BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MICHIGAN (WKZO) –A billionaire philanthropist and retail pioneer from Michigan credited with inventing the shopping mall concept is dead at age 91.
A. Alfred Taubman died Friday of a heart attack at his home in Bloomfield Hills outside Detroit.
Taubman became known as a retailing innovator for designing, building and owning the country’s first major shopping malls and changing the way Americans shopped.
He donated tens of millions of dollars to the University of Michigan where the Taubman Medical Research Institute has become a leader in stem cell research.
Taubman also was a major contributor to the Detroit Institute of the Arts and his name can be found on buildings at universities like Harvard and Brown.
