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Mall reopens after day of silence By GREG STILES The Rogue Valley Mall returned to life a day after the death of perhaps thousands on the other side of the continent silenced the cash registers and locked its doors. "It wasn't a financial decision, it was about doing the right thing," said JCPenney manager Frank Clifton, whose sentiments were echoed throughout the mall on Wednesday. The mall closed late Tuesday morning, while anchor department stores JCPenney and Meier & Frank shut down at noon. Mervyn's closed at 3 p.m. Many store managers and owners, stunned as much as anyone else by the day's events, figured it best to close up shop and go home. Clifton said there were a half-dozen customers at noon, but the decision had been made earlier after a conference call with the district manager overseeing Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. Only 20 percent of Penney's 1,100 stores nationwide remained open. "There's a different mood today," Clifton said on Wednesday. "It's truly part of the healing process that pulls this great country together. Business is active this morning. It's not so much a financial issue, but one of attitude." Billiards and Sports store owner Drew Brown said he was caught off-guard when word of the closure came. "This mall doesn't shut down for anything," Brown said. "From the standpoint that it gave me a day off, considering I have a newborn at home, it was good. I didn't expect to sell much anyway. The one part-time employee I had coming in is getting ready to go back to school, so it really didn't bother her." Mike Smietana, sales manager at Select Comfort, wasn't sure public confidence had returned. "I can understand wanting things to get back to normal," Smietana said. "But I'm not thrilled about today; this is a little quick. There's always another day to sell things." Totally Cellular manager Ron Powell said his priorities might have been different than most. "I'm a little older," Powell said. "I thought Tuesday was a time to be with loved ones and see what the real story was. It was a shock for me; my job didn't seem that important at the time." He said all four of the Eugene-based firm's offices shut down. Chuck Horton of Lawrence's II said closing after being open for little more than an hour wasn't a big deal. "People who were planning to do business are going to come back another day, Horton said. "If we were up against a Christmas deadline it would be different." The people who stood to get hurt, Horton said, were hourly workers. "The people who lost eight hours of work are not going to be able to make it up. It won't have much impact on employers, but for others it's going to be grocery money or the electric bill. They say there are 2,000 employees working here and that might be an understatement. But some of them might have been happy to have the day off." Mervyn's was the last store to close. "The reason that we were open was that not all of our guests (customers) wanted to be in front of the TV set and some of our team members didn't want to go home," team leader Frank Avila said. "Whether we had guests or not, we wanted this to be a place of solace. But eventually we closed because of wanting to stand with the mall community. In a way it's a Catch-22." He said store policy "fully took care" of employees whose shifts had already begun. Horton said he was so distracted by the repeated mental image of a passenger jet smashing into a skyscraper that he twice left his keys behind as he tried to leave the store. "If there hadn't been somebody still here the second time," he said, "I would've had to walk home." Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.