Josh McKivigan and Meg St-Esprit stopped at Ross Park Mall on Wednesday afternoon with a goal -- pick up Ms. St-Esprit's shoes for their July 18 wedding.

While there, they passed by tables set up for an autograph event that evening with Steelers' tight end Heath Miller.

"We couldn't pass it up," Mr. McKivigan said. Rather than leave, they walked around killing time before the event. Ms. St-Esprit had her necklace fixed, and Mr. McKivigan purchased presents for his groomsmen at L.L. Bean.

Once their Heath Miller autographs were in hand, Ms. St-Esprit said she was going to try to persuade her fiancé to buy her an early wedding present at Macy's.

With the recession putting the squeeze on retailers, malls around the country are using community events to drive traffic into the building or to get such consumers as Mr. McKivigan and Ms. St-Esprit to spend more time shopping.

The Conference Board, a New York-based organization that surveys consumers to gauge and predict shopping habits, issued a report at the end of June saying consumer confidence had dropped following a few months in which confidence numbers rose, signaling a slow recovery in which retail sales will continue to struggle.

Consumers are more cautious about how and where they spend their money now, said C. Britt Beemer, chief executive officer and founder of America's Research Group in Charleston, S.C. The recession means that malls must encourage traffic, and organizing community events is a good way to draw customers in, Mr. Beemer said.

"What you hope it does, is that people who go in the mall, even though they may not buy something on that particular visit, they say, 'Gosh, I'll have to get back there,'" he said.

Malls across the country are marketing themselves as meeting places or community centers, especially in locations that don't have a downtown area, International Council of Shopping Centers spokeswoman Erin Hershkowitz said.

"It certainly has become more of a social scene than it used to be, rather than just a place to shop," Ms. Hershkowitz said.

At Ross Park on Wednesday, a local Pittsburgh charity foundation hosted Mr. Miller and held a silent auction to raise money. "Glimmer of Hope" funds an under-40 breast cancer research study at Magee-Womens Research Institute, and for four hours, they occupied the mall's center court, where they attracted a line of people -- some dressed in Steelers jerseys -- excited to see the Super Bowl winner.

Johnnie Thomas, 20, and Sean Garrison, 21, both of Bellevue, visited Ross Park because Mr. Garrison's mother had told them Mr. Miller would be there signing autographs. They walked around the mall beforehand, but didn't buy anything, Mr. Garrison said, but they were planning to shop afterwards.

The community events are a positive for the retailers, the community and the mall, said Michael Gianoutsos, the director of marketing for Ross Park Mall.

"We feel that the mall isn't just a place where people go to shop anymore," he said. "It's a place where people go to see what's happening."

The mall has been hosting community events for years, he said, but recently they've been ramping up. When the DVD of vampire movie "Twilight?? was released, Ross Park hosted a blood bank sign-up at the mall's "Hot Topic" store. They also have worked out a deal with the Pittsburgh Symphony so people can park at the mall, take a bus Downtown to the performance, and then receive a coupon book to shop in the mall.

"We would love to have [an event] every single day if I could handle it," Mr. Gianoutsos said. "It's just a great way for the mall to stay in touch with the community."

Coincidentally, it's also a way to draw in consumers that are not flocking to malls the way they have in the past. Century III Mall in West Mifflin was listed in a recent U.S. News & World Report ranking of the country's 10 most endangered malls. The rank determination was based on data that included sales and occupancy rates. Tenants fill 70 percent of the space in Century III, the report said.

Century III is hosting more community events this year than it did in 2008, said Christine Jamison, the director of marketing and business development at the mall. It held 44 events in 2008, and have held 61 so far in 2009, including job fairs, high school robot competitions, pet adoptions and a comic book and collectibles show.

"The stores see an increase in traffic on those days, and that gives us an opportunity to promote to people that may not have been at the mall," she said.

South Hills Village Mall in Bethel Park has had about a 30 percent increase this year in community events, said Megan Frenz, director of marketing and business development. She said she'd always tried to think of the mall as more than a place to shop.

"You can come to the mall, you can do your shopping, you can eat and you can go to the movies," she said. "It's really just going on with what we've always done."

Mindy Suhoza, marketing director at Monroeville Mall, said that while the shopping center hosts community events often, it hadn't had a significant increase in programs this year.

Meanwhile, Ross Park already had several more community events planed, Mr. Gianoutsos said, including the unveiling of a mural painted on a mall entrance by the MLK Community Mural Project.

"The more we have going on in the mall, the better for the property itself," he said.