For mall, new name rings up trouble
With upscale stores, luxury condos, and swanky restaurants all planned for an expanded Natick Mall, the owners decided they needed one more thing: a new name.
They decided to streamline the name, chopping off "Mall" and referring to the complex simply as "Natick."
That didn't sit well with officials and residents in the town of Natick, where the mall is located. Many thought the mall was stealing their community's name.
"The new mall is many things," said Joshua Ostroff , a selectman. "It is residents, it's shopping, it's a transportation hub. But it's not the town of Natick."
With town officials gathering signatures on a petition and preparing to fight the mall's trademark application for a new logo (which showed a stylized "N" over the single word "Natick"), mall officials yesterday changed their tune.
"We really regret that our intent was badly misunderstood by people inside the town of Natick," Stephanie Gambino , senior marketing manager for the mall, said yesterday. "We are no longer going to refer to ourselves as 'Natick.' We're trying to be good neighbors."
Gambino said the mall's owners, Chicago-based
"I'm so glad they listened," said Carol A. Gloff , a selectwoman who said she had gathered a few hundred signatures opposing the proposed name just yesterday morning. "People are really concerned and upset about it. They're concerned about confusion. They're concerned that people are going to start to look at Natick as just being the mall."
Natick, a town of 32,000 people, has much to offer, said Arthur B. Fair III , owner of Fair & Yeager Insurance Co., a family business that has been on Main Street for 109 years.
"Natick is a heck of a lot more than a retail and residential complex on Route 9," said Fair, president of Natick Center Associates, a downtown booster group. "Natick exists in the community, the residents, and businesses that have been around for hundreds of years. A lot of people have invested a lot in this town."
Gambino said mall officials share that affection for the town. "Our desire was to honor a town we were proud to call home," she said. "We love this place."
The mall has been a fixture in the area since 1966. The expansion, which began in February, will offer 550,000 square feet of additional retail space that includes a Neiman Marcus and the state's first Nordstrom. Officials are building residential buildings with 215 luxury condominiums that will have direct access to the mall. It all should be finished by September.
"We're changing the face of retail in New England," Gambino said. "We needed to let people know that the difference would be truly dramatic.
"Whether it's luxury or the most wonderful new fashions . . . we've got it at Natick -- Mall," she said, apparently still adjusting to the change. "We'll call it Natick Mall at this point."
John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com. 
