After 32 years, Gallery mall still wrestles with its rep

JOE PINEIRO likes to gamble.

Although he makes a monthly trek to the Atlantic City casinos, the retired chef from Voorhees, Camden County, was excited about a planned casino opening in Philadelphia.

Until he learned that developers of the Foxwoods casino had abandoned their Delaware River site in South Philadelphia and instead planned to put the casino at the Gallery at Market East, in Center City.

"No one wants to go there. You have to pay for parking, you get your car broken into or stolen, you get beat up in the bathroom," said Pineiro. He was referring to the Sept. 10 robbing and beating of John Gabel, 83, inside a Gallery restroom. "There's a bad element there. They could send me a coupon for $500 free play and I'd trash it."

Thirty-two years after it opened, the Gallery still struggles to overcome the "city" stigma that sends so many people packing for the suburbs.

That stigma has never been more severe than in recent months, when several savage attacks - most involving teenage perpetrators - have occurred in or near the Gallery.

Still, violent crimes at the mall are rare: Less than 1 percent of more than 605 arrests made in the 1-million-square-foot mall last year are for the types of crimes that justify fears, such as aggravated assault, robbery and drug offenses, according to police data. About 85 percent were for offenses that seem characteristic of a retail environment: theft, fraud and forgery.

The number of arrests actually decreased from more than 680 in 2007, police said.

But perception can be a persuasive thing.

"There is a level of unease there that has zero to do with crime; it has everything to do with people encountering people of different backgrounds, different income levels, different education levels," said Paul Levy, president and CEO of the Center City District.

A grand experiment

When it opened in 1977 and expanded in 1984, the Gallery was a grand social experiment, an effort to bring the suburbs to the city, developers say.

Between 1955 and 1977, 15,000 regional shopping centers were built in the U.S., and the Gallery was the first built in a downtown, Levy said.

"It was pathbreaking - the notion of a regional shopping center in the middle of a city, directly connected to public-transit lines," he said.

But it was a business model that perhaps was doomed, considering consumer trends, one expert said.

"In terms of retail-shopping patterns, people tend to shop oriented to where they live rather than where they work," said David Bartelt, a Temple University professor of geography and urban studies. "You can't change consumption patterns."

Still, Bartelt said, "this is an area that had been a fairly seedy section of Market Street, so in a lot of ways, it's a step up. Is it nirvana? No. But most people count it as a qualified success that never lived up to the sizzle promised."

Consumption trends aside, the Gallery has grappled with other problems.

Urban-development experts say that its design - few street-level, windowfront displays and sparse, subterranean entrances - turns off some potential customers.

And its biggest boost may also be its bane: public transit.

Teens 'have no respect'

Throngs of teenagers take the subway or bus to the Gallery daily. Whether they misbehave or not, crowds of kids have a way of making shoppers nervous.

"During the days when I'm down there, there's a lot of teenagers there, and I'm trying to figure out why aren't they in school," said Harriet B. Brown, 62, of Southwest Philadelphia.

"They have no respect for anybody, and they just take over. I sit down to have lunch, and their mouths are horrific. I ask them: 'Do you talk like that at home?' Or I just ask them to move."

Stevany Johar, 25, was in the mall's food court in January when three teens approached her, called her names and tried to steal her cell phone.

"I was like, 'What the heck!' " Johar said. Although Johar tried to ignore them, the incident escalated until Johar started screaming. The teens had fled by the time police arrived, she said.

The incident was particularly poignant for Johar: She was the fiancee of Sean Patrick Conroy, who died of an asthma attack last year after a group of teens beat him on a subway platform near the Gallery.

A week after Conroy's death, Tyesha Tazwell, 24, was attacked by a dozen teenagers in an underground concourse between the Gallery and SEPTA's underground lines at 8th and Market streets.

The abundance of public transit available at the Gallery also poses a problem for police. Thieves who grab purses from unsuspecting women or goods from kiosks can rely on a subway or bus for a quick getaway, said Lt. George Ondrejka, of Central Detectives.

"With SEPTA right there, they're gone in the blink of an eye," said Ondrejka, who regularly investigates crimes at the mall. "That's a nightmare for police to combat, but sometimes we get lucky."

The 'Michigan Bank Roll'

The Gallery also routinely draws clever crooks who practice the so-called "Michigan Bank Roll" in front of the mall.

The bank roll, Ondrejka said, is a scam run by a group of men who speak with Jamaican accents. The tricksters fold hundreds of pieces of newspaper into the shape of dollar bills that are then covered by a bandanna.

The men will approach a passerby, claim to have found the money and offer to share it, as long as the other person gives them $100 to hold as an act of good faith.

"It's a big scheme," Ondrejka said. "The guy will disappear with the $100, and the other person is left with nothing."

Overall, Ondrejka said, "my impression is the Gallery is not that bad. The fact of the matter is, when you have a heavily traveled space like that, there is going to be crime sometimes."

Mall spokeswoman Maureen Brady declined to comment on mall security, crime or any strategies that the mall might have to handle rowdy teens.

But she said that the 130-store, four-story mall remains a huge regional draw, with 40,000 visitors a day, or about 280,000 a week. The next largest Center City mall, the 60-store Shops at Liberty Place, has 25,000 visitors a week, a spokeswoman said.

Staff writer Julie Shaw contributed to this report.