THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, February 3, 1996             TAG: 9602030351
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A9   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: BY STEPHANIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   38 lines

AT SOME MALLS, IT WAS A DAY OF SHOPPING IN THE DARK

Their cash registers quieted due to rampant power outages Friday, hundreds of the region's retailers closed early or patiently waited for the juice to return.

At Lynnhaven Mall in Virginia Beach, staffers began walking around the shopping center, asking retailers to close at 4:30 p.m. The mall, illuminated by emergency lights, had some electricity, but apparently not enough.

Other malls, including Pembroke Mall in Virginia Beach and Military Circle in Norfolk, experienced outages affecting sections of the malls for several hours but had electricity restored by 3 p.m. Mall managers were crossing their fingers, hoping the electricity would keep flowing.

In Chesapeake, Greenbrier and Chesapeake Square malls had lucked out - at least by the late afternoon. Still, mall traffic was down because of the ice.

All of the malls planned to be open today, but some said the ice could potentially cause more problems.

Farm Fresh Inc., based in Norfolk, said seven of its stores experienced temporary outages, but each had back-up generators.

Still, there were creative ways of retaining business during the outage.

At the Price Club in Norfolk, customers pushed their carts through the dark, only to find out they couldn't pay for their goods because the computerized checkout system had shut down. But employees marked customers' shopping carts, allowing them to return later in the day, when electricity returned, said Pete Barney, an assistant manager at Price Club.

KEYWORDS: WINTER STORM ICE by CNB