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Bostonist doesn't recall the local shopping mall as an unsafe location growing up in our teen years, but in Holyoke no one under the age of 18 will be allowed into the local mall (after 4 p.m. on weekends) without parental accompaniment or proper identification. The reported problem is that large "gangs" of children shoplift and their presence is scaring away older clientele from the mall. The mall claims that since the policy was implemented, stores are getting more business and adults are enjoying the relaxed atmosphere. But what about the children? A local Western Mass paper, The Republican, quoted fifteen-year-old Brian D. Sullivan of Hampden, calling the situation "a total bummer."
"'That is so not cool,' said Sullivan, who was eating lunch yesterday in the food court with friends King and Michael A. Deroche. The trio will be sophomores at Minnechaug Regional High School, and each spends about $20, mostly on food, during their weekly mall visits."
Bostonist did a little investigating and found that neither the Prudential Center nor the Cambridge Side Galleria have any restrictions with teenagers in the mall and yet experience very few problems from gangs of shoplifters. The Meadow Glen Mall in Medford, which is more comparable to the Holyoke Mall versus the security-laden Prudential, also doesn't have any age requirement, even during the summer when kids are out of school.
If we can keep out kids because they are bad for business, Bostonist
has a few other suggestions for people we'd like to see not allowed into stores. (i.e., that overly-loud cell phone user, old ladies with too many coupons, our seventh grade math teacher, etc.)
Checking IDs is a form of age discrimination, so the National Youth Rights Association has looked into bringing charges against the mall. However, it's unlikely that anything will happen since this isn't the first mall to institute age restrictive policies. The largest mall in the U.S., The Mall of America, introduced a similar policy in 1996.
Contributed by Matthew Nelson/image courtesy of Wikimedia.
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As far as I know, there is no law preventing age discrimination against teenagers by private businesses (kids, after all, are subject to a wide variety of age-based restrictions). In other places where malls have imposed these sorts of rules, I've noticed that the kids most affected are frequently black and hispanic, and I know that the ACLU and Urban League have attacked the age limits as proxies for race restrictions, arguing that the mall rules are not responses to actual crime but to white patrons' discomfort around large groups of kids of color. Being as I don't know anything about Holyoke, I can't say whether that might be the case there.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/25/2530840.html
If you check out that link you will notice that Holyoke is 41.4% Hispanic, where as the Massachusetts average is 6.8%, according to 2000 US Census data.
So I would say that's probably the exact problem, though no ACLU involvement has been meantioned.
Growing up in central connecticut my friends and I would occasionaly take a trip up to that mall, just as an excuse to drive somewhere "far" and get away from the same crap in our home town. We went there maybe a handful of times before I said "to hell with it I'm not going back" because of the problem this post is talking about. Maybe I was just too nerdy for my own good, but a trip to a friggin' mall shouldn't be stressfull and akin to a warzone. awww hell naw.
lastly - in every case where me and my stupid "alterna-teen" friends were accosted they were white teens. white, black, hispanic, asian - thug kids are thug kids.
Yes, they are very mean, and they beat up my grandmother.
And I liked the mall. Maybe I was a thugah.
I live a few miles from that mall, and the Hispanicity of Holyoke really has nothing to do with it -- it's the only good mall for twenty miles in any direction, and everyone goes there. Among the high school students wandering around town there is talk of a boycott.
I've never had a problem in Holyoke, and I've been to the mall only about ten thousand times since birth.