When soothsaying investors were predicting that e-retailers would make brick-and-mortar stores obsolete, owners of the largest shopping malls made a show of trotting out their own Internet strategies.

From hand-held scanners for shoppers to kiosks with Internet access, these gizmos were an anxious attempt by mall developers to prove they were ahead of the cyber curve. But no sooner had the gadgets been launched than the dire warnings that spurred their creation proved drastically off target.

Hundreds of e-retailers fizzled, and malls were seen again as durable. And the Palm hand-held infrared scanners with names like YourSherpa and FastFrog already have been shelved.

Mall owners launched those programs "at a time when everyone was abuzz about tech initiatives in the real estate world," said Greg Andrews, an analyst with California-based Green Street Advisors Inc. "It was a kind of a knee-jerk reaction."

Which may explain why the Irving, Texas, developers of the provocatively named BigFatWow Inc. are careful to distance themselves from the quickly constricting dot-com world.

Sure, BigFatWow's mall-based Internet centers merge the point-and-click and brick-and-mortar worlds, but the company's goal is decidedly old-fashioned: By providing a dozen computer terminals hooked up to free T-1 high-speed access to the Internet, the centers could draw more shoppers to the mall and expose people on the other side of the digital divide to the cyber highway--blacks, Hispanics and older women who are less likely to use the Internet. Just as critical, malls would get rental money from BigFatWow for its space.

Since June, the privately held firm has opened 40 centers in the lobbies of malls nationwide, said Brent Earles, executive vice president for sales at BigFatWow. The first one in the Chicago area opened at Gurnee Mills in November.

BigFatWow's numbers doubled this month when it merged with its major competitor, Plano, Texas-based CyberXpo. Retaining the name BigFatWow, the new 250-employee company has 114 installed centers nationwide and plans to have 300 by the end of the year.

Recently at the Gurnee Mills BigFatWow center, situated in the lobby near the Spiegel outlet store and within sight of the Rainforest Cafe's 20-foot-high wooden giraffe, seven of the nine computer terminals were filled with shoppers pecking away at keyboards and staring at screens for their search-engine results.

Seemingly oblivious to the constant din of squeaky shoes, crying or laughing children and intercom announcements, Michelle Espinoza, 23, a part-time dog trainer from Mundelein, looked up Web sites on dog training. It was the first time she had ever experienced high-speed Internet access.

"I have AOL at home, and it's always busy or it freezes up a lot," she said. "I think this weekend I'll look into high-speed."

Another young women searched the Internet for a crocheting magazine's Web site for her mother standing nearby. "I've never been near the Internet," her mother laughed.

Since its opening, the Gurnee Mills center has drawn a steady crowd, and "during busy times there are people waiting in line to use the computers," mall spokesman Curt Morey said.

From the beginning, BigFatWow founder Don Daseke, a Dallas apartment and real estate investor, always approached Internet opportunities with the nuts-and-bolts needs of shopping mall real estate investment trusts in mind, Earles said.

"The issue for mall owners isn't, `Hey, look out for the big bad e-retailers,"' Earles said. "Rather, the issue is, `How will you use the Internet in the years ahead to complement a shopping center?"'

So Daseke viewed BigFatWow as an entertainment, or "inter-tainment," center, a way for malls to keep shoppers around longer, much as skating rinks and amusement rides already do in malls across the country.

An additional incentive for malls to invite a BigFatWow center: The company would pay rent for its space. Part of the rent includes a percentage of the company's gross revenue. A mall's management also gets to use the center's advertising displays for its own promotions, according to company officials.

But even though Gurnee Mills' owner, the Mills Corp. in Arlington, Va., welcomed the center at its Gurnee site, the company is taking a wait-and-see approach to ventures like BigFatWow, said Mark Rivers, executive vice president at Mills.

"The single biggest reason developers have embraced these technologies is for the [rental] income they can bring in," Rivers said. "But a lot of these concepts are still in their infancy."

Earles would not disclose how much rent BigFatWow pays or other financial information on the company.

But if shoppers don't pay a dime for Internet use, what's in it for BigFatWow? Partners and advertising sponsors pay to pitch their products and services on each center's six 42-inch flat-panels and numerous computer monitors and television screens.

Company executives hope high-speed Internet providers and sellers of consumer high-tech goods will bite, and, so far, SBC Communications Inc., AT&T Corp., ExciteAtHome Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Sega Enterprises have come on board as sponsors or partners.

The lure for them is the potential to reach huge numbers of shoppers who are on the other side of the digital divide. For although millions of people still don't have access to the Internet, more than 90 percent of Americans visit a shopping center each month, the International Council of Shopping Centers says.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, 32.6 percent of black households and 33.7 percent of Hispanic homes--versus 55.7 percent of white households--had home access to the Internet last year.

"We provide a bridge for the great digital divide," Earles said. "Our centers are free. They're easy to use, and it allows anyone who didn't have access before to experience the Internet."

In the case of women, the same Commerce Department report found that the digital gap between younger men and women has closed, but that older women were less likely to use the Internet.

"About 60 to 65 percent of shopping mall shoppers are women," Earles said. "We wanted to make sure our Wow centers were not threatening to them, that they didn't look too high-techy."

In June, BigFatWow was able to test some of its ideas when it opened its first center in the Atlanta area's South DeKalb Mall, in the heart of the one of the country's most affluent African-American communities. Although African-American households with incomes over $75,000 have much higher Internet-use rates than less affluent blacks, they still lag behind comparable white households, according to the Commerce Department study.