Are malls dying?
I think they are.
The biggest one in my neck of the woods opened around 1980. I remember how exciting it was to have a spiffy new mall within just a few minutes of my house. Now that mall is a ghost town. When I drive by at night and think of stopping by, it is so dark and forbidding that I don’t do it.
I still go to stores to buy clothes and a host of other items. I need to try on the clothes, and I like to actually see what I’m getting with many things (such as, for example, a new carry-on, which I’m presently in the process of researching and buying). But it seems I’m more and more in the minority these days.
I doubt many will disagree with you. I don’t. Two nearby malls have been transformed. One torn down for Wal-Mart and other stores/restaurants. Seems to be a success. The other, government space. Not the first time I’ve seen dead/dud real estate space transformed into government space.
Condos were built at the Natick Mall. From what I have read, there were some problems with that.
I live in Oak Ridge, and about 20 years ago a big indoor mall was opened here to great local fanfare. They finished demolishing it late last year.
A lot of unused strip malls are being turned into church facilities. The most unusual repurposing I’ve seen is an old Amarillo TX mall that was made into an art gallery, with each artist in a different retail space and one large “museum” location. It was very effective.
Our malls in Denver are still doing well, which is because of the snow and cold, I suspect; however, the outdoor “down town” areas are also thriving.
I remember the first mall I went to as a child in Dallas, which was built for the opposite reason, climate-wise: it could be air-conditioned in the summer.
It’s really becoming annoying to have to refill the name and mail spaces every single time I want to Leave a Reply.
They built an outdoor shopping mall (call it a ‘Markeplace’) a bit more than 5 miles from two indoor malls. One of the indoor malls has about 1.6m square feet and the usual anchor stores (JC Penny, Nordstrom) and restaurants. The other indoor mall has the smaller anchor stores (Target & Best Buy), and lower end restaurants. It has a movie theater too.
The new Marketplace, despite being uncovered here on Boston’s north shore, draws a lot more traffic than the indoor malls. Some of the more attractive brands moved to the Marketplace (JCrew, William Sonoma, Apple). It also has restaurants frequented by the hip crowd. Even though it is just five miles south it is in a more dense population area.
I hardly go to malls of any type these days, unless I’m buying clothes or shoes. Like Neo, I prefer to try them on before i buy them. Note that Amazon is now offering to ship clothing for a trial period, if you don’t like them you just send them back. This could mean my mall visiting days are all behind me.
I can’t imagine buying clothing, especially foot wear without first trying them on. Actually, I don’t shop on line. Mrs parker does, and at least half the time she sends back the apparel she purchased. Still, she “persists”. 😉
It seems that the outdoors mall is how they are trying to tackle this at least in my area. We have a mall here that was built in the 1990s and by about five years ago it had been partially torn down and reconfigured with Old Navy, Bed Bath, Michaels and the like where you have to go outside when leaving every store.
The real test will be when the next slowdown comes.
I remember going to Shoppers’ World back in the 50’s. The first time is was a beautiful summer day, hi-fi was a thing, and it was the first time I heard jazz. One of the shops had it’s doors open so we all could hear. That Shoppers’ World was torn down in 1994.
Around here the malls are drying up. The trend really accelerated after the economic downturn in 2007, and new construction in general dried up at the same time.
Thirty years ago, a brand new mall was built where I used to live. Down town, multistory, high end urban mall. My mom loved it. It had great stores, glitzy interiors. Designed by some architectural form with a pretty big name. It was torn down a few years ago and turned into a park…
20 years ago an outdoor mall was built in our city in one of the large suburban counties next to Washington, D.C. Every store/restaurant, even the smallest ones, is seen from the parking areas, which the indoor malls do not offer to the non-anchor stores. Our mall is doing very well, even though some companies (e.g., Borders) went out of business and had to be replaced. Most of the indoor malls in our county are doing poorly.
Dunno. Shopping in public or semipublic places has been a major activity of humanity, especially the female place, for a long, long time.
At least some of the pain of brick-and-mortar retail has been self-inflicted: creepy and idiotic micromanagement of the precise words employees must speak, long checkout lines, poorly-designed self-checkout systems, etc.
As regards malls, I think the “new downtown” paradigm will have a better future than the traditional indoor mall. A pioneer of this kind of development has been Federal Realty Trust, which did, for example, Bethesda Row (Bethesda, MD) and a similar project in what had long been a pretty scruffy area in Rockville, MD. (disclosure: I’m an FRT shareholder)
that was supposed to be ‘especially the female HALF’
I think the anchor stores bear part of the blame. It was too hard to find the things you might want and that would fit you. They were poorly organized too, and few of the salespeople could really give you advice.
When you avoid the anchors, why go to a mall? I am totally insulted by places that want to double the price of a pair of jeans because some a**hole from Manhattan cut slits in them.
Side note… Carry-on? 8^) My wife and I used these for a trip to Israel in 2016; they were amazing! I promise I have no association with the company, I just wanted to share with one of my favorite bloggers. https://www.ebags.com/product/ebags/mother-lode-tls-weekender-convertible/143101?productid=10150072
Bill Young:
Thanks for the tip. But alas, I can’t use a backpack or carry anything at all heavy because of my chronic arm problems. I must have something with wheels. Wheels add to the weight as well as the dimensions, unfortunately, but they are absolutely necessary for me. I even did some research on carry-ons and other luggage with retractable wheels but there are few, and they are VERY expensive. So this is the one I’m considering right now, because it gives the most packing space, is lightest, and has wheels.
I work for a certain well-known business with its headquarters in Freeport, ME. Returns are about 15-16% of all merchandise sold, which is the industry-wide average. Every item returned has to be processed, and that cuts into already-low profit margins. Please, get it right the first time.
During my travels around Maine and New England, I tend to see more vacant store-front properties, in both enclosed malls and strip malls, than was the case ten years ago. That corresponds to trends I have learned of from economics and business sources. This may have to do with not only relative amounts of disposable income, but where such discretionary spending may be going; what age groups the population is in; and the ongoing trends with online shopping and digital services.