• Washington Post , Wednesday, February 25, 2009 10:30 AM

Two major shopping center developers are reducing hours of operation at malls across the country, Ylan Q. Mui reports, as the retail industry struggles to adapt to the severe drop-off in traffic and consumer spending.

Westfield Group says that starting next week, its malls will open a half hour later, at 10:30 a.m., and close a half hour earlier, at 9 p.m., on weekdays. On Saturdays, they will open at 10 a.m. as usual but close a half hour earlier, at 9 p.m. Sunday hours are unchanged. And Simon Property Group, which moved up the weekday closing times at 17 malls in New England by a half hour in January, has announced that three malls in Pittsburgh also would close early.

"It's absolutely unusual," says Bernard J. Haddigan, a senior vice president and managing director at Marcus & Millichap who helps analyze and finance shopping center developments. "This is clearly a defensive strategy."

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