托福阅读机经背：＂拯救＂大型购物中心.docxVIP

智课网TOEFL备考资料 托福阅读机经背景：＂拯救＂大型购物中心   Still, when Graham Weston, the company’s 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 the highway.  即便如此，当公司的创建人之一兼主席Graham Weston表示他们要搬到一家购物中心时，员工们都还将信将疑。那时候商场是空置的，地点位于Windcrest这个被包围着的郊区，外观不太好看，相当重要的原因是这座空无一人的大型商场正位于公路的出口处。  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, 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 of the year.  不过要想从零开始建立一座办公楼至少得花上几年的时间，而且不管怎么说，用现成的购物中心是比较省钱的作法。“现在已经没人想要购物中心了”技术总监John Engates说到。如今只有Rackspace，和其余像它那样把空置商城看作是一张空白画布的公司对购物中心还有好感。2008年Rackspace的新总部投入使用，还得了一项“社会经济发展”奖。如今，现场的员工有3000多人，计划到今年年底还要雇用几百人。  Plenty of enclosed malls are, of course, still thriving. And after several abstemious years, shoppers are perking up. In February, according to the Commerce Department, retail sales were 1.1% higher than they had been in January—higher than expected, and a welcome sign of recovery.  当然，还是有为数众多的封闭式商场生意很好。经历了几年节制消费，购物者们又活跃了起来。根据美国商务部的数据，2月份的零售额同比1月份增加了1.1%——比预期值高，是可喜的复苏迹象。  But many American malls had run into trouble before the recession started, and the country’s nascent recovery is not likely to revive them. America’s 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 vulnerable to systemic shocks; if an “anchor” stores closes, or if vacancies linger, other vendors quickly suffer. And many of the