But in a larger sense, the renovation of Randhurst Mall -- which opened in the inner-ring Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect, Ill., in 1962 -- also could signal the end of a retail era that began 50 years ago.

That was when Victor Gruen, a Viennese immigrant with a socialist bent, unveiled Southdale Mall in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina. He eventually became the father of the modern enclosed mall.

Now, after a long period of decline, Randhurst is undergoing an overhaul that involves demolishing most of the original center and replacing it with an open-air street of shops and additional anchor tenants.

"Our approach is to look for good real estate that has the wrong real estate product, and that's often the case with 40-year-old malls," said Brett Hutchens, president and chief executive of Casto Lifestyle Properties.

In Florida, Casto is best known for developing the Whole Foods Market Centre and One Hundred Central condominium tower in downtown Sarasota; the Main Street at Lakewood Ranch; Lakeside Village in Lakeland; and Winter Park Village, in Winter Park. In addition to Randhurst, the company also has partnered with giant New York investment house JP Morgan Asset Management to build or rehabilitate retail centers in Cincinnati, Ohio; Raleigh, N.C.; and Charlotte, N.C.

Randhurst's anchors will include an AMC multiplex and a 120-room Hampton Inn and Suites hotel. In addition, the shopping street will include about 22,000 square feet of rentable second-floor office space.

Gruen's first creation at Southdale Mall consisted of two department stores at either end of an enclosed two-level retail arcade with a large public "garden court" with plantings, sculpture, a fishpond, a cafe and a 21-foot-high aviary.

M. Jeffrey Hardwick, Gruen's biographer, said Gruen "believed that if you can keep people at the mall, if you entertain them long enough, they'll eventually spend money."

Gruen designed more than 80 malls and shopping centers and defined suburban shopping for the baby boom generation.

Randhurst Mall, built six years after Southdale, included three department stores as well as a garden court with a "floating restaurant" surrounded by 20-foot-tall palm trees. The cost was $21.5 million.

At 1 million square feet, Randhurst was then the largest enclosed shopping mall ever built.

The redeveloped center, which has been renamed Randhurst Village, reverses Gruen's concept while continuing to embrace his notion of shopping malls as community centers.

Larry Beame, president of Beame Architectural Partnership in Coconut Grove, designer of the new center, said the goal was to create "a traditional Main Street shopping experience" with diagonal parking in front of the various storefronts and outdoor public spaces for dining and socializing.

A bomb shelter included in the original mall has been converted into underground parking for a Hampton Inn and Suites hotel. The new AMC Theater, which replaced an older AMC movie house, opened in April and has 12 screens and digital sound and projection. The rest of the shopping center, about 800,000 square feet total, will open in phases over the next year.

The redevelopment of Randhurst reflects a number of retail trends under way for much of the last decade but accelerated by the recession. Development of "enclosed regional malls," as the sector is known, boomed in the 1980s and '90s, with the peak year being 1990, when 19 major centers were completed. But construction has slowed sharply over the last decade. Since 2006, only one major enclosed mall, City Center in Las Vegas, has been completed in the U.S.

The slowdown has been due to cultural and demographic shifts in the nation's population, said Ellen Dunham-Jones, a professor of architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a co-author of "Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs." Changes include a reduction in the number of suburban households with children and an increase in empty-nester households.

Raymond T. Cirz, chief executive of Integra Realty Resources, a New York company that specializes in real estate valuation and appraisal, described malls as a "mature concept" and said he expected only "selective development of enclosed malls in the future."

"I see a fair amount of 'de-malling' taking place," similar to what has happened at Randhurst, he added. "It's mainly centers that have antiquated design but good locations relative to the demographics of the trade area."

Another factor in the decline of enclosed malls is that they are more expensive to develop and operate than open-air "lifestyle centers."

"Malls have to be heated and air-conditioned and cleaned and maintained," said Paul Vogel, a retail real estate consultant based in Chicago, "and these costs are passed on to the tenants. The square-foot charge for an open-air center is probably 30 percent cheaper."

And even in cold climates like the Chicago area, open-air centers are popular with both parents and their children because the experience is seen as an outdoor activity rather than merely shopping, Dunham-Jones said.

"To the degree that shopping is perceived as a leisure activity," she said, "both groups like to tie that in with outdoor time."

Would Victor Gruen approve? "I think so," Hardwick said. "He was always out to please and attract American consumers. If this is a better mousetrap, he would be in favor of it."

Staff writer Kevin McQuaid contributed to this report.