Nike Town Is a Shoo-In for Sports Fans : Retail: The Costa Mesa store creates a fantasy environment for a growing number of consumers who want shopping to be fun.

Nike Town, which opened Saturday in Costa Mesa’s Triangle Square, has become the latest experiment in blending retailing with entertainment.

Futurist Watts Wacker describes the enterprise as a combination museum and theater that happens to sell athletic shoes and apparel.

“They tell me that . . . one day I’m going to be able to go there and holographically dunk over Michael Jordan,” said Wacker, who monitors retail trends for Yankelovich Partners, a New York-based market research firm. “It is a fantasy environment.”

The technology to let shoppers go one-on-one with an NBA superstar isn’t perfected yet, but Nike Town still boasts a stunning blend of architecture, electronics and retailing gimmicks.

Merchandise swooshes to checkout counters in the 29,000-square-foot store through plexiglass “shoe tubes.” Customers move through the multilevel store--which is dotted with television monitors--on suspended staircases and glass-enclosed elevators.

The shelves--some fashioned from basketball hoops--hold more than 1,100 different types of merchandise from the sports apparel company based in Beaverton, Ore., ranging from infant’s clothing to Nike’s mainstay athletic shoes.

With Americans spending just half the time they did in malls back in 1985, entertainment is increasingly important to retailers. According to results of a recent Yankelovich Partners survey, malls remain the third most popular place--behind home and office--for hanging out, but Americans increasingly view shopping as a necessary evil.

Holograms and other electronic bells and whistles won’t do much for consumers who loathe shopping. But in-store entertainment could rekindle interest among consumers who want shopping to be fun, especially when it comes to “things you don’t necessarily have to have,” said Richard Thalheimer, founder of Sharper Image. “Then, shopping is fun. You can spend time with your friends being entertained, making the day enjoyable.”

Thalheimer’s San Francisco-based Sharper Image stores invite shoppers to “test drive” $2,000 massage chairs and play with high-tech gizmos before purchase.

That hands-on approach means “a higher cost of merchandising,” Thalheimer said, “but it also results in better sales.”

The Walt Disney Co. uses its own special blend of fantasy and reality at its 200 Disney Stores around the world. In keeping with Disney’s theme park heritage, store personnel are “cast members,” customers are “guests,” and the stores are designed to make “each visit seem like a trip to Disneyland.”

Retailers are realizing that “it isn’t enough to be the Nordstrom’s of whatever (niche) you’re in,” said Thomas W. Gilmore, general manager of MCA Development Co.’s soon-to-open Universal CityWalk retail complex in Los Angeles. “With the opening of projects like (Minnesota’s) Mall of America and the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace (in Las Vegas), you’re seeing more entertaining shopping environments.”

MCA’s CityWalk, a 200,000-square-foot retail and restaurant complex that will open this month near Universal Studios, encourages merchants to throw out old retailing rules and take chances with their store designs. Retailers were encouraged to strive for what MCA executives describe as an “idealized reality.”

Many retailers have welcomed the challenge: The Nature Company incorporated a rain forest into its CityWalk store. Dark Horse Comics has dedicated large portions of its store to games, shirts, puzzles, toys and a huge flying saucer, Gilmore said. “Whether you’re a sci-fi buff or not, this store will grab your attention.”

But CityWalk will also contain some decidedly non-retail attractions--the Museum of Neon Art, a Panasonic electronics pavilion, 14 classrooms staffed by UCLA’s Extension Center and a “motion simulator” theater that mimics a runaway train and a rocket ride into space.

At Costa Mesa’s Nike Town, there’s enough sports memorabilia--including shoes worn by professional golfer Curtis Strange, any number of professional jerseys and a statue of long-distance runner PattiSue Plummer--to keep even ardent sports fanatics busy.

Nike Town is the third company-owned store that Nike has opened across the country to showcase its growing product line. Nike earlier opened stores in Chicago and Portland. A fourth store will open in June in Atlanta.

In-store attractions needn’t be as dramatic as going up against an NBA superstar. Yankelovich Partners’ research suggests that there is also room for the relatively mundane--a quiet place for home improvement store shoppers to sip coffee and contemplate a potentially expensive home-remodeling project.

Mossimo Giannulli, founder of Mossimo, the Irvine-based active-wear apparel company, said retailing should be founded on prompt, courteous service.

But Giannulli wants to turn shopping into “more of an enjoyable experience . . . which is something retailers have forgotten how to do.”

Giannulli is considering juice bars and other creature comforts for a proposed string of retail stores that would sell his Mossimo line of clothing and accessories.

While Nike’s glitzy store is designed to entertain shoppers, the 29,000-square-foot complex is also supposed to educate retailers who carry the Nike line.

Nike builds its company stores in areas where they won’t compete directly with existing retailers. And the stores never undercut retailers on price.