Is it a shopping mall or more about being mauled?

I finally got around to heading over to Biddeford, Maine's newest addition, a shopping mall. According to the City:

"A 500,000 s.f. shopping center project is under construction on an 80 acre site on Rte 111 just west of the Maine Turnpike's Biddeford Exit. The $50 million project is being developed by Packard Development, Newton, MA.

"The Shops at Biddeford Crossing" will be anchored by a Lowe's Home Center and a Target and will include 4-5 restaurants and nearly 20 other retail and service businesses.

The project is expected to create 700-800 new jobs and generate an estimated $700,000 in property taxes to the City. Conpletion is scheduled for fall of 2006."

It is bad enough that another pristine field has been turned into a man-made jungle, but this mall, like many others popping up around Maine, is made up of several separate shopping plazas scattered around the 80 acre site. I am sure the developers have some rationale for this kind of layout, but such a design is bad for people's health and the environment.

First, there is no easy way to walk between the different plazas. This will force people to repeatedly move their cars between parking lots. This limits the amount of exercise people can expect during their shopping trip. In comparison, older malls such as the Maine Mall, has 140 stores under one roof and is used by many as a venue for logging walking miles when the weather is less than friendly. A large majority of people around Biddeford (and the nation as a whole) are struggling with excess weight. Every effort should be made to design new shopping developments so that they encourage walking.

Similarly, the added low speed driving between the different stores is going to lead to higher auto emissions. This will increase carbon emissions and increase the ground level air pollution in the vicinity of the mall.

Also, I know traffic congestion is a problem around any shopping mall and that the location selected is convenient to the highway, but I wished there had been some way to locate all of these shops and restaurants at the vacant mills located in the center of the city. Such an investment into these old buildings would have helped clean up this part of the city and surely would have resulted in a more walkable project. And image how much more character this space would have as opposed to the modern buildings.

Finally, do we really need 3 Lowe's building stores within 15 miles of each other? And what about a Target or Wal-Mart every 6 miles? And yet more fast food restaurants which serve food which furthers the obesity problem?

I think there is way too much easy money out there. I am no financial wizard, but I think the house of cards is due to crumble within the next year or two. The US Government keeps printing more money which is not exactly guaranteed by anything of value.

Enough ranting.

On the climate change front, here it is, December 14th and the temperature has topped out at 54F. The existing record of 50F was set in 2001. I will summarize the year to date in a bit. Another warm year is about to come to a close.