and, of course, Camp Snoopy. To really browse its corridors will take about three days, according to the Ghermezians, four reclusive Iranian-born brothers who own the project.

Phase One alone totals 2.8 million square feet in gross leasable space. (Gross leasable area includes shops, storage, food courts and Camp Snoopy, but not non-leasable space such as corridors and parking lots.)

By comparison, the nation’s largest mall now is Del Amo Fashion Plaza in Torrance, with 2.65 million square feet of gross leasable area. South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, ranks No. 2, with almost 300 stores in 2.6 million square feet, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, an industry trade group.

The miles of aisles in Mall of America’s Phase One total roughly two-thirds of what is on the drawing boards. Long-term plans make the complex sound more like a city than a mall. The project’s two major developers--Melvin Simon & Associates and the Ghermezians’ Triple Five of Minnesota Inc., based in Edmonton, Canada--have approval to add up to 5.3 million square feet, including three high-rise hotels, office space and residential buildings.

When it is completed, Mall of America will be second in size only to the West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, a 5.2-million-square-foot Ghermezian extrava ganza said to be the largest enclosed shopping center in the world.

Sales at the 8-year-old mall are a very impressive $300 per square foot, according to executives with Melvin Simon. But at the shopping center trade group’s recent conference, the Edmonton Mall got poor reviews from developers who say it does not seem to draw hordes of customers and caters mostly to people buying middle-of-the-road, lower-priced merchandise.

7-Acre Theme Park

But things will be different in Minnesota, Simon executives say. For one thing, Mall of America is expected to serve bag-toting shoppers from a surrounding community of 4 million. That’s four times the population base of West Edmonton.

Another big difference is Camp Snoopy, which will be located on two floors in the center of the mall. The seven-acre theme park will include 16 of the most popular attractions at Knott’s Berry Farm--all presided over by an eight-foot look-alike of the famous beagle on top of a 60-foot fountain.

Knott’s $70-million “entertainment component” will be the first major theme park built inside a retail center. Others--such as the behemoth West Edmonton Mall--have amusement parks, but they were added in stages, giving a scrambled, hodgepodge effect.

While it’s still too early to project revenue, Knott’s is betting that it can’t lose. After all, “you’re putting something into a facility that is going to deliver 40 million people to your front door every single year,” said Stuart Zanville, Knott’s spokesman.

Knott’s and the mall developers hope that the marriage will bring together the best of both shopping malls and theme parks: crowds and money. The strategy seems to have worked at similar projects.

At the Woodbine Center north of Toronto, adding a one-acre indoor children’s park with 11 rides brought about 15% in additional sales, said Hermann Kircher, president of Larry Smith & Associates, Toronto-based marketing research consultants who did studies for Mall of America.

At the West Edmonton Mall, features such as Ferris wheels, a huge aquarium and a church have boosted sales 35% to 40% above what they would be if there were no razzle-dazzle in the retail, according to Nadir Ghermezian, managing director of Triple 5 Corp.

One reason is that by adding flashy rides and shows, malls lure customers from hundreds of miles--compared to an ordinary mall that attracts shoppers from say, up to 10 miles away, Ghermezian said. And once in the mall, entertainment goes a long way toward keeping customers there up to two times longer, some retail experts say.

What mall theme parks won’t guarantee is that people who will pay to play are also the ones who will plunk down money for a Givenchy gown. “It’s the repeat customer who uses the entertainment facility. And that customer doesn’t (necessarily) spend much” on high-priced, high-profit apparel, said Kircher, the consultant.

If all goes as planned, Mall of America should have sales averaging more than $400 per square foot in its first year, Nadir Ghermezian said. That number is more than double the national average of $166.26 and probably overly optimistic, according to industry experts.

Whether Mall of America can reach--let alone sustain--those numbers remains a serious question.

“The question is longevity. What happens after the carrousel gets old?” said Dawson of Resort Parks International.

Hooker Corp., the Australian retailer and developer, is wondering the same thing. In March, Hooker opened the 1.8 million-square-foot Forest Fair Mall in Cincinnati, which includes 100,000 square feet of entertainment.

Splashy features like a miniature golf course, batting cages and bumper cars have been “very successful,” said Greg Glass, president of the Atlanta, Ga.-based, LJ Hooker Developments division. “Entertainment in malls is here to stay.”

Even so, Glass acknowledged that Hooker Corp. would consider selling Forest Fair for the right offer.

“The question is how to keep giving the customers what they want,” Glass added. “People in this country are very fickle, and what’s hot today isn’t hot tomorrow.”

So will today’s entertainment satisfy tomorrow’s shoppers? “I think the jury’s still out,” Glass said.