Are Malls Over?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/03/are-malls-over.html

by pesenti • 12 years ago

230 239 12 years ago

thrush3• 12 years ago

What do malls offer that regular shops do not (besides lots of stores being located closely together, but thanks to Yelp and local transportation, that doesn't seem like too big of a benefit).

UPDATE:

So I am from NYC, and I have lived in urban areas my entire life. Finding the right stores so that I could make immediate purchases has never been an issue for me, but based on early comments, I clearly have a myopic view.

I can see how a mall could potentially offer an "urban" experience (meaning that food, stores, people are all conveniently located in a nearby area) in a non-urban area.

bliti• 12 years ago

A mall is a gathering place for many people of various age types. One does not simply go to the mall to shop. Sometimes it is to socialize.

thrush3• 12 years ago

Nice. So how can we recreate the gathering place in an era where the mall as a shopping center is no longer necessary or successful?

ZanyProgrammer• 12 years ago

I was going to say something snarky about the 80s being the last time people did that, but there are occasional times I've had to go to a mall in the past few years, and I notice teenagers hanging out (usually in the summer).

meddlepal5• 12 years ago

You mean just like our downtown's used to be before we murdered them?

mildtrepidation2• 12 years ago

Aside from the facts that not all malls are dying and that there are still new malls being built, they offer exactly the benefit you stated: "lots of stores being located closely together."

I don't believe the existence of services like Yelp offsets this much if at all. People who don't mind spending the extra time to use it and then to travel around to the places they find (or even wait for shipment) are not necessarily the shoppers a mall caters to, as they're obviously not so concerned with getting what they need quickly with minimal travel.

There's also the social and entertainment aspect to consider. Many malls have food courts and restaurants and/or include movie theaters (or even theme parks, which I find hilarious, but it's there).

Malls do often exist for and serves purposes other than just providing goods in a centralized location... but that purpose itself hasn't lost its utility.

kemayo• 12 years ago

I'd say a mall is a place to go when your intention is to shop as an activity not just as a means to an end. It allows you to constantly browse, with nothing requiring you to stop -- the next store is meters away, food is right there...

Yelp and local transport doesn't meet this niche. Or, it only meets it in a handful of big dense cities that have decent shopping districts. Malls replicate that sort of experience for a spread out suburban area.

Is all that sustainable? Apparently not.

hansy• 12 years ago

I can't even remember the last time I set foot in a mall. I think it was to try on a suit, but even trying on clothes will be virtualized with augmented reality. Other than being a destination place to hang out, I don't see much utility in malls.

lttlrck• 12 years ago

Whether a suit fits you and you like how it feels are two different things.

jrockway• 12 years ago

So the online retailer sends you five different suits to try on, and you send back the four you don't like. The extra $30 worth of shipping is nothing compared to paying employees and rent.

hibikir• 12 years ago

Augmented reality won't tell me that two pairs of pants, from the same store, that say they are 30 inches long at the waist, are really 29 and 31. Different colors mean different suppliers and different results.

The technology that will tell us if some pants are a good fit or not is still nowhere near where it need to be.

Many other stores will die quickly though.

spiralpolitik3• 12 years ago

Actually technology will make sure that your pants fit just perfectly from the 1000s of measurement taken by the full body scanner in the retail store you ordered them from.

The future of retail will be where it is fully integrated into the manufacturing chain to enable just in time manufacturing and delivery of the perfect item with the cost savings from such automation passed onto the consumer due to competition.

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

I sure hope not. Some of my fondest memories when I was growing up in the States was visiting stores like JC Penny, the random Electronics store or Jack's Joke Shop with my parents, then swinging by the food court and eating some Sbarros pizza.

When I come back home, I would like to take my son to the mall as well and spend the morning just browsing around and buying trinkets. It's fun!

Amazon may be cheaper but come on, going to the mall is not all about shopping, it's about the experience!

jimktrains23• 12 years ago

What about if you did all that, but in your city center? I'd argue that that would have been a better experience than the mall.

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

1. Not everyone lives in or near a city.

2. Parking

3. Convenience. It's much easier to walk around a mall in winter than it is a city centre.

ryanhuff2• 12 years ago

I live in Southern California suburbia. The nearest true city center is an hour metro train ride away, while the nearest mall is a ten minute drive. For me (and millions of others here) the malls are more convenient.

mildtrepidation2• 12 years ago

Obligatory: No, they're not.

More relevant to HN: The comments so far suggest that many of us are pretty far removed from not only the demographics that use malls, but also the people who run them and the shop owners and managers that are their tenants. It's important to remember, though, that this doesn't mean they don't exist or that they're somehow wrong.

Many malls are still successful, and to suggest that because some are closing the model is dead is baseless.

mrharrison• 12 years ago

No. Come on silly question. They are still alive and well in many cities. Even in SF, where you are suppose to order a single dental floss through google shopping express to be part of the cool crowd. Going to the mall allows you to quickly search many stores at once, which will be a need for some time.

6cxs2hd62• 12 years ago

Instead of "reinventing malls", how about "reinventing" what's left of the downtown shopping district in cities and towns?

I think the only way to compete with online shopping and with Wal-Mart, is with an experience that goes beyond efficient commerce. Some people, some of the time, will gravitate toward an authentic in-person social environment that is interesting overall, and which happens to include interesting shops.

This also tends to make the place more interesting for tourists, which at least up to a point can have a beneficial impact

meddlepal5• 12 years ago

You get it. We need to fix a lot of American mass transit infrastructure though to make this feasible. Getting into the city is not easy or cheap in many places in the United States. And we cannot just rely on the cheap trick of using parking garages and highways to get people into the city anymore - that's part of what killed cities in the first place.

6cxs2hd62• 12 years ago

I agree, and I'm definitely thinking of larger cities, in part.

I'm also thinking of smaller towns. People may drive there, park, then walk around and enjoy it -- and spend money. There are towns like this around New England, for example. They're destinations people want to visit or live in. If instead the town had a Wal-Mart, it wouldn't be the same economic benefit to the town. Who would visit for that?

Of course even better if there were rail service to the town. I'm not disagreeing with you, there. I'm just pointing out that this isn't only an urbanista issue. I think it matters as much, maybe even more so, for smaller cities and towns.

ams61107• 12 years ago

Mass transit is OK for commuters who can tolerate the homeless-shelter-on-wheels aspect of it, but not good for shoppers, since it limits your per-trip purchases to what you can carry.

aestra3• 12 years ago

Instead of "reinventing malls", how about "reinventing" what's left of the downtown shopping district in cities and towns?

This is happening, big time.

It is insane, when I was growing up the downtown was scary. Not only were there very few places to go, it was crime ridden and a blight. If you wanted to go shopping or to a restaurant you had to go to the suburbs, mostly the suburban mall. In the last several years, downtown has completely transformed. I live far away and ever time I come back there is TONS of new stuff there. About 6-7 years ago I now see the few things that were starting to come in was the beginnings of this revitalization.

lmm2• 12 years ago

Downtown shopping is dead; malls can do the shopping experience much better. They can control more of the experience (and keep out undesirables), and don't have to share street space with government buildings or random non-consumer businesses.

badman_ting• 12 years ago

I don't go to them much anymore, but every time I do, I notice what a strange place it is. The stores are mostly bad, the food is of course terrible, very limited natural light, the list goes on. I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years. True, there is a human need to congregate. But why do it in there?

There is a reluctance among posters here to consider a "yes" to the question in the title. Which seems strange and perhaps self-conscious. Consider:

"Mall traffic, for a number of years, has been slowing down. Whether it continues to decline somewhat over time, I think that’s realistic to assume."

People from companies as large as the Gap rarely get more explicit than that when talking about dying aspects of their business. The writing is on the wall, folks.

sliverstorm5• 12 years ago

I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years.

Did you actually attend malls in their heyday? Today's mall is a sad shadow of their former selves, and as a result a poor way to judge how or why we enjoyed them in decades past.

sillysaurus3• 12 years ago

What were they like?

mgkimsal• 12 years ago

agreed. back in the 80s, the closest mall to me was pretty good - a decent mix of entertainment stores (music, games) and arcades, and water slide for a while, movie theater, and a decent mix of food (well, some of the better food was anchor restaurants in the parking lot). My recollection is there was a lot of natural light on sunny days - large glass sections in the ceiling structure let in quite a lot of light. I seem to remember one wing (of the 5?) being a bit drearier than the others, but might be bad memory (or... it was the 'lord and taylor' wing and I rarely ever went there!)

Biggest drawback I see to the older style 'mall' areas was lack of expandability - the structure was forever in place - you couldn't change the character with a new wing/section very easily. Outdoor shopping areas have a bit more flexibility in that respect.

Much like radio and tv have far more competition for our time, so too do malls have more competition for our time and money. But they had a good run :)

Touche• 12 years ago

I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years.

Are you being serious? There are many stores all next to each other. Don't overthink it, it's as simple as that.

ams61107• 12 years ago

I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years.

The indoor shopping mall was, initially, a huge convenience. You could drive to one place, park once (usually for free), and visit a variety of shops in climate-controlled comfort (nice in rainy/winter seasons or hot summers). Most people found this preferable to driving all over town or even to a central downtown or shopping district, hunting and paying to park on the street or in a remote garage, and having to walk from shop to shop outdoors. As malls got bigger and bigger, though, the shops became more and more specialized and less interesting to most shoppers. Walking vast distances between the one or two shops you want to visit just recreated the original problem.

Young people used to like to hang out at malls because it was something to do. There was usually a video game arcade and movie theatres, offering entertainment you could not get at home. You could browse shops with friends, and catch up on gossip. Before mobile phones, Facebook, Twitter, etc. you actually had to stay in touch face-to-face and meeting at the mall was easy.

So malls are dying because a) most of them are too big and b) most of the social and entertainment opportunities have been replaced by technology.

kunai• 12 years ago

This is the perfect characterization of the demise of malls that I can think of. They fill a niche that just isn't needed anymore.

Sad. I miss my local arcade and video stores... there's only one video store left and the arcade closed up shop back in 2008.

I wish people would get off their asses for once and experience life! Convenience isn't everything. You don't make memories by sitting in front of a black rectangular slab with buttons and menus to choose from, you make memories from experiences. Like going places.. walking. Biking. Breathing. Seeing.

If we're not using all 5 senses I think there's no point in doing something.

sizzle4• 12 years ago

I thought the experience of malls were essentially like that of casinos, in that they were designed so you would lose track of time and buy/gamble more?

eli_gottlieb• 12 years ago

So malls are dying because a) most of them are too big and b) most of the social and entertainment opportunities have been replaced by technology.

Also, they decided that a bunch of loitering teens were more trouble than they were worth, and made bunches of rules designed to make teenaged mall rats go elsewhere. Those rules went horribly right.

lmm2• 12 years ago

'60s architecture is terrible, and my response to a lot of it is "what were they thinking?". But modern malls can be beautiful; light, airy, with great shops and food.

I think one thing is seriously damaging malls: we're now allowing huge corporate-owned "public spaces" in a way we never used to, which give the retailers the advantages of a mall while being out in the open. But where I live new malls are still opening, and they're still great places to go (as is what claims to be the first ever mall, on Jermyn Street).

thrill• 12 years ago

I don't care for shopping in general, but malls are far from dead. I had to pick my daughter up from a modeling gig at the mall yesterday - I literally could not find a parking space. There were people waiting in nearly every row for someone - anyone - to pull out. It's the middle of March and it was as bad as Christmas.

meddlepal5• 12 years ago

Some malls are thriving, but many are dead. In the city I grew up in I can name at least two that are dead or close to dead. On the other hand if you go just outside the city then there are two that are still going strong.

tsunamifury• 12 years ago

Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not. Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef-driven eateries.

What people have abandoned is indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza and Chinese chains and the same terrible jewelry stores.

People want shopping centers to reflect regional and local character, be in town centers, and offer high quality unique options with a few staples. Get rid of the huge parking lots and add a grocer.

However tacitly this article is pointing to a possible larger problem in the Midwest where cold weather, and permanently depressed economy and a talent drain is leaving them without the tools to build interesting gathering places. This is a far larger and sadder issue.

blackjack48• 12 years ago

I've even noticed that Stonestown, a parking-lot surrounded anachronism in SF, has remained quite busy, despite being close to neighborhood commercial corridors. They've moved towards offering more community events: movie nights, Chinese New Year celebrations, etc. They also added Trader Joe's a few years ago, which has been a major draw.

The entire place used to be an outdoor mall, but a skylight was added to keep out the notorious SF fog while retaining natural light.

The next logical step in its transformation would be moving more of the parking into structures or underground, and building apartments on the land. But that would require the blessing of neighbors and activists in the area, not an easy task.

xcrunner529• 12 years ago

Yep, we have Easton Town Centre around here (Columbus). It was one of the first of its kind, I believe and is very nice and a great place just to hang out.

flexie• 12 years ago

In Europe, malls are still constructed in many places and they have the advantage of being built a few decades after many of the US malls.

Where I live summers are a bit too warm and winters a bit too cold to make outdoor shopping joyful. Also, streets are noisy and full of aggressive drivers and the sidewalks are full of holes and broken tiles. So in the last few years this 1.5M population city has seen the construction of 10 shopping malls, most of which are actually really nice "gathering places" as you put it and most of which seem to thrive.

One advantage from most of the US malls that I have been to is that cars are parked under the malls, not around them, that most of the malls are built near subway or tram stops and that they somehow fit nicely into the surrounding architecture.

Often the malls are built in the city center and usually in a very nice quality. Usually the malls have one major supermarket chain in the basement that acts as an anchor store and usually they have a cinema and a food court in the top floor that offers not just the usual fast food but often also some decent food.

I really enjoy shopping in a mall and until someone fixes the problem of waiting and paying for delivery I don't see online shopping making malls obsolete.

analog313• 12 years ago

On a brief but pleasant trip to Switzerland, I got around using their wonderful transit system. Every transit station was also a commercial hub. Big stations had big shops like supermarkets and department stores. Little stations had little shops like bakeries and banks.

Any restructuring of retail shopping in the US would have to include thinking about how entire districts are laid out. It takes one person -- the owner -- to restructure a mall, but considerably more cooperation and time to restructure neighborhoods.

rch• 12 years ago

One advantage from most of the US malls...is that cars are parked under the malls, not around them...

Thanks for bringing this up. Dealing with parking is a much more complex problem than was assumed for the last 50 years or so. Better modeling should improve the situation going forward though, and could help effectively redevelop some of these megamall wastelands too.

WalterBright3• 12 years ago

A few years ago I went to a mall in Stuttgart. The interesting thing was I could have been in any mall in America. The layout, architecture, parking garage, etc., was right out of the US, and even the advertising was all in English. It's like eating at McDonald's in Tokyo. What's the point?

bowlofpetunias• 12 years ago

There is no such thing as "Europe".

I don't know of any malls being constructed in the Netherlands.

kyro• 12 years ago

> indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza and Chinese chains and the same terrible jewelry stores.

What a depressing yet accurate description. Growing up in California suburbia, spending time with friends or family at the (Brea, Santa Ana) malls was always mind numbing. Those places had no life or character. Others didn't seem as bothered, and I've chalked that up to my mood being more influenced by my surroundings than most. Even today I find my mood and productivity drastically affected by the age, quality, design, openness, brightness, etc of my work environment.

ams61107• 12 years ago

My biggest problem with malls is the pervasive aroma of human flatulence that seems to be everywhere. Maybe that's why so many of the shops spray perfume/cologne into the air.

sizzle4• 12 years ago

Ontario mills, Montclair mall, Brea mall, all mind numbing indeed. The only malls I enjoy in socal are the ultra high end ones like southcoast plaza, simply because they sell nice things that I can tangibly handle. All the other dingy, musty malls (ie. Ontario mills) are the absolute last choice for me, opting for open air alternatives such as Victoria Gardens.

wahsd• 12 years ago

What happened is more of a change in cultural expectations that malls and their stale corporate overlords did not and were not able to adapt to. There is no reason that malls could not have been revamped and renovated to adjust, but I think that ship has sailed. People have given up on those areas where malls are located, which makes the extensive capital investments necessary to make any such changes even more impossible now than when they should have been made.

jimmaswell3• 12 years ago

Brutalist? Don't you think that's a little hyperbolic? Every mall I've witnessed has had interior and exterior design far from brutalist. Pretty nice-looking, really.

A popular one around here actually has a large skylight spanning most of the middle of the roof.

There are a lot of good reasons to prefer an indoor place. The weather's often not comfortable outside. It's only really perfectly comfortable for a time throughout the year that sums to maybe a few months over here. Maybe you're used to some place where it's the perfect weather all year?

"People want shopping centers to reflect regional and local character, be in town centers, and offer high quality unique options with a few staples. Get rid of the huge parking lots and add a grocer."

Do they really want all that, or do they just want some place with a bunch of stores and maybe a movie theater and food court, in a nice indoor climate-controlled environment and some light music in the background?

You just admitted in your last paragraph that the weather in that place makes an outdoor gathering less desirable.

theoh2• 12 years ago

Brutalism is a style, not a term of abuse. It does often refer to high modernist 1960s and 1970s buildings which are expensive to operate, having been constructed before environmental friendliness was on the agenda. Some people don't like the rectilinear boxes and raw concrete, but that's not why the term brutalism is applied to a particular subset of the buildings of that period: it was the popular name of an aesthetic movement, for better or worse. The architects in question were influenced by the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, as well as the notorious (but admittedly brilliant) Le Corbusier.

Roboprog• 12 years ago

There's some good tongue in cheek commentary about the style in this podcast:

http://kunstlercast.com/shows/kunstlercast_111_brutalism.htm...

"Darth Vader" windows :-)

Of course, the host's main concern is about peak oil, so he would have some other things to say about the gradual decline of malls.

I'm not as extreme, but mail order is definitely more economical than frequent commutes to a far away shopping center. I'm glad I live within easy biking distance from an outdoor shopping center, which has many little restaurants (chain & local) to hit for lunch when working from home, as well as a theatre, Target & a "Whole Foods"-like grocery store. I can carry a fair amount of stuff home on bike rack "pannier" bags, and sometimes only get in the car one or two days a week to make an appearance at work. Only the Target has decent bike racks, though. Otherwise, trees and trash cans get pressed into service :-)

chaostheory• 12 years ago

Exactly. Union Square has better places to eat and drink near by that are way better than a standard, factory mall box. You can also just walk around or hang out in the small park. Stanford Mall has this in a different style as well as Milbrae, Burlingame, and Santana Row. They all have 'character'.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

At the same time, outdoor car-centric outlet-malls are still plentiful if not gaining steam, and they have all the hideous disadvantages of the traditional mall plus the problem that people drive from store to store and you're not even protected from the elements if you choose to walk from one store to the next.

gress• 12 years ago

It is extremely rare for malls to be housed in brutalist buildings.

dictum• 12 years ago

Most of the malls I've seen are closer to postmodern architecture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_architecture

Lewisham• 12 years ago

I was going to come here to say this. I've lived in a couple of college towns in California (Davis and Santa Cruz), and they both have a Gap in the downtown area. Strolling downtown, especially in Santa Cruz, is just a Thing To Do, like going to the mall used to be. It's where you see the Santa Cruz character, grab a cookie from the cookie store, and mooch around looking in shop windows. Essentially the exact same mall activity.

That said, as the article focuses on Gap, I think their problems are far more pronounced than just malls or online. The Gap and Baby Gap store in Santa Cruz are almost always completely empty, and that seems to be the case for most places. I get the feeling Target is just dominating them, selling the same clothes cheaper.

dylz2• 12 years ago

Half of the reason I go to Westfield Mall is because of the food court.

If it was the standard mcdonalds-unrecognisable foodcourt chicken with different sauce-etc, I would hate it.

eclipxe2• 12 years ago

Westfield is a mall brand/company. There isn't just ONE Westfield mall.

edj• 12 years ago

Exactly.

Take for example the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan[1]. It's in the city center, it's visually spectacular, it's unique, and it's a fun place to visit, eat lunch, window shop, or spend (too much) money. It's been around for 150 years which indicates that this is a sustainable model for a shopping mall in a dense & vibrant city.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleria_Vittorio_Emanuele_II

tbyehl• 12 years ago

Being next to one of the main tourist attractions of the city has probably helped. All of those damned pigeons...

igravious• 12 years ago

In Ireland it rains a lot. The one big mall built recently in the city I live in is always busy. Why? Because you won't get wet going from shop to shop. Not a single vacant space. You get a bit of daylight from a strip of glass in the roof. Typical food court, multiplex, big name grocery store, car valeting, farmer's market once a week, clothing retailers, there are very few things you can not get there - the only annoyance is that the DIY, home improvement, outdoorsy stuff, car stuff, electrical and electronics, is across the road and over a bit in this weird appendage space :( Also chock-a-block.

If you have kids this is doubly important, you don't get wet! (Or cold I suppose). If traditional retail could solve this then well done them, but how? I'm not keen on the sterile everything-is-a-chainstore atmosphere of indoors malls but you can't argue with the convenience and the not getting wetness. I would prefer multi-storey car parking though, I hate the sprawl of these enormous car parks, so ugly! why not build a tall multi-storey car park and lots of nice green spaces with trees and ponds and fountains?

MrFoof• 12 years ago

Boston has it nailed, though Boston also used to have one of the most prestigious high streets on the planet.

Although they've gotten increasingly commercially commoditized, Quincy Market/Faneuil Hall, Newbury Street and the Prudential Center are mostly done right. The Prudential Center is the most "gray box" of them all, but the skylight that cuts through nearly the entire structure opens it up quite a bit.

meddlepal5• 12 years ago

So they basically want downtowns? Great let's fix that problem rahther than continuing to create artificial shopping locations.

woofyman• 12 years ago

The Atlanta metro area has 17 malls. A third are struggling and a third are thriving.

bluedino3• 12 years ago

Is that based on the average income of the area they are located?

thrush3• 12 years ago

How does the profit hierarchy work in a mall? Do the owners of the real estate see a larger margin than they would if owning an aggregate of locations outside of the mall?

untog• 12 years ago

NYTimes had an article a few days ago[1] about Sbarro's bankruptcy that touched on this topic - basically, Sbarro bet big on shopping mall food courts, and that bet has not paid off.

But the more interesting part is at the end - as shopping malls become less desirable, rents will go down. This could lead to a radical reinvention of what a mall looks and feels like. So malls as we know them might be dead, but "the mall" isn't done yet.

[1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/this-is-the-rea...

yasth• 12 years ago

Rents may well go down, and many malls may live a second life as anything from indoor paintball arena ( http://www.specialopspaintball.com/forum/index.php?showtopic... ), megachurch ( http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/report-megachurch-in-... ) to a secure datacenter ( http://www.lifelinedatacenters.com/data-center/indianapolis%... ) , but will anyone build new malls? I mean carriage houses have been renovated into everything from B & Bs to pubs to studios, but the carriage house is still dead.

If no one is willing to spend the money to seriously build a new mall then the mall is dead. It will still be part of the landscape for a while, just as you can see the remains of failed fast food chains, nuclear weapon launch sites, and pre-bussing decentralized high schools, but that is just reuse.

vidarh2• 12 years ago

Lots of places in the world malls are still being built at a rapid pace. London, for example, is seeing an ongoing stream of enlargment, redevelopment and new mall developments. For an example local to me, the Australian developer/mall operator Westfields has formed a joint venture with another developer to combine two local malls and redevelop them into one huge mall, which make Westfields 3rd huge mall in London:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/croydon-westfield-set-...

Maybe large parts of the US just has too many/too large ones, given how many of them were developed pre-online shopping. And a problem with malls is of course that population shifts are far harder to accommodate when such a large area is operated as one unit. If the mall owner does not actively manage changes due to changes in the surrounding area, it can easily become obsolete as a whole.

zevyoura• 12 years ago

just as you can see the remains of failed fast food chains

There was an interesting recent episode of 99% Invisible about re-using old Pizza Huts: http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/u-t-b-a-p-h/

dylz2• 12 years ago

I want to say that maybe Sbarro charging $5-8 for a single slice of pizza might also be partial killer, especially in mall food courts where there are generic other selections for far far less.

erdle2• 12 years ago

And bare in mind that the average mall was only able to be financed by the big tentpole retailers such as JC Penny, Sears, Best Buy, etc. So if Sbarro can't pay their rent... how much longer can the big boys?

Except the larger stores that anchor a mall actually pay less per square foot than the smaller stores. In order to get financing for a large mall, backers want to see big names signed on. So a mall developer goes out and lands a big fish and promises them a sweetheart deal. So right now you have the little guys paying full price not being able to pay. So it's only a matter of time before the discounted big boys can't. One of the big exceptions being sporting good stores such as Dick's.

Source: Worked on a very sad customer loyalty program for Simon Property Group, Inc.

stephen_g• 12 years ago

Not in Australia. We've probably had over $2 billion in re-development and upgrades integer biggest six shopping centres around the city I live in over the last three years... The one a ten minute drive from my house is wrapping up a two year, $450 million upgrade this half of the year. Pretty crazy, but they are doing pretty well making them places where you might actually want to be, which is important now online shopping has meant they are no longer places you need to go.

Tiktaalik• 12 years ago

In Vancouver two malls (Oakridge and Brentwood) are being redeveloped, pivoting away from their car oriented, suburban roots and becoming the anchor of transit oriented complete communities. In 2010 Oakridge got a transit connection for the Olympics which has helped it stay relevant. Now the city is taking advantage of the connection to build a transit oriented community around the site, doing away with outside parking, adding several towers, planning for surrounding mid rises, and turning the roof of the mall into a park. Nearby Burnaby is doing this same with their mall, which has had a rapid transit connection since 2001.

http://www.straight.com/news/608306/vancouver-approves-oakri...

cperciva• 12 years ago

There's also a lot of office office space going in at Brentwood and Oakridge. In short, they're shifting from "shopping area to which people drive" to "miniature downtowns connected by rapid transit". (Arguably Metrotown was the first of these, although it was a bit too early to benefit from the condoization shift.)

I think we're going to see a lot more developments like Burnaby's "SOLO District" -- underground parking, 10 acres of ground floor retail, ~7 acres of park space on the roof of the retail space, 1-2 acres of 6-storey office space, and 2-3 acres of 30-50 storey residential space. If you're lucky, you could live, work, and shop without leaving the building -- and if you do need to go somewhere, the skytrain is right across the street, so you probably won't need to drive.

bhauer• 12 years ago

This again? I remember reading malls were over 15 years ago and yet all of the malls in my corner of Los Angeles are still open and thriving. All have been renovated at least once since the first batch of "malls are over" articles many years back. Some have converted a bit of their indoor space to outdoor (such as Del Amo in Torrance, which was one of the largest in the United States). Some have converted from outdoor then back to partially indoor when they realized that shoppers don't like being cold.

Yes, retailers face heated competition from the likes of Amazon, and yes I am not the typical mall demographic. But the malls I know—assuming they have a spectrum of trendy retailers—tend to be just as busy as ever when I have reason to visit. I hate the crowded parking lots as much as I ever did.

If they're stuck in the 1990s with Sbarro, Foot Locker, and JC Penney, yeah, they're probably suffering. But that's just not keeping current with consumer demand and isn't really an indictment of the model in general.

analog313• 12 years ago

The imminent demise of shopping malls has been a feature of every recession that I can remember, and I'm old enough to have lost count.

mikeleeorg• 12 years ago

I think the malls in LA and Southern California in general have done a good job in reinventing themselves as destinations rather than merely shopping centers. Especially for teens. Downtown Disney is a good example.

A lot of those outdoor destinations even seem centered around a movie theater now, which one might predict is also on the decline - though every time I've visited these places, they seem pretty packed. (At least, on weekends.)

vidarh2• 12 years ago

Our local movie theatre (suburb of London) does much more than just show the latest blockbusters these days. They have special, low priced, early morning showings for families with kids, late night 18+ showings for movies with lower ratings, autism friendly showings, showings with subtitles, a lot of movies that previously wouldn't be shown much here (Bollywood movies in particular), and of course the 3D movies are helping them, as well as showing live transmissions of operas and plays from various locations around the world and a variety of other events. They've also put in two rows of larger, comfier seats in all their screens, that goes for a higher price, and I expect to see more of that... The theatres too are reinventing themselves.

waterlesscloud• 12 years ago

The thing that surprised me about Los Angeles is how little malls matter. They're here, but they aren't as central to shopping as they are in suburban areas. I literally can't remember the last time I was in a mall (other than to go to the Sherman Oaks Arclight theater, and the Galleria is a very strange "mall" these days).

I find everything I need/want in stores that are either standalone or in small (10 storefronts or less) shopping centers.

Los Angeles is an odd city, one that operates in a much more urban way than it looks on the surface.

EEGuy• 12 years ago

The old approach: "Stores! Stores! Stores!"

A new approach: Anchor stores, entertainment, utility, accessiblity, asthetics, a spectrum of economic appeal, grocery stores. Owners can be demanding of rents to some extent, but when they drive out (or never had) a movie theatre or grocery store, they are losing the "single destination for lots of what you need" and "nice place to go" value.

Of some LA malls, I think the Fallbrook Center [1] has rebuilt itself well, regarding:

* Entertainmnet-wise, AMC Theatres rebuilt the old shoebox-y 7-screen multiplex with way fewer seats. Moreso, every movie theatre seat is a wide-width, electrically-powered recliner including footrests! What used to be 20 rows of seats is now 7 or 8 for one screen, so prices are a bit higher. One can /reserve a seat/ via Fandango over the Internet (fee refunded by AMC) so one doesn't have to come early and wait in line for "a good seat"; they're all good and one can book them in advance. The theatre feels much more full, and seems more popular.

* By "spectrum of economic appeal", specifically, Fallbrook has /three/ full grocery stores (a "Ralphs" (Kroger) supermarket, "Sprouts Farmers Market" luxury grocery, and a "Trader Joes", plus two more department stores that include grocery sections: A Target and a Walmart.

* Utility-wise, it's got a Home Depot, a 24-Hour-Fitness gym, a Chuck-E-Cheese (hat tip to Nolan Bushnell)

* Accessability-wise, there are street lights at mid-block entrances for auto traffic, and bike lanes on the streets for bicycle traffic, and bike racks (though I'd like to see more of those).

* For asthetics, there are planters and small stand-alone buildings facing the street (urban-style). This broke the ugly old impression the prior desert-of-asphalt a hot summer's day brought.

* Instead of a food court, the small buildings facing the street are a mix of stand-alone and multi-tenant places to eat, both sit-down (indoor) and walk-up bar with outdoor seating. Market diversity here too: Starbucks, Jamba Juice, IHOP, a lobster specialty franchise, and a non-franchised grill (Tikka grill) and non-franchised Vietnamese restaurant.

They're doing fine, there is such a diversity of things to do as well as things to get there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallbrook_Center

Edit: grammar, clarity

nick2• 12 years ago

Yep, can't remember the last time I bought something from a mall. Maybe 5 years ago or more.

greggman• 12 years ago

Come to Singapore. There's places where there are 7 or more malls all right next to each other and more being built. Kuala Lumpur seems to have lots of shopping centers being built and many of them get full as in the there's no parking left.

dageshi• 12 years ago

Probably the climate? I'd imagine in summer Singapore and KL are ferociously humid and hot?

kalleboo2• 12 years ago

Even outdoor malls in Singapore have air conditioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke_Quay

ulfw4• 12 years ago

Undoubtfully the climate. This leads to Singaporean malls being 100x more interesting, convenient, high-end and better looking than any US mall. Pretty much all large malls have direct or adjacent to public train transport (MRT at Vivo, Ion, 313, nex...), have high-end restaurants, mid-range and fast-food offerings (local and international) and a wider variety of stores. They also have air conditioning, which is pretty much the only reason why all life happens in malls and you can barely walk around on weekends ;)

voteapathy• 12 years ago

I was just in Guangzhou recently. Same thing there. In TienHe all of their multiple 6+ storey malls are connected by a sprawling series of underground malls. The shopping there is crazy.

mbillie12• 12 years ago

I hope they're dying - malls are miserable places to spend time.

interstitial2• 12 years ago

As opposed to the DMV, the post office, the ER waiting room and other paragons of bureaucracy?

astrodust4• 12 years ago

Some malls are indistinguishable from Soviet Era waiting rooms.

mbillie12• 12 years ago

How are shopping malls paragons of bureaucracy? Paragons of shallow consumerism, if anything... and while the DMV et all are surely dehumanizing and Kafkaesque, the mall is a special and unique sort of revolting to me. But different strokes...

carsongross• 12 years ago

If only there was some way to organically grow outdoor shopping areas, in central, easy to reach locations, with a distributed ownership structure ensuring that no single entity can ruin the whole area. Maybe some historically significant structures (town halls, parks, etc.) could even add a sense of civitas to the whole thing.

We could call these things something catchy... like "downtowns".

jessedhillon• 12 years ago

Wouldn't be as profitable as "The Downtown™ by Westfield"

malandrew2• 12 years ago

It would be if they also invested in the residential real estate around it. If you only focus on commercial properties, you're ignoring the value you are adding to other real estate investments in the area.

justinph• 12 years ago

Yes and no.

Crappy malls are dying. Decent malls in more affluent areas are diversifying their experiences and thriving. In some places, indoor malls make a lot of sense. I live in Minnesota (home of the original indoor mall, Southdale). It's cold here a good chunk of the year, and an indoor mall isn't a half bad idea.

bluedino3• 12 years ago

Malls are on life support.

Our local mall has 3 anchor stores: Macys, JC Penny, and Sears. Two of those three have reported sales increases in the last quarter but it's a mystery on how Sears stays in business.

The other popular stores are all gone - American Eagle, The Gap, etc. Instead, new tenants have replaced them which make the place look like an indoor flea market.

Also enhancing the flea market look are the kiosks of people reselling things from cell phone cases to cheap sunglasses and worse jewelry than the mall jewelry stores, which are half gone as well. There's even a store that's almost like a 7-11, they sell candy bars and bottles of soda and chips.

interstitial2• 12 years ago

Those anchor stores are on life support. New channel anchors: American Girl, Apple Stores, etc, etc. What is dead is price-based stores the internet has replaced.

res0nat0r• 12 years ago

I think Betteridge's law of headlines applies to this article. I live in Indy where the (billionaire) Simon's live, who own Simon Property Group. Their stock is currently @ 161, up 100 points over 5 years ago. Their stock has just been upgraded: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140312006497/en/Fitc...

I used to live between two of their major malls for years. I could barely leave my apartment for 2 months before xmas due to traffic. They just spent millions remodeling their high end mall adding capacity and additional room for high end stores like Sacks and Restoration Hardware.

Non generic crap malls are fine. Junk stores that have generic brand cheapish clothes and the like (JCPenny) are being replaced by Amazon, but overall malls are doing fine.

ceejayoz• 12 years ago

Our local mall has realized that, I think. Most of the new stores are designer stuff - think Coach bags - and a new anchor called Von Maur which is an old-style department store - attentive staff, live piano in the lobby, etc. They seem to be doing much better than the JC Pennys of the area.

bluedino3• 12 years ago

One of the more interesting solutions to malls is transforming them into office space, one good example is Rackspace converting the Windsor mall into their HQ - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rack...

It's easy when you have 3,200 employees that you need under one roof, but malls would work great for for 20-500 employee businesses as well. The larger companies would take the spots used by anchor stores and of course the smaller companies could subdivide or take the smaller stores.

There's plenty of parking, they're located in the suburbs where many people live - and the food courts can even stay open, those employees have to eat lunch somewhere.

kimmel• 12 years ago

The city I live in now only has 2 traditional style malls left. When I moved here numerous years ago it had 7 malls, all of which were accessible by bus. That is a major change and there has been no new malls built. The buildings just stand there like relics of a time gone past. Retail and restaurants have moved into existing strip malls that had space available due to businesses folding. Back where I grew up it is the same story.

I miss the tradition malls because some had unique and good food places. As well as arcades, movie theaters, and places to hang out. Malls that are thriving do so because there is enough population around to support the businesses and they have new stores coming in to fill out the empty spaces.

giantrobothead• 12 years ago

When I was a wee lad, my Grandmother used to spend days with me while my parents were working, and after say, a morning in the park, we'd go to the mall and get lunch at the restaurant in JC Penney's.

It was run by a gentleman of Greek descent, whom my Grandmother knew, as she seemed to know everyone, and served brunch, lunch, dinner, like any other small cafe. I would routinely get a hot dog, served on toasted white bread. It was tremendous.

I miss those days, and the subsequent teen years of the nineties spent mall-ratting with my friends, hitting the record store, book store, the arcade (don't get me started on the demise of the video game arcade) people-watching...

Times change, and I assume, so will these structures, whether it be to fade into irrelevance or transform into something vibrant and communal again.

jimmaswell3• 12 years ago

The malls around me are doing just fine. My friends and I find them to be a fine place to go occasionally. I've always found them to be a nice place to be around. I don't really get the complaints about them in this thread. That law of headlines thing applies here.

pessimizer• 12 years ago

Yes. They were a horrible substitute for public spaces anyway. Now the malls aren't the only alternative to teenagers wandering the streets engaging in aimless vandalism; they can stare into screens 12 hours a day, yet still shop and gossip (and engage in aimless vandalism.) Also, Amazon.com doesn't have to pay taxes, because Internet, so that's accelerating the decline of all physical retail. Malls weren't doing great before Amazon - deadmalls is nearly a dead site, it's been around so long.

The only good places for malls are cute little cities that attract a lot of small town tourists, and places with a lot of people too old to understand the internet but rich enough to not have to work.

blahedo• 12 years ago

I'd like to mention three malls that don't purely fit the "greybox" model and may point to a likely future for malls in general.

- West Edmonton Mall (Edmonton, AB). In one sense, it is the mother of all greybox malls, surrounded by an asphalt moat. But: it's accessible via local transit, and it's very much in the model of an artificial downtown: it contains hotels, apartments, a hockey rink, an aquarium, and a variety of other things not in the simple greybox mall. This is because it gets really freaking cold in Edmonton in the winter and it's nice to go "outside" without going "outside"; and the diversity of stuff that's there keeps it more alive than at, say, Woodfield (outside Chicago, IL). The food court felt less like a food court and more like a street that had a bunch of little food shops on it. Basically, they've adapted "downtown" to the needs of their climate.

- The Ala Moana Mall (Honolulu, HI). I mention this mostly to contrast the previous one. It's laid out like a greybox mall, but since it's Honolulu, they just skip the whole "roof" thing on the central ways. So it's really more like a pedestrian street with a lot of shops on it. Also, it contains (or is adjacent to?) some non-shop things, and it's well-connected by transit. EDIT to add: There are outdoor malls other places, too, and they're sort of in vogue right now. What makes this one different is how well-adapted it is to its surroundings.

- Providence Place Mall (Providence, RI). Built much more recently (1999 or so), it does include a parking deck but isn't surrounded by asphalt in all directions. It's got entrances that are right off a relatively walkable street, with a couple transit connections (and it's about two blocks from the main central transit station). Internally, it feels nothing like a classic greybox mall: it's five stories with shops on both sides, and lots of windows give it plenty of natural light. It felt much more like a part of downtown than an alternative to it.

So basically, it's possible to set up your mall in such a way that it steers clear of the major problems plaguing malls; and there's certainly reason to think that reinvention rather than abandonment is the mall's likeliest future.

ams61107• 12 years ago

Combining residential spaces with malls is an interesting idea. There are a lot of builing codes that now require ground-floor retail on any residential buildings over a certain number of floors, but I've never seen or thought about revitalizing malls by adding a residential component. One downside would be that the parking starts to get taken up by residents rather than shoppers.

spiralpolitik3• 12 years ago

Which is why you combine shopping, residential spaces, and transit hubs so that owning a car becomes optional rather than required.

For a bonus you add employment spaces so that people can live, work, and shop in their communities.

cmbaus• 12 years ago

I took a business meeting in Houston one time, and my colleague kept telling me that the office was "in the mall." That seemed very odd to me, but there was a massive office building attached to the mall. Not a bad idea I guess considering the summer weather in Houston.

analog313• 12 years ago

The common thread: Transit.

fudged71• 12 years ago

I grew up in Calgary. In my opinion, West Edmonton Mall has been dying over the years. There are several corners of the mall that feel really gross to be in. They got rid of the submarines that I enjoyed as a kid. And it no longer feels new.

I don't know if the recent renovations have changed anything, but it would be great to hear someone from Edmonton chime in.

hnnewguy• 12 years ago

And it no longer feels new.

I lived in Edmonton for a few years. I left in 2010. Before I moved there from Ontario, the West Edmonton Mall was legendary.

I remember going to the West Ed. for the first time; it felt like a mall just like any other, anywhere. Outside of the sheer size, I wasn't impressed.

ccurtsinger• 12 years ago

The Mall of America, from the same developers as the West Edmonton Mall, is another good exception. The mall is massive, but the interior spaces feel like the outdoors. This is partly because of the live plants and bright sunlight filling the theme park in the middle, and partly because of the fresh air from their fascinating climate control system. It's also well-connected to public transit. Outdoor malls don't do as well in the winter months in Minnesota, but MOA appears to be doing well enough since they have a massive expansion underway.

zyxley• 12 years ago

I think the Pioneer Place mall in Portland, OR would be another interesting example. It's made of four separate buildings in the middle of downtown (underground parking only), connected by underground sections and skywalks, and directly adjacent to tram and bus transit stops. The buildings have an open atrium-style design, with skylight roofs that provide natural light all the way down to the connecting basement level.

plumeria• 12 years ago

I think the best model so far is the mixed development: offices, residences, and commercial stores all in one. That's what you see in developing countries.

Patrick_Devine4• 12 years ago

Maybe it's because I live in Palo Alto, but it seems, at least here, that there is a hollowing out of the middle end of the spectrum. On the low end, there are still the Target's and the Walmart's, and on the high end you have things like Stanford Shopping Center, Union Square, Santa Row, etc. The middle has taken a real beating though, as has the low middle. I'm not sure who shops at JC Penny, Sears, or even K-Mart for that matter.

ams61107• 12 years ago

K-mart's problem is that their merchandise is no better than what Wal-Mart carries, their selection is worse, and the shopping experience in their stores is, in my experience, worse than at Wal-Mart as hard as that may be to believe.

Target seems to be a step above Wal-Mart/K-Mart, and I'm guessing that has been a big part of JC-Pennys' and Sears' problem. The local JC Penny's here has gone, and going to Sears feels like stepping into the 1970s, the store literally has not had a serious rennovation since then. Target stores are new, bright and well-organized and reasonably pleasant to visit.

Patrick_Devine4• 12 years ago

I definitely agree. I think Target has positioned themselves as the low end place you go to shop if you don't want to be associated with the crowd that shops at Walmart. I'm not sure anyone even knew that that segment existed.

You can see this playing out in the airlines as well. JetBlue/Virgin America/EasyJet are all low cost alternatives to the majors, but more upscale than RyanAir, Allegiant or Southwest. Actually, in many cases they're even nicer than the majors, but they can't offer great connections or as comprehensive business travel.

z92• 12 years ago

Reminds me of this op-ed from 1995

"...how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?"

http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva...

astrodust4• 12 years ago

Some people, even technically inclined writers, fail to understand exponential growth.

dasil003• 12 years ago

LOL, that's good for a chuckle... at least as long as Newsweek is able to keep the lights on :)

jccooper• 12 years ago

The demographics have changed around the first- and second-generation malls enough that many of them are no longer viable. Since they're huge properties, they tend to rot slowly. They're finally dying. There's probably some fundamental challenges wrt online shopping, and preference for more "natural" environments, but there are plenty of malls that are doing very well, especially the more upscale ones.

Just because not every mall is succeeding, it doesn't mean the whole category is doomed. (Not that I actually like them, but enough people certainly do.)

bane9• 12 years ago

This is really an important question as malls are usually massive holders of lots of valuable real estate in many towns.

Where I live, there are...maybe around a dozen proper stereotypical malls within an hour drive. Of those, the two malls I literally grew up in have had very different trajectories.

The one next to my highschool is a veritable empty shell. I think it sits at 40% occupancy, with entire wings boarded up, lights turned off and otherwise abandoned. When I was in High School it was the city center, so bustling and full of people it was often hard to walk in a straight line. I'd leave school and go to the mall instead of taking the bus home, mill around in the arcade for a bit, eat some cheap Chinese food in the food court, bum around in Radio Shack or the electronics section at JC Penny or just hang around with friends mallrats style. It seemed like it would stay this way forever.

But some key demographic shifts happened in the 2000s and the entire city changed, leaving the mall a grotesque enlarged gangrenous tumor hanging off of the attached Walmart. Strangely, the arcade that was there, then closed, is back open again and one of the few signs of life in the entire place.

I've thought a lot about what happened, and the basic conclusion is that it had to do with the housing boom and bust. In the 2000s as the housing market was exploding, people who had lived in this older city suddenly found out their houses had doubled in value. They sold them off and turned the equity into a down payment on a new house in new suburbs. Those new suburbs came complete with new malls (the two new malls near the new suburb I live in are pretty jam packed all the time) and everybody left.

So who bought those old houses? The people who were working on building the new suburbs. In this case largely immigrant workers from Hispanic countries. They needed the cheapest possible housing, and these older areas, though now much more expensive, were still lower cost than the new suburbs.

Because of the higher housing costs and the lower pay these new immigrants had, expensive mall shopping just wasn't on their regular agenda. Better bargains were the draw and Walmart boomed, outgrew their original store and struck an agreement with the mall for cheap property and rent if they could become the new anchor at the mall. If you drive a circle around the mall these days, the parking lot outside of the Walmart is packed to the gills, there are maybe 2 dozen cars in any other lot at the mall combined. A walk through the mall tells the same story, Walmart is buzzing with activity, but right outside the doors, nobody goes anywhere else.

To give you an idea what a huge shift this is and that I'm not imagining it, when I graduated, my highschool was something like 85% White, and 3% Hispanic. In 2012 it was less than 30% white, and 42% Hispanic. For comparison, the demographics of the entire region are 55.41% White and 16.3% Hispanic.

The other mall, in another nearby town, is doing well. It's a larger mall, and the demographics of the area didn't really change all that much. It's not quite as busy as it used to be, the anchor stores seem to be the most empty, but it seems to be getting along fine.

Now in the 2000s, two new malls sprung up in the newly built suburbs. One, a traditional all under one roof enclosed 1.4 million sq ft mall. It's new and pleasant and does pretty well. It's not packed at all times, but business is obviously doing well enough there. The other is an open air discount outlet mall and it's packed, shoulder to shoulder, at all times. I bet if I were to go there right now I'd have trouble finding parking. It's booming, and there's talk of them expanding the property to a sister mall across the main town thoroughfare with a connecting pedestrian tunnel.

There's also a pair of high-end luxury malls in another nearby town that have been through all of this pretty much without hiccup. A time traveler from 1998 to today wouldn't notice much difference except for the fashion.

So yes, I think some malls are dead or dying. That much is clear. But I think the reasons for it are more than just Amazon. There's still lots of services I get from my local malls. I don't go every week, but the 3 or 4 times I do go I inevitably walk out with a few hundred dollars worth of clothes and other goods. And looking at the other people there, the demographics span from young to old, I don't think Amazon has quite replaced the kind of buying where you have to go see the product.

Some stores have caught on to this, and have a seamless exchange program from their online stores. They know that you'll end up buying something you don't like or can't fit into, so they let you bring it back to their physical store, because that's less hassle than shipping it back. They'll even time online sales to preceed in-store sales a bit, so when you come to the store to return the ill-fitting item, why don't you browse the 50% of sale they're offering right now?

edit

Thinking about this more, I think a similar effect can be seen in the midwest. As agriculture labor shifted to much cheaper migrant workers and automation, the people who used to live in these places year round either became less affluent, or moved away. Either way the local malls had a smaller pool of eligible customers and they die off.

maratd• 12 years ago

I think you hit the nail on the head and this is really region specific.

There was a mall next to me when I was growing up and it was dingy, just poorly maintained. Then the area became hot, Whole Foods moved in. Then Target. Then a bevy of smaller upscale retailers. Now that dingy mall is unrecognizable and filled to the brim. Not a single vacancy. Not a single open parking spot either.

Malls aren't dying. Some malls are, but that has nothing to do with the mall paradigm and has more to do with the local population. A mall can't get up and move. It's like a tree. It is where it is and it either thrives or dies.

leoc• 12 years ago

It would be interesting to see some numbers: total in-use square footage in out-of-town malls over time and so on. That would give a better idea as to whether there's an overall trend or not. It's hard to imagine that the Web hasn't caused an overall decline, though.

greghinch2• 12 years ago

Malls aren't dying. Some malls are, but that has nothing to do with the mall paradigm and has more to do with the local population. A mall can't get up and move. It's like a tree. It is where it is and it either thrives or dies.

I would argue this is exactly why malls are dying, that they can't keep up with more and more rapidly evolving socio-economic trends and shifting demographics across geographies. Another byproduct of globalization and technology-driven streamlining of commerce

Spooky232• 12 years ago

Great point.

The article's example of the Apple store as a model of a retailer that "just plunks a glass cube on busy shopping streets" is pretty clueless. Most Apple stores are in malls!

I think the issue with Malls is that in 1980-something, your choices were dying downtowns, department stores or the Sears/LL Bean/whatever catalog. For food it was local places, McDonalds/Burger King/Wendy's. The mall offered more choice for food and retail.

Nowadays, the traditional mall retailers are all consolidated and offer similar stuff. Why hang out in a food court when you have a dozen fast casual restaurant choices outside the mall?

earino• 12 years ago

You just described Nashville, TN perfectly. I don't know where you are describing, but you just gave a fantastic breakdown of the fall of the Hickory Hollow Mall and the rise and plateauing of either Green Hills or Cool Springs. It was a little uncanny. If it isn't Nashville, TN then this is a spectacular repeating pattern and now I hope I can find some good data sets regarding mall occupancy somewhere that I can visualize.

bane9• 12 years ago

Nope, not Nashville. About 750 miles East of there in the D.C. area.

jusben13692• 12 years ago

Great write up. What I can't tell is whether the change in behavior is class based or culturally based. Do Hispanics not visit the Mall because they're poorer (class) or do they not visit the mall because the Mall is more of a white person invention (cultural)

bane9• 12 years ago

I think it's class based more than anything, but it's more complex than assigning a single cause.

Mexico City, for example, has plenty of malls, and a decent number of immigrants are from other countries in Central and South America, all places that have malls in the cities.

From the immigrant laborers I've talked to, they mostly seem to come from small towns and village in their home countries and remit as much money as they can back home. On top of that, they usually command lower pay than the domestic laborers in the same market, so this leaves them with very little in the way of spending money. They also work relentless hours, 7 days a week. So their life is basically wake, work, sleep with stops for meals 3 times a day.

There are more than just workers though, the women who come tend to end up in lower-end service jobs, house cleaners, cheap day care etc. And some of them have kids who are right now, very young and not in the job market (meaning no disposable income).

Both groups are well serviced by their local Mercado Latino and Walmart in terms of most needs and their children, if they've brought them here, are usually too young to want to shop at stylish mall shops.

If you look at the kinds of places that service the community, they aren't high-end restaurants and retail shops offering comforts from home. It's cheap fast food, pupusa shops, check cashing, cheap phone calls home etc. A visit to local pawn shops in and around Manassas will reveal shelf after shelf full of tools laborers have sold as they head back home after the housing bust, and are usually in shopping centers full of Spanish language shops. It's very much a temporary laborer blue collar demographic.

I suspect this will change. Folks I know who came here during the early parts of the Salvadoran Civil War now have kids old enough to care about such things and are generally well integrated, educated and affluent.

bedhead• 12 years ago

Shopping malls are interesting because their entire appeal is predicated on a network effect. So when something reverses that effect, whether it's demographic shifts to the area, a large tenant going out of business, or a competing mall, the results can be devastating and you get a vicious circle death spiral.

As others have noted, malls in general aren't doing too poorly, but for the ones that are they're awfully conspicuous and downright depressing, so I think those tend to stick out in peoples' minds.

kingkawn• 12 years ago

I think the time to turn these all into public mural projects and community spaces has finally come.

trekky1700• 12 years ago

I think the American model of malls may be over. The model where there are crazy numbers of huge malls everywhere, even in relatively small populations. But malls are still hugely popular.

In Canada, where we have a lot less malls, they seem to be growing more popular. With renovations and extensions being built to attract and accommodate more shoppers. But there aren't that many major malls here, and they stick to major population areas. I'm always surprised the size of malls in small towns when I visit the US. Northwood, Ohio has a population of 5,000. That doesn't seem like it could sustain a mall the size described, even if you include the surrounding area and assume there's no other malls in the area.

I think the model will change, but malls will stay around for a long time. You'll have larger malls servicing more population, rather than malls for every town.

slashmasterx• 12 years ago

The thing I found most surprising about this article

Internet sales reached six per cent of total retail spending in the fourth quarter of 2013

I thought that would be a bit higher.

astrodust4• 12 years ago

Remember that the fashion industry has revenue that absolutely dwarfs the tech industry. It's so far beyond that it's not even funny. People can't go naked, they need clothes, and most of the time they prefer to try them on, see how they look and fit, then purchase in person.

Then there's food which is even larger. The online ordering of groceries is a drop in the bucket. You want fresh food, you're going to have to go and hand pick it.

Not surprisingly Wal-Mart has a foot in both camps.

mikeash3• 12 years ago

Does the fashion industry really "dwarf" the tech industry?

Random googling tells me that the global fashion industry does about $1.2 trillion in revenue per year. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and IBM together do a bit over $400 billion per year, so about a third of that, and that's only four (albeit large) tech companies. I'd be surprised if you couldn't more than triple that number after you accounted for all the other tech companies in the world.

ulfw4• 12 years ago

If US malls want to survive they need to start copying international malls, which are a lot more upscale, better looking (new or significantly renovated) and above all offer a much better mix between entertainment (movie theaters etc) and food (actual restaurants you would WANT to go to instead of chain/fast-food places) as well as stores. The problem with many malls is that they are copy cats of each other. Uninspiring 'practical' architecture, inedible food, the exact same stores at every mall, not much to do besides shopping and having a fast-foody coffee.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

U.S. malls do tend to have movie theaters. But they aren't going to pay high rent to get into a mall if there is open commercial land anywhere nearby.

It's a similar thing with decent restaurants, they don't necessarily gain much from the association.

I saw a thing in a local paper that the bankrupt mall should 'bring in' good stores. Of course this is backwards, the stores mentioned in the comment have no interest in running a store in a run down mall in a small market.

ulfw4• 12 years ago

Very true actually. It's just sad that malls had to get all the way to the state of being run-down. What I suggested should have been down 10 or even more years ago. Right now I'd agree with you that many malls have to work hard to find tenants who'd be unwilling to be associated with a mall.

lucaspiller• 12 years ago

One of the big things about most malls outside the US is that they aren't usually built in the middle of nowhere. You don't need to drive for an hour then struggle to find a place to park just to buy some jeans. In some cases this is a because the transport links were built afterwards, but in most cases this is because they are built in areas that are already connected. Obviously space is restricted so they are smaller (250,000 sq ft is a pretty average size), this means you often end up with the same well known brands in each mall which can be a bit boring. Due to space and as malls are usually in the 'town centre' you don't always have cinemas in the mall, but they can usually be found nearby.

egypturnash• 12 years ago

Basically my feeling is that malls are "over" for people who are too poor to shop anywhere but the deep discount world of Walmart. If we get minimum wage raised to a high enough place that they can actually pay for anything more than the barest minimum to pay rent and eat and whatnot, then they'll have the funds to start shopping at places that actually have nice things and well-paid employees.

I live in Seattle. There's a lot of malls, shopping districts, and other kinds of collections of shops. There's also a lot of money in the town, to support all these stores of all sizes.

Malls are dying all over because money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. People who want their malls to thrive should be campaigning for a living wage for everyone (or eve better, a basic income) - because all those people will have enough money to happily buy all their pretty trinkets.

Eleutheria• 12 years ago

Malls as shopping centers may be over, but those who transmute into amusement parks will survive.

I rarely go to the mall for shopping, but I go many times a week for a walk, a fancy dinner, or just to meet people.

Zigurd• 12 years ago

When I bought a house just outside route 495, I had to plan grocery shopping carefully or I'd be stuck with no pizza delivery and a can of beans in the pantry. Now I have a new shopping center with a BJs, a supermarket, and soon a Cabelas so I can shoot all the food I won't be able to buy after Immanent Collapse (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404923) about 12 minutes away, door to door.

Clearly there was demand. The supermarket is often packed, even though it isn't as big or nice as the Wegmans that opened a bit farther away. There are malls even farther out that appear to be prospering, including some old ones that are less seedy than they used to be.

Curiously, there is still a lot of empty office space off 495. The newly built then mostly evacuated Sun campus off Route 3 is still very slack. So people out here are making and spending money, but not filling up the old Digital and HP buildings.

gdilla• 12 years ago

one thing missing in these predictions is the fact that we are still social animals. It certainly is convenient to buy online, but teenagers, busy parents (where they can amuse there little ones in play areas or Santa) and people (increasingly) seeking relief from the heat (as in socal), gather at malls, and engage in both planned and impulse buys by just being there. I'm not saying malls are good, or efficient, or will survive in current form, but, there's a reason why Barnes and Noble has converted into a coffee shop with books - people like to hang. We may see malls take on more experiential offerings to make up for underutilized retail space.

Additionally, I know that best buy and guitar center will price match any price I show from an online retailer on my phone (this is so not obvious, but just ask). Just knowing that, I will occaisonally go to the mall or physical shop to actually look at things & try them out.

praetorian84• 12 years ago

Half the problem is that every single mall where I live has basically the same shops. I find that often new malls seem to be built largely as speculative investments by property developers, rather than to fulfill an actual need. All that happens is that that the new mall is either a disaster, or gradually replaces an older one, simply because the demand doesn't exist for yet another collection of the same chain stores.

malandrew2• 12 years ago

Or you know they could try to promote more mixed use properties, which is what most people actually want.

It's very clear that city centers are growing everywhere because that's what young people are gravitating towards. It's a lifestyle thing and if they don't consider the lifestyle people aspire to in their future plans, they are going to go bankrupt again.

Take a look at SF for an example. Many people would love to live in the few blocks surrounding the commercial areas of the Mission, the Haight (upper and lower), North Beach, Union Street, Hayes Valley, etc. Those areas are desirable because they are supremely convenient. They are the "modern mall" because they are also the "timeless mall", i.e. the mall that naturally forms when people decide where they want to shop instead of corporate overseers. It's a pattern that exists everywhere in the world in big modern cities to small towns designed before the advent of the car.

Betting on mixed use buildings creates "captive demand", since your commercial store customers conveniently live right upstairs. And they are happy to live in such buildings because they provide the ultimate access by foot to food, bars, supermarkets and other businesses that enrich their lifestyle.

There are a few thing they need to do to make such mixed use properties desirable.

* Mixed use properties need authentic business with unique identity instead of franchises (e.g. a building with a starbucks and a moe's underneath it isn't as desirable as one with a neighborhood coffee shop and a local burrito joint). * The deals struck by commercial owner's associations (COAs) need to consider the needs of the HOA which is often formed after the COA for any mixed use property. Any property (like the Beacon in SF) where the COA has unfair deals that prejudice the residents of a building often end up in litigation that suppresses the value of the the property in the building causing the building to move to having more renters than owners.

Unfortunately many of the new building projects in SF don't take this into account. There are a ton of new projects going up south of the ballpark. All those properties will be filled because of the extremely limited stock of housing, but they are not going to be desirable places to live because of how few of those properties are designed to be mixed use, which is what will make that area feel like a neighborhood instead of a vertical suburb that you need to leave in order to visit a commercial center.

hawkharris• 12 years ago

I enjoy two things about going to my local mall...things that I can't get from online retailers: instant gratification and ceremony.

1. Instant gratification....If I'm excited about a new product, I can get up immediately and travel to the store, find and pick up the item. Sure, this entails an effort of its own, but at least I'm taking action instead of waiting for a package to come.

2. Ceremony: You may not appreciate this unless you're a videogame buff, too, but there was nothing like waiting in line for GTA5. It was truly ceremonial... High school students, construction workers, businessmen, etc., all stood with me because we were so excited to tear off the packaging of that game. The store even hosted a party featuring competitions and prizes.

Will malls survive? I don't know....the prices, selection and convenience of Amazon are hard to beat. But my advice is to capitalize on the instant gratification and the ceremonial aspects of shopping in-person. Online retailers haven't yet found a way to duplicate this IMHO.

twerquie• 12 years ago

What you describe as "ceremony" I take to mean socialization, that you are shopping with the public in a market atmosphere and I think that's something absolutely intrinsic in all human cultures and isn't going anywhere. The mall is the perfect style of market for shopping for clothes, media, fast food, housewares.

smadge• 12 years ago

What's with all the hate for brutalist architecture in this thread?

royaljelly• 12 years ago

The US is lucky to have its malls. TFA mentions growth coming from Asia, where pretty much every new development - and there are a lot - is a luxury mall that positions itself as an 'integrated' destination i.e. retail, entertainment, lifestyle, office space and residential. The problem is worst in Hong Kong where MTR Corporation, which owns the underground network, also owns the land that its stations sit underneath. It makes more money from the malls it builds on top of them than from running public transit.

The luxury part is a problem too in that Chanel, Gucci etc are given free/low-cost storefronts to up the image of the mall which not only raises prices for normal tenants but means they put their goods prices up too so they look like a serious alternative to the luxury brands. Chinese malls in particular have a lot of made-up Chinese-owned store brands with foreign sounding names, selling utter rubbish at wildly inflated prices.

I wish the 'high end' here was JC Penney or Sears. And forget a reasonably priced Kung Pao chicken; I hope you enjoy chicken feet and birds nest.

acchow• 12 years ago

Chinese malls in particular have a lot of made-up Chinese-owned store brands with foreign sounding names, selling utter rubbish at wildly inflated prices.

I find this comical whenever I see it in China - especially brand names with western geographies on their merchandise. "California 1973", "Cambridge".

mwfunk2• 12 years ago

I have fond memories of hanging out in malls when I was a kid, but my fondest memories are about things that I don't find in malls anymore. Arcades, toy stores, book stores, hobby shops, electronics, music shops, etc. Those things still exist but it seems like there's a lot less of them now.

When I go to malls now it seems like nothing but designer clothing stores. I swear there used to be a lot more diversity in the the types of stores you'd find. I'm not sure if this is a real trend or just the haze of childhood memories.

kimonos• 12 years ago

Can't imagine my life without malls. Haha!

tbirdz• 12 years ago

I only went to the local mall to go to the movie theater, which was located inside the mall. Then the movie theater shut down, so now I never go to the mall.

jusben13692• 12 years ago

I feel like the article was trying to make the point "traditional malls from the 80's are dying" but didn't do a good job at that (the title for example). So that's leading to a lot of comments saying "Well some malls are flourishing and some are dying" I suspect the flourishing ones are the newer malls that have a lot of unique features you can't get online (food/cinema/furniture)

pjbrunet• 12 years ago

I find "indoor" malls are great for working on code. Even in bad weather you can take a break and stretch your legs, do some window shopping and then get back down to work. It's nice to have a predictable environment like that. Also malls tend to have high, airy ceilings. I'm no architect but I find large open spaces to be pleasant, for lack of a better word, especially for cerebral work. IKEA is a great place to work on code too. Free coffee.

singingfish• 12 years ago

Hopefully, they're toxic environments that showcase the worst aspects of the industrial revolution.

Are Malls Over?

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