Let’s talk about the mall and the bus stop situation…

You start with a small issue. Hyperbolic community outage and social media make this issue grow larger than it should. A tone-deaf upper management statement turns the entire situation into a dumpster fire. Hoo boy.

Let’s talk some common sense about Danville Mall’s decision to not allow the city’s bus service to stop on mall property.

I’ve got a lot to say so let’s bring out a Big Board for it.

• The mall and the loop road around the mall are private property. In the end, it’s their decision to make and “the people” have absolutely no say-so. Yep, it’s the old “It’s my sandbox and you can’t play in it” argument. Feh.
• Other shopping centers have made the same type of decision to head off potential liability problems. If that had been the reasoning behind the decision, that would have been perfectly understandable and things would have been a lot calmer. But noooooo. I’ll talk about that more down below.
• You can’t blame the city and the bus service for this, and I’m glad nobody is really doing that. The city had to have the public notices and public meetings because the bus system is highly subsidized by federal funding. Because of that, the decision had already been made to stop mall bus service because of the mall’s directive from upper management. That made people believe that their opinion didn’t really matter… and it didn’t in this case.
• Marc Adelman is the head of the city’s transportation department and Marc Adelman Gets It. I have high respect for Adelman and all he could do in this situation was try to explain what the city could and couldn’t do and then just shrug. He’s frustrated over the situation but he just can’t say that publicly.
• Katie Keatts is the Danville Mall manager and she’s awesome. Unlike previous mall managers (and there’s been a lot of them), she’s extremely friendly, outgoing and a pleasure to work with. Every time that I’ve ever had any questions, she’s been prompt with her answers. She also has no problem implementing changes to anything that she has the authority to change. You can’t blame Katie for this decision, either. This came from the corporate office and she’s forced to be the figurehead of the policy by the people who don’t know all the facts. Calling her incompetent, uncaring and any other nasty adjectives is completely wrong and not fair to her hard work.
• That “what she has the authority to change” can be a problem. Shopping malls just aren’t locally owned anymore, and corporate thinking kills free thinking quite often. Hull Property Group, the owners of the mall, have 20 malls all over the Southeast and don’t seem to have much of a feel for the individual communities. It takes a lot more than flying in on the corporate jet every few months to be a part of the community.
• And that leads me to barbecue Coles Doyle, the marketing director of Hull Property Group. Her statement on the issue was
  

  “The mall is unable to keep its main entrance properly landscaped, maintained and free of trash and debris due to the current fixed route service. It is crucial that we restore our main entrance as it is imperative to attracting tenants and providing a pleasing shopping experience for our customers.”

  What the hell? When the community could easily get the impression that your company is being hoity-toity about not wanting “those types of people” around your mall, why in the ever-loving hell would you come out and say exactly that? Doyle’s statement is horribly tone-deaf and brings her marketing knowledge into serious question. Someone with her knowledge and experience should know to incorporate things like “we are working to minimize impact to our valued customers” or some public relations spin like that into the message. All we got from upper management was a “We do what we want. Fark you.”

• Finally… Calling for, supporting or doing a boycott of the mall is a stupid idea. None of the mall stores had any say-so in this decision, nor did any of the hundreds of employees of those stores. A boycott would only cause problems for those innocent employees, but that’s not stopping misguided people from yelling for that boycott.

If you want to know how you can get your viewpoint to the mall’s owners in regards to this decision, you can go to Hull Property Group’s media center page and send an email directly to Coles Doyle. If you decide to do that, please make it a nice, polite one that shows that you have compassion and empathy. You know, totally unlike her company statement on this issue.