Jackson Free Press

When the four young women arrived at Metrocenter Mall Friday, Oct. 25, just after dark, they didn't expect to be carded at the door. Casually dressed in sweats and sneakers, Renata Davis, 20; Stacey Swana, 25; and Danielle Baldwin, 15; came with Andreal Davis, 18, to get her infant daughter's ears pierced. But when they reached the entrance next to Ruby Tuesday's, they met a white-shirted security guard in a big black hat and a member of mall management who asked for their IDs. The weekend before, Metrocenter had launched a new curfew, called the Family First Guardian Policy, that requires people 17 and under to be escorted by a parent or legal guardian from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday nights.

The young women, all African American, didn't know about the curfew. Only Andreal had brought her driver's license, and she was the only one security would allow through the doors.

"It's dumb and stupid," Andreal said a couple minutes later. "Jackson is burnt up, man." She added, "It's mostly young people who come and spend money here." She added that there was nothing in the mall harmful enough—like liquor, drugs or adult stores—to require young people to have to show IDs to get in. She said they like to go to the mall regularly on the weekend to shop and walk around. "It's the only time young people come to the mall," Andreal said.

The four all disputed the notion that the mall had been a threatening place on the weekend. "This is not 'the club,'" added Stacey, who says she is 25 and looks it. She said she isn't coming back to Metrocenter Mall; she'll go to Northpark Mall on County Line Road instead, where there is no age restriction for customers.

Technically, 15-year-old Danielle, a basketball player at Murrah High School in North Jackson, was the only one of them the policy should have applied to. But the mall can require IDs of anyone security guards think could be under 18. Still, Danielle was as annoyed as her elders. "I don't like it, and I ain't coming back," she said just before they returned to their car to drive to a mall in another county.

And that's exactly what has many Metrocenter businesses worried. "Has it hurt my business? Probably so. Has it hurt customer satisfaction and caused inconvenience? Absolutely," said Donald Garforth, who with his wife Jeanne has owned the Gingiss Formalwear franchises in both Metrocenter and Northpark for 24 years. Garforth is trying to be optimistic about the policy, which he found out about a week before it was launched. The mall's owner, the Dallas, Texas-based Coyote Management, says it spent a year developing its plan. The company also owns malls in Columbus, Miss., Sarasota, Fla., and Wichita Falls, Texas, but has not instituted curfews at those properties.

Garforth's young clients, especially 16- and 17-year-olds, can't drop by after school on Fridays to pick up their tuxedos for homecoming and other formal events, which inconveniences both them and their parents, he said. Many are going to his Northpark store, instead, but Garforth worries about losing some of them to his competition.

Coyote is assuring nervous mall merchants that the policy will start paying off within six to eight weeks when more adults and families start crowding into the malls on the weekends for holiday shopping. But Garforth isn't waiting that long to do his own intelligence. He is conducting a written survey of other mall merchants to get their opinions; so far, about 60 percent of those who have responded say they are against the policy as adopted. Garforth is offering them four options to vote on: (1) Leave the policy as is; (2) change the starting time from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.; (3) get rid of the policy, but increase mall security; or (4) go back to the way it used to be. Garforth's first choice is to get rid of the policy, but increase security—an interim step that most malls around the country take in lieu of instituting age restrictions. Many worry about losing potential long-term customers; teens, after all, are one of the most coveted marketing targets, spending upward of $90 billion a year in the U.S.

"I'm stuck right now with the worst option," Garforth said. "I hope and pray something gives a little bit before prom season comes around." He gets 50 percent of his annual business during prom months, and hopes that the mall at least will consider changing the time to 6 p.m.—the typical time for such escort policies around the country, incuding at two malls in Minnesota and Tennessee that Coyote says are the models for their policy.

But merchants such as Garforth may be in for a hard fight.

'It Was My Idea'
Coyote regional manager Nina Holbrook takes full credit for the policy—"It was my idea"—and vows that it will not change at all. Standing outside Camelot Music amid palm trees in a near-empty mall at 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, Holbrook explained her decision to start the policy earlier than other malls with similar escort policies: "That's when children get out of school," she said simply. The policy will not change, she said, in any form or fashion. She pointed to Camelot, which she said has seen increased business with the policy. (One of the store's managers, who asked that her name be withheld, said later that the store had had one good weekend and one bad since the curfew started. She hopes the policy will help stop shoplifting.)

Holbrook reiterated the company's assurance that business would start increasing again within six to eight weeks. Since Coyote bought the 1.25-million-square foot Metrocenter in 1997, it has tried to build the mall up to rival Northpark. In the meantime, Holbrook said, there is "no mechanism" for assisting businesses that cater mostly to young people, whose sales are dropping.

Chick-fil-A, in the mall's Food Court, is one of those businesses. Typically at 4:15 on a Friday afternoon, the counter would be hopping with kids just out of school dropping by for food before going home or back for sports practice. Not this time. Two cleancut Jim Hill High School football players, who asked not to be identified as they ordered their sandwiches, were in the mall unescorted because one of their uncles works in Sears. They don't like the policy. "They're definitely losing business," the nephew, 16, said. "In an hour, it'll be completely empty in here."

Joseph Richburg, manager of Chick-fil-A, said that teens definitely like to hang out in the Food Court, but he didn't think the atmosphere in the mall was threatening. And the policy is certainly affecting his business. "We're definitely seeing a downturn," he said. "Our sales are slow." He had seen a few more families the weekend before, but said it may have been because of the "curiosity factor." The mall owners, he said, are promising more traffic soon, and he is "guardedly optimistic." However, he doesn't think such a policy is needed. "If I had my preference, I'm kind of against it altogether. But 6 to 9 would be better." He added that the suddenness of the announcement "took a lot of us back." The kids' policy "suddenly went from ground zero to 10,000 feet," he said.

It would be easy to assume that Coyote Management instituted the new weekend age requirement—perhaps the most stringent in the country—in order to make the mall safer. You might think that some young people were endangering the lives of each other or older customers. But that's not true.

"The mall is safe. The mall has always been safe," Holbrook said. "Metrocenter is probably one of the safest places in all of Hinds County, and the tri-county area, come to think of it. The problem is, there's a perception out there that we've tried for years to overcome. But customers see 1,000 kids in the Food Court, and perception gets out, and it's harder to overcome. Perception is reality to some people." Indeed, Holbrook added, she knew of only two scuffles in the Food Court in the last year. But, still, the mall shouldn't be a "babysitter" for parents who drop their kids off for hours, she said, adding that the mall wants to attract both new businesses and more customers from places like "Clinton, Pearl and Brookhaven" on the weekends, the "two best shopping days" of the week.

Instead of committing violence, the young people had been gathering in groups with some using foul language, and "running in and out of stores," Holbrook said. She declined to say how many security guards Coyote had employed before the new policy, but confirmed that eight had been added to the weekend shifts to man the doors and check IDs. Without giving exact numbers, security chief Ronnie Hendrick later said he usually had six or eight officers on duty before the policy; now it takes up to 16 to enforce the policy. Coyote hires security from a Chattanooga company, as well as off-duty Jackson police and Hinds County deputies. "The only time they get involved is if we have a problem," Holbrooke says of the police officers. The new policy says that any young violator caught on the property can be arrested for trespassing, but that had not happened as of press time.

The mall's policy does not apply to the actual businesses themselves, only the common areas that belong to the mall. The major department stores—McRae's, Dillard's and Sear's—are not restricting youth access to their stores, and they have their own entrances. Kids have to walk through the mall's territory, though, to get to other businesses such as Diamond Jim's, an arcade. Customer-service representative Warren Torey said the arcade can be near-empty during the restricted hours. But, he said, parents can drop their kids there and go shopping. "Security can't come in here unless we let them," he said. "They just should have increased security; this mall is propped up mostly by teenage kids. They went a little overboard with it."

Many malls, including Northpark, have chosen to institute a clear code of conduct and increase security to enforce the rules, a strategy that can work well—and not alienate young people or the merchants who sell to them. In October 2001, the International Council of Shopping Centers told mall owners to use curfew policies only "with care, and only after other avenues have been pursued." Security personnel should be trained to apply the policies fairly and if the mall chooses to try a curfew policy, it should publicize it well in advance of its start time. In Metrocenter's case, the mall merchants learned of the policy about the time the public did, Holbrook said—and that was six days before it began. Still, she maintains that the mall had no other choice. "We have tried for five years. To us, this was a last resort."

A matter of race?
Holbrook said she got the idea from Chattanooga, Tenn., where she used to live and work. In March 2001, the Hamilton Place mall announced that nobody under 18 could be there after 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights without a parent or legal guardian. She also points to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn., which has a similar policy for young people 16 and under that also starts at 6 p.m.

Although neither are as extreme as Metrocenter's, both of those polices have been extremely controversial, bringing charges of both age and race discrimination from groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Urban League to the National Youth Rights Association. The Minnesota Urban League denounced the Mall of America's policy for targeting all young black kids for the behavior of a few. "When you talk about the possibility of instituting a policy that clearly restricts a certain group of people (more) disproportionately than others, that is a racist policy," then Urban League President Gary Sudduth told the media.

Many mall curfew policies are indeed put into place in malls, such as Metrocenter, where large numbers of children of color—typically African American or Hispanic—go to hang out. Often, as at Metrocenter, actual acts of violence are rare, but some customers fear large groups of often-boisterous kids. In turn, some malls try to keep the young people from gathering in order to overcome the perception of danger, fair or not.

That approach irks many civil libertarians. "These fears of kids are often based on some kind of cultural misunderstanding or conflict," said Damon Hewitt, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York. "There's got to be a race dynamic. People don't tend to be afraid of people who look like them unless they have a reason to be." Those irrational fears are, in turn, perpetuated by policies that punish kids whether or not they've done anything wrong, he said. In essence, the policy itself convinces people that the kids are bad.

Many children's advocates say such policies are akin to laws and "whites only" business restrictions of yesteryear that kept blacks and other minorities from participating fully in society and commerce. "We find it discrimination, just as Jim Crow laws and such discriminated against blacks in the South. It's never OK to discriminate against somebody because of their age, race or gender; it's not a factor in who they are and what they do," said Alex Koroknay-Palicz, the 21-year-old executive director of the National Youth Rights Association in Washington, D.C. His group is targeting Hamilton Place in Chattanooga, organizing youth to speak out against the curfew policy there. Koroknay-Palicz was shocked that Jackson's Metrocenter readily admits that the policy is about perception. "They're not even saying that youth are causing crime. That's really bad; you can't get any more blatant discrimination than that," he said.

'The city was not involved'
Holbrook said the mall's policy is not about the race of the children who are hanging out there. "That is definitely not true. This has nothing to do with that. Kids are kids," she said. The regional manager said that Coyote spent a year consulting with representatives of the city, the police department, the sheriff's department and the business community. The company also conducted focus groups in the community that included "African-American mothers, teachers and political people." She added, "We wanted to make sure the people in Jackson and Hinds County wanted and needed this." She said they did. "We're the only mall in Hinds County; it's a huge tax base for the city of Jackson and the county. It's a big thing for the city."

The focus groups were not publicized to the community at large, and Holbrook declined to share the names of the participants for possible interviews. "I'm not giving out that information," she said.

At an Oct. 11 press conference, Holbrook was backed by several prominent Jacksonians, many African American, including: Jackson Police Chief Robert Moore, Hinds County Sheriff Malcolm McMillin, Rev. Jesse Sutton, Jackson Chief Administrating Officer Otha Burton Jr., Al East and Jack Bethany of East Ford, and Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr.

"The mayor was always involved with this from the get-go," Holbrook told the Free Press. "He was one of the first people we talked to about it."

The mayor's office takes a different stance. "The city was not involved," said public information officer Chris Mims. He said there has been no written correspondence or documentation about mall problems between the shopping center and the city. Later that day, the mayor faxed a statement to the Free Press to explain his position: "I recognize the management of Metrocenter Mall's right as a private entity to initiate and enforce their new policy to have youth chaperoned during certain periods. … Although the Metrocenter has made a business decision that directly involves the youth of Jackson, the larger issue is that many youth feel that they don't have enough activities in Jackson." The mayor said he is forming a task force to find alternatives for young people who can no longer gather in the mall. "But the City can't do it alone. We are very interested in getting the private sector involved," Johnson said.

Holbrook said the mall would help the mayor's effort, but "not necessarily monetarily." She added, "Being civic-minded, we are willing to help if they want; we would support what they do for the kids."

Legal discrimination
There is a difference, constitutionally speaking, between discrimination by a city or county government and a private entity such as Metrocenter. Most courts have held that malls are, indeed, private and can legally institute such age-dependent policies, although some courts, such as in California, have held that malls are public spaces that cannot discriminate. Some states, including Florida and Michigan, have age-discrimination statutes that prohibit such policies. Mississippi does not, however.

"There's not a law that says a mall can't put a curfew on kids," said Jackson civil-rights attorney Robert McDuff, who has argued discrimination cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. "The Constitution applies to governments, not private entities, which have more leeway than the government to keep certain people out." Even private businesses, though, cannot discriminate based on categories such as race and sex, thanks to laws passed by Congress since the 1960s. "If you could prove that race is the motive, then it would be illegal," McDuff added.

But with mall curfews, even though they are disproportionately placed in malls where young people of color hang out, it is hard to prove racial discrimination because the stated policy is aimed at all young people, regardless of race. "They would say white kids can't come in there, either, and that makes it difficult to prove race is the motivation," McDuff said.

Still, legal or not, Metrocenter's policy is shocking to many in its scope. "I've never seen anything this extreme," McDuff said. "A mall is like what the town square used to be. It's where people go to hang out, see people, be involved in commerce."

It still can be that place—but often only for legal adults. If young people and concerned adults challenge such policies, however, they will stop, Koroknay-Palicz advises. "People just don't question it; we accept as normal that young people are second-class citizens."

Certainly, it's the mall's legal prerogative to keep out a class of current and future patrons, but should they? Only their customers, and merchants, know for sure.
Donna Ladd is the editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press.

Previous Comments

ID

76684

Comment

Do you truly believe that Coyote Management would put this policy into effect if it was going to be bad for business? They've owned the mall since '97 and most certainly wouldn't have made the change if business was booming. The mall is a private business. They are not responsible for providing a meeting place for the youth of the area. Northpark has chosen to address similar concerns in one fashion and Metrocenter in another. This isn't a youth discrimination issue and isn't an issue of (lack of) adherence to ISCS philosophies. And it certainly is not a matter of race. This is a business decision and like all business decisions one which I am sure Coyote will monitor closely. And like all business decisions if it doesn't improve the bottom line it probably will be changed again.

Author

Smitty

Date

2002-11-08T11:15:17-06:00

ID

76685

Comment

To clarify, Smitty, I don't think anyone is arguing that this policy is bad business for the mall itself; you're probably absolutely right that the Dallas company that owns the mall is making business decisions that it believes will benefit the company. But it seems that some of the individual businesses, owned and/or run by Jacksonians, that weren't consulted much in advance are the ones concerned about their own bottom lines. There are a number of different smaller businesses here at issue, not just one big one, and the Jackson Free Press is very concerned about the small-business climate in Jackson. You are correct that there does not seem to be illegal discrimination at play here, as the story clearly explains. To my knowledge there is no evidence of unconstitutional racial discrimination in this case, although many people believe that such policies are more often instituted in places where young people of color gather, all of which the story discusses. Thanks for reading.

Author

ladd

Date

2002-11-08T17:36:29-06:00

ID

76686

Comment

Of coarse it is not bad policy for the mall itself, they have less laud kids to put up with and they are happy as long as stores pay their rent due by 5th. But this is a disservice to mallís clients ñ the stores and brands, who spend tons of money on advertisement to attract people to come to their stores and at least see their product and be aware of it. Believe it or not, people who walk into store and donít spend money are still good for business. Not only they might come later to buy, but also tell others what and where they saw. Unruly kinds running around the mall know damn well what they want for Christmas this year. What could it be??? 9 out of 10 times the junk they saw in Metrocenter. I care less about childrenís rights; the stores and the brands are the ones getting shafted on this one. Bad, bad, bad, bad policy!

Author

Sharp Photo

Date

2002-11-08T20:14:27-06:00

ID

76687

Comment

The fact of the matter is that no businesses at Metrocenter have gone out of business specifically because of this change in policy. This whole matter is between Coyote and their customers - the businesses doing business at Metrocenter. You can blow this whole non-issue up and make a huge deal out of it but that attention, for one minute, doesn't make Metrocenter a better place nor does it aid the businesses (some small but many also are national chains) doing business at Metrocenter. While I'll provide the JFP with some small modicum of applause for its altruistic concerns over the health and welfare of the small business owners of the metro area, and Metrocenter specifically, I still find the whole premise for this article problematic and focused on searching for an "issue" that doesn't yet exist.

Author

Smitty

Date

2002-11-09T00:18:49-06:00

ID

76688

Comment

The fact of the matter is that no businesses at Metrocenter have gone out of business specifically because of this change in policy. This whole matter is between Coyote and their customers - the businesses doing business at Metrocenter. You can blow this whole non-issue up and make a huge deal out of it but that attention, for one minute, doesn't make Metrocenter a better place nor does it aid the businesses (some small but many also are national chains) doing business at Metrocenter. While I'll provide the JFP with some small modicum of applause for its altruistic concerns over the health and welfare of the small business owners of the metro area, and Metrocenter specifically, I still find the whole premise for this article problematic and focused on searching for an "issue" that doesn't yet exist.

Author

Smitty

Date

2002-11-09T00:18:57-06:00

ID

76689

Comment

It is discrimination plain and simple. It is no different than prohibiting blacks or women or anyone else based on a characteristic that they have no control over. In Maryland the anti-discrimination laws include age although they have according to my knowledge yet to be tested. If that mall wants to send a good chunk of their business elsewhere than I guess that is their perogative since there is no law stopping them. If they want to alienate thousands of current and future customers, permanently. Do you think a whole lot of African Americans patronized businesses that had previously barred them in the years shortly after the end of legal segregation? Probably not. First of all because an entirely different economy had been set up by blacks to serve blacks but also because people are unlikely to forget the humilation of being told you cannot do an everyday activity like shopping in a mall because of some feature you have no control over. On another note, the posts above have it wrong. The mall's customers are not actually the teens they are turning away. Those teens and other patrons are the individual store's customers. The mall's customers are the stores who rent from them. If stores lose business because of some silly policy they will leave and that hurts the mall's business which is as a landlord.

Author

FK

Date

2002-12-27T04:03:03-06:00

ID

76690

Comment

I MYSELF THINK THAT YOU ALL ARE MAKING A BIG MISTAKE. SEE FIRST OF ALL YOU SHOULD ASK CHILDRENS DO THEY FEEL RIGHT WITH THIS POLICY. YOU WOULD HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THIS IF A CHILD WANTS TO GIVE HIS OR HER PARENTS A GIFT OR SOMETHING AS A SURPRISE THEY WOULD NOT WANT THEIR PARENTS TO COME IN THE MALL AND SEE WHAT THEY ARE GETTING. I THINK THE POLICY SHOULD CHANGE TO THE AGE OF 16 AND UNDER. AT 17 YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO SOMETHINGS ON YOUR OWN.

Author

carmilla

Date

2003-02-07T00:25:32-06:00