Sculptures from a show called "Scrapel Hill" -- a nearly life-sized polar bear and cubs, a soaring stack of airy spheres made of old bicycle tires, a full-sized broken door bearing the image of an enormous yellow handprint -- are scattered from one end to the other. Inside one previously empty storefront, the "Art Heels" exhibit of paintings and smaller sculptures based on the common theme of shoes line one wall, and delicate drawings done by child refugees from Burma hang from wires in the middle. In another space drama teachers from the Carrboro-based ArtsCenter coach young students in the movement of Shakespeare's characters.

Everywhere you look in the mall, art is happening. That's no accident. Madison Marquette, the Washington. D.C.-based company that bought University Mall in late 2007, sees the arts as a potential draw, especially in a community like this one.

"It's very much a strategic decision," said Susan Reda, the public relations and special events manager for University Mall. "This is a community that appreciates the arts, and we decided one path we wanted to explore was using the mall as a public viewing space for the arts. Instead of doing a cookie-cutter mall, we wanted to make a mall that reflects the community."

University Mall has long had a number of arts-based tenants; with venues such as the including Animation & Fine Art Galleries, Turning Point Gallery and Tyndall's Gallery, it probably has more pure art galleries per square foot than most malls.

But the recent emphasis has pushed visual arts and performing arts into the concourse, and into temporarily vacant storefronts. The mall has partnered with local organizations including the Chapel Hill Museum and Kidzu Children's Museum on arts projects, and has collaborated with the town of Chapel Hill on the town's latest community art project, "Our Stories, In Focus." which at 15 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter, is impossible to miss in the concourse.

Most recently, The ArtsCenter, the Carrboro-based performance and teaching nonprofit, has joined forces with the mall to open a satellite branch there. Teens in The ArtsCenter's Youth Performing Arts Conservatory are taking classes in the mall's Special Events Centre. Last Sunday, and again this Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. they will move out into the concourse to do free public performances as part of the mall's new "An Evening With..." performance series.

"I had been wanting to do theater camps for older kids, but we don't have enough space at The ArtsCenter," said Jeri Lynn Schulke, director of the Youth Performing Arts Conservatory. "At about the same time, the mall started talking to us about collaborating on some things. It seemed like a perfect fit. It's worked out great. This is just the first in a series of steps we're taking with them."

The ArtsCenter and the mall are nailing down the details of an agreement that would give The ArtsCenter permanent dance studio space in the mall, said ArtsCenter director Jon Wilner. Adequate space for dance classes is the biggest deficit at the organization's Carrboro facility, he said.

"We're talking about opening one or two dance studios in the mall," Wilner said. "It's really beneficial for The ArtsCenter, and it's really beneficial for the mall. For us, it allows us expand our space and therefore our programming, and it also gives us a presence in Chapel Hill, so people won't always think of The ArtsCenter as 'that place in Carrboro.'

"The mall obviously has taken the pulse of the community, and they've found that arts and culture are very important to people here. By putting arts and culture in the mall, you draw people there -- not just to the arts and culture but also to the retailers."

The Friday reception for "Our Stories, Our Focus" earlier this month drew a big crowd. The artwork incorporates more than 1,000 images submitted by residents -- family photographs, UNC basketball ticket stubs, recipes, newspaper clippings, even a letter to Santa. Artists Leah Sobsey and Lynn Bregman-Blass scanned the images and printed them on long strips of laminated paper. The strips hang from a hoop suspended from the ceiling, forming a sort of tall cylindrical collage that reflects the history of the community.

Although the recent emphasis on the arts is the result of a strategic decision by Madison Marquette, in some ways the push follows a trend established in 2001, when Deep Dish Theater Company opened in the mall.

"Deep Dish sort of spearheaded things," Schulke said. "At first we said, 'A theater in the mall? Like in the middle of the mall?' But it's worked out great. Now there's a lot of forward thinking about what a mall can be."

dave.hart@newsobserver.com, (919) 932-8744.