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Metrocenter is a super-regional shopping mall in northwest Phoenix, Arizona. It is bounded roughly by Interstate 17, 35th, Dunlap and Peoria Avenues. Its current anchor stores are a Dillard's clearance center and a Sears. The mall features more than 100 stores, a 12 screen movie theater, and a food court, and since January 2012, has been owned by the Carlyle Development Group based in New York City. Parts of the film ''Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure'' were filmed in the mall. ==History== Metrocenter was a joint venture of Westcor, a regional shopping center development firm headed by a group of real estate investors and developers led by Russ "Rusty" Lyon, Jr., and Homart Development Company, the real estate division of Sears, Roebuck and Company. The project was announced in November 1970, the first site plans and artist renderings announced in the spring of 1972, and construction beginning in June 1972. The mall was opened for business in October 1973, and when it opened as the first two-level, five-anchor mall in the U.S., it was the largest shopping center in Arizona and was considered one of the largest shopping centers in the United States. The original anchor stores were Sears, Rhodes Brothers, Diamond's, Goldwater's, and The Broadway. All of the anchors opened in 1973, save for Sears which opened in 1974. The mall had an ice skating rink on the ground level overlooked by a bar built to resemble the fuselage of an airliner. The mall was built on in an area of Phoenix that was a sparsely populated residential district at what was then considered the northern edge of town (the area was actually an unincorporated part of Maricopa County which was annexed by the city of Phoenix because of the project). Lyon's firm correctly noted that population growth would favor northwest Phoenix. After the site was chosen, "...from then on, it was a matter of appealing to the marketing acumen of the major department stores. They didn't take much convincing." There was some initial opposition to the project from neighborhood residents who feared heavy traffic generated from major retailers as well as buildings which exceeded height limits. As a result, there were some delays in the rezoning of the land by the city of Phoenix, but residents' fears were eventually addressed to their satisfaction. A lawsuit filed by the "Deer Valley Residents Association" was dropped by late September 1972. (In later decades, several office complexes and a few mid-rise hotels, including a 342-room Sheraton, would be built in the nearby area.) In June 1972, the First National Bank of Arizona (now the Arizona operations of Wells Fargo Bank) made a $21 million loan to the developers, which was the largest commercial real estate loan ever made in Arizona up to that time. The total cost of Metrocenter was estimated at $100 million. Metro Parkway (a four-lane divided road) completely encircles the mall and all associated parking areas. On the 'outside' of the parkway, many business buildings have been built over the years. Though most are restaurants and fast food places, there are hotels, a library, auto repair, sports store, electronic stores, a bookstore, a comic book store; the variety is both surprising and reminiscent of a city within a city. Shoppers initially came from as far away as Flagstaff and Tucson to see and to shop at the large mall. Over the years, other retailers and shopping centers also opened on or near Metro Parkway, the ring road surrounding the mall. The Phoenix Public Library has a major branch location on this ring road. Arizona's only Amusement park, Castles N' Coasters (Formerly Golf 'N Stuff), also circles the outskirts of the mall. Metrocenter became the model for later Westcor master-planned developments around Phoenix, such as Paradise Valley Mall. After Metrocenter was built, three major banks had stand-alone branches built on the property or across the street. The unique aspect about these branches is that their architectural designs closely followed the architectural designs of three of the anchor stores. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Metrocenter (Phoenix, Arizona)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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