photo by Hannah Reel

Belk employees Beverly Boyd, left, and Hattie Elery share a laugh during their shift in the ladies department at Belk Department Store Friday afternoon. Eleroy has worked at the store located in the Natchez Mall for 30 years. She started working in the electronic department when McRae’s opened and then moved to the men’s department. She is training to be a department manager.

The big 3-0

Mall will celebrate anniversary later this month

By Jennifer Edwards (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Sunday, June 14, 2009

NATCHEZ — Marie Lofton is ordering a really big cake and a lot of punch for the 30th birthday party she is planning.

But the party isn’t for one person in particular. It is in celebration of the Natchez Mall reaching its 30th anniversary, and Lofton knows that milestone wouldn’t have been reached without the help of many people.

So from June 22 – 27, the Natchez Mall will have a week-long celebration for the 262 current employees and the public who have kept the mall in business.

“The first store actually opened Memorial Day weekend in (1979), but some didn’t open until a little later so we decided to celebrate now,” Lofton said.

The first store to open in the mall was JCPenney, which has remained in its original location since that first day. The mall’s other anchor store, Belk, formerly McRae’s, opened at the other end of the mall in August of that year.

While, those two stores have been the anchors of the mall for the past 30 years, what is in between has changed a good bit since the beginning. And so has the merchandise the stores carry.

“We’ve had a number of different stores come in since that first day,” Lofton said. “The stores that we have here do a good job at keeping up with the trends.”

In preparation for the anniversary celebration, Lofton browsed old newspapers for clippings and advertisements about the mall’s history, and was surprised by some of the things she found.

“I had a lot of fun that day looking at the microfilm,” she said. “Fashions have really changed and so have the prices. It was fun to see that.”

One thing Lofton stumbled upon, was a newspaper advertisement announcing the mall’s opening. The advertisement listed all the original stores, and gave Lofton an idea for a little memory test.

She is having a contest to see how many of the original stores people can remember.

Some people, Lofton said, will have an advantage since the mall has a large number of employees who have logged over 15 years of employment at the mall. There is even one employee — Hattie Elery — who has 30 years of employment at Belk.

Elery, who works in the ladies department now but will soon move into a management position, said one of the highlights of her job is seeing the same people continue to shop at Belk.

“There are people who I saw shopping with their parents when they were children who are grown now and still shopping with their parents,” she said.

And Elery isn’t alone in her experience, Lofton said.

“There are a number of folks who have been here for 28, 25, 24 and 23 years,” Lofton said. “That’s a testament to the type of people we have working here, because the hours working in retail can be daunting.”

And just as Lofton and other mall patrons have grown accustom to seeing the same faces on the sales floor and behind the registers, the mall employees are used to seeing the same folks browsing the shelves and racks of the mall stores.

“We have a group of walkers that are in here every day,” Lofton said. “They walk and drink coffee, and we’ve gotten attached to them.”

And those walkers can rest easy because Lofton said the mall management is doing everything it can to make sure the Natchez Mall will be around for 30 more years.

“We are dedicated to the upkeep and maintenance of the building and bringing in stores that will drive people to the mall,” she said.