They're Not Security - They're Guest Relations Staff

By Amanda St. Hilaire, Iris Park, and Jacob Levy

The Parental Escort Policy is not unique to the Carousel Center. The Mall of America in Bloomington, MN, was the first mall in the United States to establish a Parental Escort Policy in 1996. Since then, other malls across the country have developed similar policies, including Walden Galleria in Buffalo.

Walden Galleria, like the Carousel Center, is a shopping mall owned by the Pyramid Companies, headquartered in Syracuse. Center General Manager Rob Schoeneck said Walden Galleria was the first Pyramid Mall to establish an age-based curfew in 2002.

Walden Galleria General Manager John Ecklund said he experienced problems similar to those at the Carousel Center before establishing a Parental Escort Policy. But he said Walden Galleria mall management was reluctant to set a curfew. Ecklund said Walden Galleria initially tried to take care of youth misbehavior by doubling security.

When that didn’t help, the mall had no choice but to enforce a Parental Escort Policy, Ecklund said. “It’s unfortunate that there’s a need for this. It certainly wasn’t initially the favored solution for the problems we were having. But I have to say it’s been an effective solution. We have a much-improved environment; it just cleaned everything right up.”

But Carousel Center and Walden Galleria differ in how they enforce their policies. Walden Galleria uses more security guards to enforce its policy, Schoeneck said. “Everybody that was participating, either in house security or parental escort, everybody was in a security uniform.”

The Carousel Center put those responsible for enforcing the policy in red coats, not a security guard uniform. Schoeneck said Carousel Center chose to use Guest Relations staff separate from security. He said mall management made the distinction because they wanted to deliver an experience consistent with the Destiny USA Project.

Schoeneck said Destiny USA was a project designed to transform the Carousel Center into an “experience that transcended simply shopping in a mall.” But Destiny USA stalled when Citigroup refused to lend the project more money in June 2009. Although Destiny USA developer Robert Congel sued Citigroup and won in two court decisions, the project has not yet restarted.

The Carousel Center went ahead with the development of its Guest Relations staff anyway. Schoeneck said Guest Relations personnel were key to the implementation of the Parental Escort Policy. In April, 2003, one month before mall management started enforcing the policy, Guest Relations staff members were already greeting people at the mall entrance.

Before long, other malls started to notice. Schoeneck says four of the 14 other Pyramid shopping centers visited Walden Galleria and Carousel Center before establishing Parental Escort policies of their own a few years later. Although enforcement varies slightly from mall to mall, Schoeneck says the main idea is the same. “I think everybody implemented it the way that we did it. They just picked a different color coat.”