Cure for 'mall sick'

McRae's opens at Edgewater Mall

By PAM FIRMIN
pfirming@sunherald.com

BILOXI, Miss. - Shoppers happy to have the scent of mall back in their lives after nearly 10 weeks of hurricane odors fanned out across McRae's in Edgewater Mall on Friday morning in pursuit of warm clothes and elite fragrances.

"It's what they miss most," said Dean Haggerty in the men's fragrances area, where she reported some very good sales and "a lot of sightseers coming in for the first time again - it's like a little bit of normalcy."

For Doris Bradley of Long Beach, "This is actually our first time to go shopping."

"I was mall sick," said 15-year-old Alyssa Dudney, whose mother was in line to buy several arm loads of winter clothes to replace things lost in their Biloxi Eagle Point home. "I was used to coming to the mall all the time," Alyssa said. "I just liked looking at it."

More than 100 people waited outside the store's east entrance for its 10 a.m. opening, enjoying the ceremonial ribbon-cutting that featured the Biloxi High School band and U.S. Army Color Guard.

Store manager Jim Zeller, who arrived on the job from Spartanburg, S.C., three weeks before the storm, said most of the store's original 170 employees are back on the job and most of the 30 who quit after the storm have been replaced. About 65 to 70 percent of store space is currently in use with the rest behind temporary walls.

"It has been such a long time since I've been able to go shopping. It's like civilization again," said Holly Christie of Biloxi, who pushed a basket filled with clothes and housewares.

Lakeshia Williams of Biloxi held an arm load of boys' sweat clothes while she fingered through a rack looking for more. She said she's been waiting for the store to open because, "I didn't want to go to Mobile to get children's clothes."

The patience that most Coast residents have honed since Katrina came in handy for shoppers who waited in line while store associates dealt with new equipment and coding that is unfamiliar in the store's new role as a division of Belk. One of them called it "McBelk."

Alyssa's mother, Elisha Dudney, finally got her turn to check out the 2½-foot pile of new clothes that, after the day's double discounts were taken, came to just over $500.

"We have to replenish everything," she said. "I spent $600 last week in Mobile. We went to Florida after the storm and bought summer things; now, we need warm clothes. I'm putting everything on credit cards and hope our insurance pays."