In August, 1991, the shopping mecca known as Gurnee Mills opened to the public. It has gone through a lot of change in the last 29 years, but one thing has remained constant — Black Friday is bananas there.
This week, we’ll take a look back at some of the more eventful Black Fridays at Gurnee Mills.
In 1998, stress experts offered relaxation stations and guided meditation tapes to the first 1,000 shoppers at Gurnee Mills on the biggest shopping day of the year.
“Gurnee Mills will have BarcaLoungers and beanbag chairs set up in the Show Court and near J.C. Penney for exhausted shoppers,” Diana Carney wrote in the News-Sun on Nov. 26, 1998.
“While some are predicting big dollars this holiday season, Audrey Guskey, a professor of marketing at Duquesne University in Pennsylvania, disagrees. The last big year was 1992, when merchants saw an 8 percent jump in sales over 1991,” Carney’s article continued.
In 2001, Gurnee Mills emptied out, as most retailers did, on Sept. 11, but things were soon back to normal.
“Rosemarie Arnold, who operates a leather goods kiosk in the middle of the mall, agreed that traffic seems to be up at the mall. Traffic picked up two days after the terrorist attacks, she said. Business is probably better than last year, and she hopes it will continue,” according to a Gurnee Review article by Mike LaRose on Oct. 4, 2001.
LaRose’s article continued that Black Friday sales that year were expected to be brisk.
In 2006, a nearby drunken-driving crash tied up traffic around the Mills a couple of hours before Black Friday shoppers would arrive.
“A significant stretch of Rollins Road was closed for about 11 hours on Friday after an allegedly drunken driver crashed into a utility pole just after 1:30 a.m.,” Jim Newton wrote in the News-Sun on Nov. 25.
“The crash, which occurred near the intersection of Rollins and Sheldon roads, resulted in the closure of Rollins from Route 45 to Hook Drive just east of Route 83 until shortly after noon on Friday. ‘It was quite a disruption of the Black Friday traffic flow,’ said Grayslake Police Sgt. Doug Hess.”
A 2003 Chevy SUV crashed into a utility pole around 1:30 a.m. The car’s driver was charged with improper lane usage, failure to reduce speed to avoid an accident and driving under the influence of alcohol, according to Newton’s article.
“While it was quickly determined that no live electrical wires had been downed by the crash, it took hours for telephone company crews to remove the pole from the roadway, Hess said. In the interim, a main thoroughfare to stores in the Round Lake area and Gurnee Mills was closed to traffic on the busiest shopping day of the year,” according to the article.
In 2008, a 24-year-old Park City man was arrested and charged with battery after allegedly being involved in a fight that broke out in the early morning of Black Friday at Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5th in Gurnee Mills, according to a Nov. 28 News-Sun article by Korrina Grom.
One man was arrested after the fight, which occurred at 12:40 a.m. according to Grom’s article. Police were called to the same store at 2:05 a.m. in response to another fight. Nobody was charged in that incident, Grom’s article continued.
“I don’t know what they were about,” police said of the fights, which are unusual during the holiday shopping rush, Grom’s article continued.
A Look Back will examine aspects of Lake County’s rich history. If you have suggestions, email them to wweber@tribpub.com.
