托福閱讀機經(jīng)背景：＂拯救＂大型購物中心

1、智課網(wǎng)TOEFL備考資料托福閱讀機經(jīng)背景：拯救大型購物中心 Still, when Graham Weston, the companys co-founder and chairman, suggested that they move into a shopping mall, staff were sceptical. The mall was vacant. Its site, the encircled suburb of Windcrest, was slightly grotty, not least because of the huge dead mall right off

2、 the highway. 即便如此，當公司的創(chuàng)建人之一兼主席Graham Weston表示他們要搬到一家購物中心時，員工們都還將信將疑。那時候商場是空置的，地點位于Windcrest這個被包圍著的郊區(qū)，外觀不太好看，相當重要的原因是這座空無一人的大型商場正位于公路的出口處。 Building a campus from scratch, however, would have taken several years at least. Anyway, the place was cheap. “Nobody wants a mall any more,” says John Engates,

3、 the chief technology officer. Except Rackspace, and others like it, who have come to see a dead mall as a blank canvas. In 2008 it opened its new headquarters, and won a prize for community economic development. Now it has more than 3,000 workers on site, withplans to hire hundreds more by the end

4、of the year. 不過要想從零開始建立一座辦公樓至少得花上幾年的時間，而且不管怎么說，用現(xiàn)成的購物中心是比較省錢的作法?！艾F(xiàn)在已經(jīng)沒人想要購物中心了”技術(shù)總監(jiān)John Engates說到。如今只有Rackspace，和其余像它那樣把空置商城看作是一張空白畫布的公司對購物中心還有好感。2008年Rackspace的新總部投入使用，還得了一項“社會經(jīng)濟發(fā)展”獎。如今，現(xiàn)場的員工有3000多人，計劃到今年年底還要雇用幾百人。 Plenty of enclosed malls are, of course, still thriving. And after several abstemiou

5、s years, shoppers are perking up. In February, according to the Commerce Department, retail sales were 1.1% higher than they had been in Januaryhigher than expected, and a welcome sign of recovery. 當然，還是有為數(shù)眾多的封閉式商場生意很好。經(jīng)歷了幾年節(jié)制消費，購物者們又活躍了起來。根據(jù)美國商務(wù)部的數(shù)據(jù)，2月份的零售額同比1月份增加了1.1%比預期值高，是可喜的復蘇跡象。 But many Ameri

6、can malls had run into trouble before the recession started, and the countrys nascent recovery is not likely to revive them. Americas retail sector is probably overbuilt; in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the National Association of Realtors, its vacancy rate was 16.9%. Malls are vulnerabl

7、e to systemic shocks; if an “anchor” stores closes, or if vacancies linger, other vendors quickly suffer. And many of the malls that were built in the heyday of the genre are starting to look shopsoiled. The new fashion is for mixed-use developments, or the outdoor malls that are designed to look li

8、ke a friendly downtown shopping district. In some cities, people are returning to actual downtown shopping districts, as new urbanists always dreamed they would. 但是許多美國人開辦的購物中心在經(jīng)濟衰退期來臨前就已陷入困境，而美國新生的復蘇勢頭不太可能讓他們得到復蘇。美國的零售業(yè)很可能建設(shè)過度了，根據(jù)美國房產(chǎn)經(jīng)紀人協(xié)會的統(tǒng)計，2011年第四季度的房屋空置率為16.9%。購物中心容易遭受系統(tǒng)沖擊帶來的影響，如果某家“錨”店停業(yè)了，或者房屋

9、持續(xù)空置，其余的商家也很快遭殃。還有很多類似在繁榮時期建立起來的購物中心開始變得陳舊起來。新的時尚是提倡“多用途混合式發(fā)展”的建筑群，即戶外購物中心要建得像個市中心的購物區(qū)。在一些城市里，人們回歸故態(tài)，愛去真正的市中心購物區(qū)，這可是新生代城市規(guī)劃家夢寐以求的事。 The result is that even if Americans are heading back to shops, they may not be heading to malls. That has left many cities and suburbs with dead and dying malls on the

10、ir hands: boxes of blight surrounded by acres of hot asphalt. 因此，即使美國人又開始購物了，卻未必會去購物中心這樣的地方。這就導致許多城市及郊區(qū)出現(xiàn)一些停業(yè)和即將停業(yè)的購物中心亟待處理這些毫無生氣的像盒子似的建筑，周圍是大片炎熱的瀝青地(指周圍的停車場)。 Some of these will be used as canvasses for graffiti. Some will be razed. Others, happily, will find another purpose. One strategy is to tur

11、n the mall itself into a mixed-use development. The Natick, a high-end mall in Boston, has added condominiums. Another idea is to bring in unconventional tenants. In Cleveland, Ohio, part of a mall has been given over to indoor gardens, with the idea that it might be a model for other urban agricult

12、ure programmes. Schools and universities are another settler group. The University of the Incarnate Word has leased part of another mall in San Antonio. Vanderbilt, in Tennessee, has leased some space to open a clinic; patients are given pagers so that they can get a snack from the food court while

13、they wait. Hundreds of high-school students in Joplin, Missouri, are taking classes in a converted mall after the towns high school was destroyed in a tornado last summer. 其中有些購物中心將成為涂鴉者們的好去處，有些則要夷為平地，還有一些很幸運，將另作他用。有一個好辦法是把購物中心改造成綜合性建筑。Natick是一家位于波士頓的高級購物中心，這里增建了些公寓(condo)樓。還有個辦法是引入非傳統(tǒng)租戶。在俄亥俄州的克利夫蘭市

14、(Cleveland)，有家購物中心里的一塊地建起了室內(nèi)花園，其他的都市農(nóng)業(yè)項目也許可以借鑒此案例。另一類居住人群是中小學校和大學。美國圣道大學(The University of the Incarnate Word)租用的是圣安東尼奧市的另一座購物中心原址;田納西州的美國范德比爾特大學(Vanderbilt)租用了某購物中心的一些空地建起診所，給就診的患者都發(fā)了呼機，讓他們在候診時能去購物中心的美食街吃點東西;密蘇里州小城Joplin的高中校園被去年夏天的一場龍卷風摧毀了，現(xiàn)在成百上千的高中生到一家購物中心里改造成的教室去上課。 These projects may be more sen

15、sible than enclosed retailing. Universities and offices do not depend on passers-by as shops and restaurants do. But turning these spaces to fresh purposes requires some expense and experimentation. 以上這些項目也許比封閉起來做零售更可行。大學和事務(wù)所的運營模式不像商店和飯店那樣需要依靠客流量。只是要找到新用途需要耗費財力，還要多實踐。 Rackspace, for its part, has sp

16、ent more than $100m gutting and redoing the space. Windows were carved into the walls, and skylights installed. Workers were getting lost, so the conference rooms are now grouped by category rather than numbered. If someone makes it to the game-show zone, he can usually figure it out from there. The

17、re is, at the moment, an internal debate over whether to preserve the fountains. Allan Nelson, the facilities manager, warns that overenthusiastic “Rackers” would try to go swimming in them. 在這方面，Rackspace公司花費了一億多美元的資金把該購物中心的內(nèi)部設(shè)施全部打掉重建。在封閉的四周外墻上開了窗戶，頂上裝了天窗。以前的布局設(shè)計讓員工經(jīng)常走錯方向，所以現(xiàn)在會議室不像以前只是編號，而是用具體的類目陳列

18、加以區(qū)分。假設(shè)有人好不容易來到了“娛樂節(jié)目區(qū)”，那他一看周圍的環(huán)境就知道身處何處。目前的內(nèi)部小爭議是要不要保留原有的噴泉。設(shè)備部經(jīng)理Allan Nelson提醒說，要是保留噴泉，可能就會有些超級熱情的公司員工跳進去一游為快。 And the idiosyncrasies of the space have spurred some creative thinking. Freestanding conference rooms adorn the walkways, their glass walls cut from the old shopfronts. A loading dock has been converted into apresentation room, with a rolling industrial door so that groups can spill over outside. Worke