Promenade Lemonade: Cynical Pinnacle?

PROM-E-NADE — The Pinnacle Hills Promenade Shopping Center opened Wednesday. Wanting to see the center, not the artifice of ribbon-cutting, and crowds that won’t be that big until the day after Thanksgiving, I’m here for an hour Thursday afternoon.

Background here and here.

Forget this joint on bustling weekends, too. Well unless there’s an exceptional movie showing at the new complex here. Oh, and Borders Books. Darn, it still is full of dust and scaffolds. (Were I a professor of retail, I’d understand why I can spend an evening at Barnes & Noble and buy at most a cup of Starbucks, but a half-hour in a Borders in another city and I find I have bought at least one paper good).

Until Border’s opening day in, perhaps, November, I have this afternoon.

This burg is weird. It’s not an all-enclosed mall but open-air. Its designer, UA Architecture Professor Fenster Wiggle, insists ours is a moderate enough climate that recreating a downtown will get more shoppers than it scares off. Open air is a shopping center, not a mall, Fen’.

It reminds me first of those child-training fields larger cities used to have, that with miniature streets and scaled-down buildings teach a child how to be a pedestrian — walk on the left facing traffic — and how to ride a bicycle — go on the right with the flow of traffic.

They’re fenced off but instead of aisles, Pinnacle has cute-but-full-size two-lane streets with white diagonal parking stripes and yellow center stripes. If these ever are opened to traffic, expect pedestrian casualties due to shoppers walking like they own it.

Second thought was the recent movie The Truman Show, where scientists created a fake, but cleanly perfect American town to fool Jim Carrey for the sake of the big experiment.

Pinnacle has faux police, too. There are more security personnel than Little Rock city police at Park Plaza mall during a Gang Threat Condition Orange. The private patrolmen have state-police-like wide-brimmed hats and most have pot bellies for authenticity. The sometimes trimmer bicycle guards have Tour de France yellow jerseys. The latter wear their black cargo pants tucked suavely into their black shiny work boots. All wear loaded utility belts — no guns but what are in those pouches?

(My newspaper, the Demzette, has told itself that the second reference is to be the Promenade, capitalized and include that “the,” but the locals already have their own jargon. Earlier Thursday I told friends in Bella Vista I was heading to the Promenade, and they didn’t understand. So I clarified, saying the new shopping center with the Dillard’s that’s been in the paper. The reply was, “Oh, you mean you’re going to Pinnacle.” There really aren’t hills in this Pinnacle, and the only thing peaking are the prices, but it refers to a handful of similarly named centers of shoppes as well as good ol’ strip malls in the area as well as an exclusive subdivision and country club/golf course.)

Later, my beloved asked me if the shopping center was upscale, given the neighborhood, the promotions, the ads and the hype.

No, it’s got the solid middle class anchors Dillard’s and Penney’s, and the rather ritzy Coach Leathers and Joseph A Bank clothiers. Coldwater Creek has well-made apparel, but then there’s Payless Shoes, too. Dean & Deluca in the food court? No, Dairy Queen.

Find the list here. (Site may not open in older or protective browsers as it’s full of animation or something.)

Walking around I kept hearing music. Wait, this is outdoors, is Muzak allowed? Finally I spotted those Bose: squat green outdoor Bose-brand speakers, a couple in each “block,” mounted permanently in the occasional snatches of grass that Wiggle calls greenspace.

At first the rock was unrecognizable, just peppy and, oh, 1970s. There was “Take It Easy” going just a little country, and the oddest one was “Lucky Man” from Emerson Lake & Palmer.

Fenster Wiggle gave us a big present, fellow Ozarkers, but we can make it our own. Call it Pinnacle, as Benton County already is. If you must say Promenade, ignore the Wig-man who says Prah-me-nahde with his pinky up.

Give it a hard A.

When life hands you a fish, make bouillabaisse.

Give a man a lemon, he’ll pucker for a day.
Teach a man to stir Country Time into ice water, he’ll always have a spot at the fair. -30-