Show-Biz Artists Lend Malls a Special Effect

Sony Corp. of America’s Sony Development design center in Burbank had a lot of help from Hollywood in its first production: the $85-million Metreon entertainment-retail center in San Francisco, the first of several high-tech dine-and-play venues on the company’s drawing board.

Hollywood set designers, lighting specialists and sound engineers are riding a growth wave in the development of entertainment-driven retail centers like Metreon, which analysts say are rapidly taking sales from traditional suburban malls.

Burbank “is the place to be if you’re going to be in this business,” said Trevor Bryant, head of the creative division of Sony Development. The 5-year-old design center hopes to build as many as seven additional Metreons over the next several years to showcase Sony products such as the PlayStation video game console and audio equipment in a setting that’s a cross between a mall and a theme park.

Sony tapped Hollywood companies for up to $20 million of the work at the 350,000-square-foot attraction, which has drawn more than 1 million visitors since it opened June 16, far outpacing projections.

For instance, Cinnabar California, which is located about a mile from Sony Development in Burbank, built fiberglass goblins based on Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are.” The figures are part of an interactive experience: For $7, kids walk through a jungle and bop creatures on the head or pull on vines to elicit animation and sound effects.

Cinnabar, founded 17 years ago as a scenery fabricator and special effects house for TV and films, derives about half its $10 million in annual sales from themed entertainment.

Bryant distinguishes Metreon from an ordinary mall. “We’ve defined the term ‘urban entertainment center,’ ” he said. “We’ve combined entertainment, education, filmgoing, club dining, retail experience and put them into one single package.”

Almost all of Metreon’s 60,000 square feet of retail space is owned and operated by Sony. Hear Music sells Sony sound systems, a PlayStation store offers the company’s games and equipment, and a boutique of high-tech consumer electronics is called Sony Style. Sony is also operating the first Microsoft store for the software maker at Metreon. The only other non-Sony retail presence is the Discovery Channel store.

A 16-screen theater--including a giant Imax screen--is a Loews Cineplex, another Sony company.

“This kind of development can [only] be done by specialized companies that own different segments of entertainment as part of their stable,” said analyst Jill Bensley, president of JB Research Co. in Ojai.

Analysts say entertainment-based retailing has accelerated as consumers’ buying habits have changed. With electronic commerce and home shopping siphoning sales from conventional malls, retailers are pressed to offer a bigger draw to get people out of the house, said John Robinett, senior vice president of Economics Research Associates Inc. in Westwood. Entertainment-oriented venues such as Metreon are viewed as a lure, he added.

In the Southland, the four big entries are Universal CityWalk, Irvine Spectrum, the Block at Orange and Ontario Mills. Bensley points out that three more such centers are under construction: the Academy Theater complex on Hollywood Boulevard, Queensway Bay in Long Beach and the Grove at Farmers Market.

Sony Development President Michael Swinney said two other Metreon projects are also under construction: a 400,000-square-foot complex outside Tokyo and a music-themed entertainment venue that will be part of Sony’s $1.2-billion European headquarters. Both are scheduled to open early next year.

Swinney said his team is working on concept designs and site selection for at least five more Metreon centers in the leading U.S. markets.

That will mean continued demand for the trappings of Hollywood, including the giant animated characters from Cinnabar, spaceship-like arcade interiors from Studio Avanti Ltd. of Pasadena and 3-D movies from Kurtz & Friends in Burbank.

Cinnabar, whose most recent major film project was creating miniature high-rises and ships for Sony Columbia’s “Godzilla,” is already turning out products for the Tokyo Metreon, with delivery scheduled through year’s end. The work includes fabricated walkways, jungle facades and giant goblins like those in San Francisco.

“We have the artisans to manufacture a very specialized kind of product,” said Cinnabar Chief Executive Jonathan Katz, who added that the creator of the images, Sendak himself, visited the shop to sign off on the production.

Sony has obtained intellectual property rights to provide themes for Metreon’s major attractions. It licensed rights to “Wild Things” as well as another Sendak book, “Mickey in the Night Kitchen,” to provide the theme for Metreon’s Night Kitchen restaurant.

Another work, “The Airtight Garage” by French graphic novelist Jean Giraud, provides the basis for a super-arcade that offers what is a well-received selection of Sony-designed virtual reality games.

A third attraction, “The Way Things Work,” inspired by the book of that name by David MaCaulay, features a three-screen, 3-D animated and live-action film produced by Kurtz & Friends.

“As we have new concepts come along,” said Swinney, whose staff of 100 include media producers, concept architects, show and set designers and musicians, “the concept design work will come out of Sony Development and the ideas come out of this maniacal group of designers and engineers we’ve cornered here.”