I Met My Future at the Mall

By Ann Hood
Providence, R.I.

I GREW up at the Warwick Mall. When it opened in 1970, I was a skinny 13-year-old in bell-bottoms, scheming to meet my heartthrob, the singer Bobby Sherman. Although I lived less than a mile away, the mall, with its bubbling fountain and fancy department stores, felt a world apart, as if I could step out of my economically depressed mill town straight into some bright unknown future.

Every Saturday, I walked over the bridge that spanned the frothy brown Pawtuxet River, past the Dunkin’ Donuts and into the mall, where my friends and I spent all day going in and out of stores, buying cheeseburgers and 45s and spritzing ourselves with perfume.

There was a Filene’s on one end and a Jordan Marsh on the other. And in between, the Outlet, Peerless, the York Steak House — it offered exotic dishes like steak teriyaki and had a salad bar (the first I’d ever seen) — a Woolworth’s that sold everything from sewing kits to parakeets and, best of all, a bookstore.

I’d been reading since I was 4, but had never stepped into an actual bookstore before Waldenbooks. It was there I bought my first book, “Love Story.” Before I gave it to my cousin for her birthday, I read the entire thing, holding it half open so as not to crack the binding.

Eventually I got older, moved away and, like most of the magical things of youth, the mall lost its pull on me. While I was gone, recessions and unemployment took their toll on my home state. I got used to shopping in big cities and the mall seemed sadder and shabbier every time I came back to Rhode Island to visit.

But then, in the early ’90s, I moved home. The mall had just been renovated. It still wasn’t anything fancy, but it became a convenient place to take my young children to meet my parents for lunch. There was a carousel now in the food court, and for a few dollars we could put Sam and Grace on it again and again while we sat grinning at them amid the smells of Chinese food, pretzels and cinnamon. In this way, I reclaimed the mall, making it my own again.

Last March, I was out of town when the Pawtuxet River overflowed and flooded the neighborhoods along its banks. As I watched the news, images of the Warwick Mall appeared. Cars in the parking lot were submerged. Water racing around the corner of Macy’s moved so quickly it had white caps.

Already hurting from the effects of the economic collapse, my hometown was now being destroyed by the worst flood in 100 years. It seemed to me then that all of the dreams and hopes of my youth were being washed away, as if nature was speaking directly to me, reminding me of all I had lost in the four decades since the Warwick Mall first opened its doors to me.

But Rhode Island’s state motto, after all, is “Hope.” Later that day, Aram Garabedian, one of the managing partners of the mall, surveyed the damage with garbage bags on his feet. “I was born and brought up in Rhode Island,” he told me later on the telephone. “I know what the mall means to Rhode Islanders.” He had hung banners around the mall, above the waterline, that read, “Count on us.”

Eighty stores closed, 1,000 jobs were lost and the damage was estimated at around $80 million. But the Warwick Mall rebuilt itself again. By August, 25 stores had reopened, including Target and Old Navy. Slowly, others followed. This spring, Macy’s finally reopened its doors. Although some vacancies remain, Mr. Garabedian told me he has no doubt that they too will be filled. “W.M. III will exceed II and I,” he said.

The other day I went to the mall for the first time since before the flood. The floors in the concourse were shiny and the stores looked as bright and new as they did when I was 13. Slowly, I walked the same path I walked every Saturday of my teenage years. I could almost see my friend Jane working checkout at Woolworth’s and Debbie scooping ice cream at Newport Creamery. I could see Beth beside me at Jordan Marsh, our long hair hanging straight and loose down our backs, our skin smelling of Love’s Baby Soft perfume.

Standing in my own footprints, I could almost see the future still: even now, after everything, bright.