PROVIDENCE — Providence Place mall generated an estimated $13.4 million in sales-tax receipts for the state in the 2007 calendar year, up 12.25 percent from 2006.

If the estimate holds true, last year was a record high for the mall.

Through the end of November, stores in the urban shopping center already had generated enough sales to turn over about $11.4 million in sales-tax receipts to the state, according to figures from the state Division of Taxation, within sight of the peak total of almost $11.9 million generated in the 2006 calendar year.

However, consumer spending ground down across the nation in December. Even a disastrous month though would have put the mall’s annual tax receipts above the 2006 total. The mall has never generated less than $914,000 in tax receipts in December.

Because of the way mall stores turn over their sales-tax receipts to the state, December’s total won’t be available until February, according to division officials.

The figures show that the mall has rebounded from a dip in 2005, when anchor store Lord & Taylor closed. Tax revenues were $11.2 million that year, falling nearly 5.4 percent from the previous year. It was the second-consecutive year in which annual sales-tax receipts dropped.

The mall is now benefiting from the success of Lord & Taylor’s replacement, J.C. Penney, and the arrival of three nameplate retailers — Apple Inc., Sephora and Tiffany & Co.

“It’s hard to get better,” said Craig Gorris, the mall’s general manager. “There is a ripple effect resulting from stores like Tiffany, Apple and Sephora that is both immediate and long-term.”

Successful chains tend to cluster together at productive malls, he said. “So [a mall’s] success brings in additional retailers.”

General Growth Properties Inc. has worked to reshape the mall’s tenant mix since mid-2004, when the company took control of Providence Place as part of the purchase of the Rouse Co., the former owner.

“I’m not sure we were where we wanted to be from a merchandising perspective,” Gorris said.

The largest change was replacing the sputtering Lord & Taylor outlet with a J.C. Penney. The outlet run by the revitalized Texas-based department store chain opened in February 2006, helping the mall to reverse two years of negative returns.

“With J.C. Penney, we strike a balance between Macy’s and Nordstrom’s,” Gorris said. “They’re certainly outperforming where Lord & Taylor was.”

As the nation’s second-largest mall owner, General Growth had the muscle to bring in an Apple store, a Sephora cosmetics outlet and a Levi’s shop, among others.

Apple and Sephora are magnets for shoppers, drawing attention and sales, Gorris noted. Together, those stores can generate the sales of big-box retailers.

“Their sales performance is off the charts,” he said.

So is the mall’s historical performance.

Based on store tax figures submitted to the state, mall stores have turned over an estimated $93.5 million in sales-tax receipts since the mall opened in mid-1999. (Receipts for last December are estimated as flat with December 2006.) Rhode Island has netted about $64.4 million from Providence Place since the mall opened. That’s the money left after financial give-and-take required by the mall’s financing package.

The package includes:

•City property-tax breaks equaling $136 million over 30 years, as Providence agreed to waive roughly $4.5 million in annual property taxes.

•A state sales-tax rebate over 20 years, worth $71.8 million. The rebate was capped at $3.68 million annually for five years, after which it dropped to $3.56 million. The rebate ends in fiscal 2020.

•$40.8 million worth of revenue-note obligations, issued by the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation on behalf of the mall. The sales-tax rebate money goes to pay the bondholders the principal and interest they are due each year.

Assuming the state sends the rebate money to bondholders on July 1, at the beginning of each fiscal year, those rebates have so far totaled $29.08 million. That means Rhode Island has so far netted about $64.4 million in sales-tax receipts from the mall.

The financing and legislative requirements necessary to make Providence Place a reality put a unique requirement on the mall. It is the only shopping center in the state that must file sales-tax returns.

Retailers and restaurants submit sales-tax revenues to the state monthly. Typically, chains send one consolidated amount to the state, no matter how many outlets they have in Rhode Island.

But a chain with an outlet in Providence Place sends one tax return for that store and another, consolidated, return for all its other Rhode Island locations.

Less than half the sales at the mall fall under the state sales tax, because Rhode Island exempts clothing, movie tickets, medications and packaged grocery items.

Stores in Providence Place turned over sales-tax receipts of approximately $93.5 million through the end of last year.

In the mid-1990s, the administration of Gov. Lincoln Almond estimated that the mall would yield more than $109 million in new sales and income taxes over two decades, even after figuring in the state rebate.

Providence Place is on track to match its original tax-revenue estimates about seven years ahead of time. And success begets success.

The upward trajectory of mall sales made it easier for General Growth to draw another gold-plated retailer — Tiffany & Co. — which opened in time to help the Christmas sales push.

“Tiffany says: ‘We’ve arrived,’” Gorris said.

Now, Tiffany and the mall’s other retailers have to hope people arrive at the mall this year willing to shop despite unsettling economic news.

Tiffany’s run of good luck ran out late this year, as it did for many retailers, as sales at its U.S. stores dipped.

Since 2002, Tiffany has been one of retailing’s golden children. It managed to raise prices on its silver goods without alienating a number of shoppers less affluent than the nation’s economic elite.

But sales at the jeweler’s U.S. stores slid 2 percent in November and December, one indication that Providence Place and other mall sales tapered off in the days leading up to Christmas.

The latest evidence that American consumers are retrenching came from the Commerce Department, which said retail sales fell in December, while it also revised its November figures lower.

Spending by consumers, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, has been key to staving off economic slowdowns in recent years.

On Jan. 15, the Commerce Department announced that December retail sales fell by 0.4 percent from November’s level. The November level was just 1.0 percent above October’s retail sales.

Still, when compared with holiday-period retail sales in 2006, the combined November-December sales last year increased 3 percent from the same two-month period a year ago.

Wall Street expected a 0.1-percent dip in December as energy prices and falling home values caught up with consumers.

“It looks like the consumer is slowing down,” said Scott Brown, an economist at Raymond James Financial Inc.

Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation predicted retail sales this year will grow at the weakest pace in six years.

“The consumer is full of anxiety,” Rosalind Wells, chief economist at the National Retail Federation, told the Associated Press last week. The retail federation said total retail sales are slated to grow 3.5 percent this year, which is below last year’s estimated 4-percent pace and marks the weakest growth since 2002, when retail sales climbed 3 percent. The retail sales figure excludes automobiles, gas stations and restaurants.

The retail federation cheered last week’s federal tax-rebate proposal.

“The proposal put forth today is simple, targeted economic stimulus that will quickly put money into consumers’ pockets, where it can boost economic growth by creating demand throughout all sectors of the economy,” said Steve Pfister, a senior vice president with the federation. “Given the financial stress that consumers will be under in the coming year, stimulus legislation is essential to the health of our nation’s economy and to the jobs that rely upon the strength of that economy.”

pgrimald@projo.com