Thirteen years ago, at The Rouse Company annual shareholders
meeting,
Tony Deering announced that catalog retailer
LL Bean would be opening
its first ever retail (non-outlet) store at The Mall. The story goes that this announcement
upstaged the retailers own plans to break the news. To show their displeasure
at this preemptive PR strike by a real estate developer, LL Bean went ahead and opened their Tysons Corner store first.
Despite this
corporate silliness, LL Bean opened its
Columbia store in May of
2001, a few months after Tysons Corner. This Sunday, after twelve years selling khakis and canoes to HoCo locos, the
Columbia store will close. By midsummer the
30,000 square foot building that housed them will be gone, replaced by a new
plaza and a
reopening of the old main entrance.
