• Los Angeles Times, Monday, November 23, 2009 10:43 AM

One way to get shoppers pounding the corridors of its mall, executives of the Beverly Center figure, is to have aerialists somersaulting 80 feet in the air above them. And so, the mall plans to offer 60 free holiday showings of gravity-defying performers starting Friday, Andrea Chang reports.

"It's just this big, grandiose, epic sort of show, and it's based on capturing the escapism that people were looking for in the 1930s when the country hit hard times," says Beverly Center gm Jeff Brown.

Other Southern Californian malls may have slightly less grandiose plans -- South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa is offering free hot cocoa and cider Fridays through Sundays, as well as twice as many live musical performances as last year and new pottery for the holiday floral arrangements -- but they are also ramping up their budgets to pull people in.

"Redoubling the marketing efforts in times like this can be very effective," says Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers. He estimates that the average 1 million-square-foot mall spends $70,000 on holiday decorations and programs.

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