32 ms·

Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

119 points by petethomas 8y ago

niftich 8y ago
Malls were always predicated on the assumption that well-to-do suburbanites, increasing in wealth and in number due to relative prosperity in the upper subdivisions of salaried workers, would spend their disposable incomes on getting boutique, brand-signalling merchandise for themselves and their children. This was a trend that was evidently worth commercially exploiting at a time when malls were being built, but by the 1990s the demand for brand-name goods climbed upmarket enough that a new distinction had to be drawn between a mainstream mall and an upscale mall for this strategy to remain effective. New malls were built at great cost, and they took the most desirable stores, leaving the older wave of malls struggling for enough business to pay for renovations, maintenance, debt, and ROI. This cycle repeated at least one other time, when the outdoor, disassembled 'lifestyle center' became the dominant design pattern in the mid-2000s, by which point the narrative that malls are "dying" had become widespread. Rather, the market has segmented to a degree that the concept is only profitable at the highest end, while lower offerings are proving uncompetitive with other forces in the economy, like powerful mainstream retailers with lasting appeal (e.g. Target), low-price leaders (e.g. Walmart), reliable stores with strong curation (e.g. Costco), and the convenience of ordering online (e.g. Amazon). Then, it's worth noting that the generation that's 18-35 now spends less of their income on clothes than the generation that was 18-35 when malls were big [1], and apparel stores are about half of a typical mall's occupancy. Compare all this to Europe and UAE. Malls are doing great there. What's different? Just about everything, from the concentration of population and the particulars of siting that draws a higher proportion of people, to the value-add of having such a variety of shops under one roof, to less competition from non-mall retailers, and brand signalling still being a desirable goal. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16322720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16322720
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  Compare all this to Europe and UAE. No, retailers are struggling in the UK at the moment, there have been a number of high profile closures and restructurings. We haven't got the same capacity problems of the US but shopping habits are definitely changing.
projectramo 8y ago
I remember learning that in the 90s some companies had this useless asset: gas pipelines that spanned the country, but had dried up and were not being used. Other companies had a problem: how to acquire the rights to lay fiber from one end of the country to the other. Some very smart person realized you could lay the fiber in the old pipes. Question: what can be done with all that retail space? Is there a new use of space that will come up? Related question: what are the properties of malls that we might use? (parking, close to residences, easy to walk through)
- schnevets 8y ago
  I'm surprised no one has proposed a vertical farm yet. You've got plenty of storage/shipment zones, diverse levels of sunlight, an intricate climate-control system, and plenty of parking to expand/convert into a solar farm. Then you maintain the food court as a locavore destination
  - olliej 8y ago
    Return on farming basically return on acreage, which means it’s directly tied to the cost of the land. There’s no real way to make a farm economically viable in a high land value area. Going vertical would make the land even more expensive
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  On the Bay Area peninsula we saw : a.) San Antonio/El Camino outdoor mall rebuilt as mixed used retail/residential b.) Sunnyvale Town Center mall - mixed use retail/residential? c.) Cupertino Vallco Mall - in litigation/negotiation for mixed use retail/residential d.) some 50 year old movie theaters with huge parking lots on the edge of existing Santana Row mixed use development were torn down recently to make room for more mixed use development
- excalibur 8y ago
  Adults-only entertainment venue. Fill it with bars, bowling alleys, hookah lounges, marijuana dispensaries (where legal), dance clubs, adult bookstores, places that rent rooms by the hour, other places where you can sleep it off more cheaply with maybe less privacy. Car keys deposited at the door into a machine that won't release them until you pass a breathalyzer.
frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
In the common conception of markets no seller has enough power to sit on their laurels, they must sell their product in order to survive. It seems wrong to me that in the real estate market liquidity would drop as prices drop. There needs to be a cost associated with holding real estate so that there is turnover in good times and bad times.
- theamk 8y ago
  Like property taxes, perhaps? (unfortunately(?), many states do not have them)
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Owners of real estate already pay property taxes. Are you just proposing that those be increased? And you think that will make real estate more valuable? I'm missing something here...
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    >Are you just proposing that those be increased? Sure, or an additional tax on unused or barely used real estate if we wanted to be targeted, but really I like the broad property tax. >And you think that will make real estate more valuable? No, I'm not trying to make real estate more valuable, actually I'm trying to make it less valuable by ensuring that the high levels of competition we see in booming real estate times carries over to the busts. If the costs are so low that people are just sitting on these properties and waiting for a magical moment when prices rise then obviously costs need to be increased to pressure these people to enter the market. Liquidity shouldn't drop when prices drop.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Increasing property tax in general is less bad than this "unused or barely used" tax idea. That sounds like a good way to turn all old malls into flea markets. That is, big messy places where anyone can sell anything she wants out of the back of her van, for $5 a day. "Anything she wants" will include a wide variety of items to which neighbors will object strenuously. In addition to the unsavory sales activity, other unsavory activity will also take place. There's no way any taxation scheme will pay for the required extra policing. I won't be surprised if we don't see this happen...
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
I wonder if it makes sense to turn malls into office spaces. That'd keep the food court busy, too.
- fuball63 8y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. Co-working is on the rise, as are small rental office units with shared assets. Maybe they could turn a mall into a Googleplex for small business, with a game area, food court, pub/bar, gym, grocery/drug stores. I think a creative person with good business sense could pull it off.
NedIsakoff 8y ago
Stupid ClickBait Headline: "That’s proving difficult, with just a shallow pool of investors who are willing to take on a declining mall and even fewer who would pay what the landlords want." How is that practically giving way? You know what? I'll sell anything you can find in my garage for $2M USD. Anything and all things. Is that pratically giving away?
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  totally agree. my favorite line is: and even fewer who would pay what the landlords want alternatively, a journalist could interpret the situation with: "Investors face a drastic shortage of declining mall properties and are lobbying American legislators to ease restrictions on declining malls so that more can be made available."
- excalibur 8y ago
  Depends on what's in your garage.
Spooky23 8y ago
Declining retail is one factor, but bad balance sheets are the other. This type of development is fueled by favorable up-front tax and accounting treatments for development, but it requires constant growth for the companies to survive. When you get to the back-end of the 30 year loans, you're paying principal on a depreciated asset... the bag of tax tricks isn't enhancing profit anymore. The fact that the operators are desperate is a good thing -- they'll be bankrupt soon and useful redevelopment of these massive properties can start taking place.
track02 8y ago
I've been watching a lot of videos recently on visiting abandoned or dying malls in America and was wondering if it could be possible to convert them into residential/communal areas? They could be almost self-contained; with housing, shops, entertainment, etc all under one roof.
bsenftner 8y ago
“It’s a tough environment. I don’t think anybody really anticipated the decline of the department store to happen as quickly as it did,” Yeah, right, all you ostriches ignoring the advance of online retail for the last 15 years.
- choward 8y ago
  It's happening a lot slower than I expected.
jonknee 8y ago
Bloomberg had a fun little game a while back where you could play a mall owner trying to keep your property profitable... Lovely retro experience, worth checking out: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/
learc83 8y ago
When I was a kid in the 90s, I remember malls being much more of a destination--they had big atriums with fountains and indoor trees. By the early 2000s, when I was in high school, they were much more utilitarian. This was way before online shopping was killing their profits. I'm assuming it had something to do with consolidation and the new owners trying to extract maximum short term profits.
- H1Supreme 8y ago
  As a teen in the 90's, "the mall" was absolutely a destination. Our parents would drop us off on a Friday or Saturday, and we'd spend hours there with our friends.
  - amdelamar 8y ago
    Recently, a local mall near me (Lansing, MI) updated their policy to limit the number of "unsupervised youths" roaming their mall Fri/Sat evenings. Apparently the complaints have gone up, regarding teens and younger children running and being loud. https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2016/02/09/lansing-mall-limits-unaccompanied-teens/80026866/ https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2016/02...
- Mithorium 8y ago
  I also distinctly remember enjoying going to the mall as a kid because of the fountains and glass ceiling atrium, lots of seating spaces, is that not a thing anymore?
  - learc83 8y ago
    None of the malls in the Atlanta area that I can think of have fountains or lots of seating anymore. Many of them do still have the glass ceilings.
  - master_ant 8y ago
    Portland's Clackamas Town Center used to have a beautiful skating rink, large fountains next to escalators, and foliage. This has mostly been replaced with a seating area, a larger food court, and more shops. It's considerably less appealing to just _be_ in, at least for me. I miss stuff like that.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bcrescimanno 8y ago
Here's an anecdote about my experience at a mall yesterday. I needed some new shoes: I went to the Skechers store. There were 4 people working. Not a single one ever offered to help me. I had to walk up to the counter and the girl looked shocked when I asked her to get me my size to try on. She handed me the box and walked away. I never saw her again and walked out without making a purchase. I went over to Macy's to the men's shoe section. The section was about 5x the size of the Skechers store. There was one person working who was busy with a customer at the checkout. After waiting for 10+ minutes with no one to help, I left without ever trying on a pair of shoes. Then I went to Ecco--they are a small shop with only a small number of shoes. While the salesperson was quite attentive and helped me out, the one pair of shoes they had in the store that were interesting to me didn't fit right so I left. Tried to go to one more store only to discover that this particular location only carried women's shoes. All told, this adventure had me in the mall for about 90 minutes and I had managed to try on 2 pairs of shoes. Throw in the drive and it was over 2 hours for nothing. I went home, spent 20 minutes on Amazon Wardrobe, and I have 8 pairs of shoes in my size arriving at my house in a few days to try on. Stores in a mall have a real opportunity to win on personal service and instant gratification. Hire someone to help me find shoes that fit me well and go with my own sense of style and who makes sure I go home happy. But if my choices are spend over 2 hours for nothing or go online, I'm choosing the latter every time.
- mdorazio 8y ago
  To play devil's advocate here... 1) Are you incapable of finding the right size shoes yourself? The boxes are usually laid out fairly logically and it's pretty rare for there to actually be anything of use "in the back". 2) Hiring people to provide the level of service you're asking for would significantly increase the cost of labor over the minimum wage kids that usually staff these stores. I'm fairly certain the cost increase would guarantee the store goes out of business with the razor thin margins they usually have. Put another way, do you really think paying 50% more for higher quality employees would guarantee 50% more sales revenue? A big reason online shopping wins is because no one has the expectation that an actual human will help them purchase things, and the labor and rent costs are tiny in comparison to retail.
notadoc 8y ago
Maybe they can turn large vacant malls into housing for the vast homeless populations found living in shantytowns and tent-cities throughout the west coast?
honopu 8y ago
Just turn them into community colleges, or satellite university locations. Put up some apartments and offer the full experience. You have plenty of parking.. plenty of land.
- futileboy 8y ago
  I would be a big fan of them converting the locations in to mixed use housing and retail.
duxup 8y ago
There are several nice fancy style strip mall type places near me. All of them reportedly have sky high rents and several are largely empty and have been for years and all cycle through stores at a surprising rate. They keep up the malls just fine as if they're occupied, but they're mostly empty. It seems like such a waste to not have something operating in there.
jdonaldson 8y ago
It's hard to explain how important malls were to some of my younger colleagues, or to folks who didn't grow up in some no-name midwestern suburb like I did. Malls were temples and town squares. They were facebook. They were the internet. Virtually all of your exposure to the "outside world" happened there. Malls were incredibly well built and thought through. They were the crown jewel for many mid-size towns (perhaps next to sports stadiums). They boasted large, secure, climate controlled areas, often in places that had dramatic seasonal weather changes. They were a constant. I think they represent a tremendous bargain, provided a good deal is struck, and someone knows what to do with the space. However, the window for this to happen is small. Spaces that are that large that fall into disrepair often are unsalvageable.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  I think this might be US-centric phenomena. While we have some Malls in the UK, I believe most shops never really left the high-streets here (until the rise of the internet).
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    We did get a lot of out of town supermarkets though and they killed off lots of butchers, bakers, greengrocers and such like in town centres.
  - sethhochberg 8y ago
    OP mentioned a "no-name midwestern suburb" - in places like that, the main shopping street in the town often never existed in the first place. The land use goes straight from farms or ranch land to massive suburban housing developments with no functional town having ever existed in between. Thats not how all of the US works thankfully, but in huge parts of the country which are still doing the suburban sprawl thing, its a pretty common pattern. The nearest city which existed before the 1950s might be an hour's drive away, everything is new and purpose-built by large scale commercial developers.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Yes, I'd say it's among the most characteristic of the American suburb.
tunap 8y ago
Scottsdale AZ's Galleria struggled as a retail mall, tried other purposes and then it went business park. Seems to be working, do not read headlines about it being sold for pennies on the dollar anymore... http://galleriascottsdale.com/ http://galleriascottsdale.com/
polski-g 8y ago
1) Do malls exist in Europe? 2) If yes, are they also failing?
pascalxus 8y ago
Malls, yuck! I find little attractive about them, and I'm not surprised no one's going any more. malls are dying because they're all based on materialist consumerism: something millennials want no part of. Here's my suggestion. Fill them with Libraries, Gyms, yoga centers, Cafes, Restaurants, movie theaters, science museums, bike repair shops, ceramic hobby shops and indoor swimming pools, theaters and historic museums. That would get me going back in a heartbeat! And for crying out loud, put those massive cement filled parking spaces underground. Replace all that extra space with Green trees, bushes, parks, bike lanes and outdoor gyms.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Funnily enough, the malls near where I live are packed. Go to a suburb of a with a large immigrant or minority population (the folks who are still having kids), and you’ll see tons of older millennial pushing strollers around the mall.
- prolepunk 8y ago
  Ironically enough the malls were envisioned to be that by the person who came up with the idea, the devil's bargain here was letting cars be the part of the equation. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-gruen-effect/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-gruen-effect/ Also I'm not sure about the egalitarianism of the millenials. Millenials shop at Amazon, and we've seen article after article reporting on deplorable ways the company in treats its workers.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  > they're all based on materialist consumerism... Libraries, Gyms, yoga centers, Cafes, Restaurants, movie theaters, science museums, bike repair shops, ceramic hobby shops and indoor swimming pools, theaters and historic museums Aside from libraries and (some but certainly not all) museums, aren't all of these examples of things that fit well within materialist consumerism? I also prefer yoga studios, expensive coffee, fancy restaurants to specialty knives, clothes shopping, shoe shopping, and food courts. But those sorts of personal preferences are just matters of choosing what to consume, which doesn't seem like a fundamental or important difference.
markaskey 8y ago
My suggestion would be to rebuild the existing set of retail locations and target a group or niche to drive more traffice. For Example: Focus on Moms with kids from zero to 6. All the stores would cater to this group. You wouldn't see Athletic Shoe Stores or Abercrombies but store lke Baby Gap, Carters, Gymboree or Childrens Place. Add in Starbucks and a few other children friendly restaurants. Put in one or two play spaces for kids. Offer Free Babysitting if the Moms schedule appointments at a Yoga Center, Nail or Hair Salon. Make it a destination for Mom's to One Stop Shop for all their needs and a place where kids can play while they sit and watch or shop. Put in a couple of Pediatricians, Eye Doctors and a few Kids focused Dental Services. A Kids focused Movie Theatre and maybe even an aquatic center attached but for young kids. Make the entire place a desitination. "THE" go to place in town to shop for Moms with kids from infant to 6.
markaskey 8y ago
Malls need to move from Everything to Everyone to targeted segments of the consuming public. My suggestion would be to rebuild the existing set of retail locations and target a group or niche to drive more traffic. For Example: Focus on Moms with kids from zero to 6. All the stores would cater to this group. You wouldn't see Athletic Shoe Stores or Abercrombie but store like Baby Gap, Carters, Gymboree or Children's Place. Add in Starbucks and a few other children friendly restaurants. Put in one or two play spaces for kids. Offer Free Babysitting if the Moms schedule appointments at a Yoga Center, Nail or Hair Salon. Make it a destination for Mom's to One Stop Shop for all their needs and a place where kids can play while they sit and watch or shop. Put in a couple of Pediatricians, Eye Doctors and a few Kids focused Dental Services. A Kids focused Movie Theatre and maybe even an aquatic center attached but for young kids. Make the entire place a destination. "THE" go-to place in town to shop for Moms with kids from infant to 6. Or take an existing Mall and put in an indoor Skate Park. Fill it with stores catered to 16 to 25 year olds. Set the expectation that you expect Youth to "cruise" the locations. Add some security to make it safe and create a hangout where they will shop.

119 points by petethomas 8y ago

Malls were always predicated on the assumption that well-to-do suburbanites, increasing in wealth and in number due to relative prosperity in the upper subdivisions of salaried workers, would spend their disposable incomes on getting boutique, brand-signalling merchandise for themselves and their children. This was a trend that was evidently worth commercially exploiting at a time when malls were being built, but by the 1990s the demand for brand-name goods climbed upmarket enough that a new distinction had to be drawn between a mainstream mall and an upscale mall for this strategy to remain effective. New malls were built at great cost, and they took the most desirable stores, leaving the older wave of malls struggling for enough business to pay for renovations, maintenance, debt, and ROI. This cycle repeated at least one other time, when the outdoor, disassembled 'lifestyle center' became the dominant design pattern in the mid-2000s, by which point the narrative that malls are "dying" had become widespread. Rather, the market has segmented to a degree that the concept is only profitable at the highest end, while lower offerings are proving uncompetitive with other forces in the economy, like powerful mainstream retailers with lasting appeal (e.g. Target), low-price leaders (e.g. Walmart), reliable stores with strong curation (e.g. Costco), and the convenience of ordering online (e.g. Amazon). Then, it's worth noting that the generation that's 18-35 now spends less of their income on clothes than the generation that was 18-35 when malls were big [1], and apparel stores are about half of a typical mall's occupancy. Compare all this to Europe and UAE. Malls are doing great there. What's different? Just about everything, from the concentration of population and the particulars of siting that draws a higher proportion of people, to the value-add of having such a variety of shops under one roof, to less competition from non-mall retailers, and brand signalling still being a desirable goal. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16322720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16322720

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
Compare all this to Europe and UAE. No, retailers are struggling in the UK at the moment, there have been a number of high profile closures and restructurings. We haven't got the same capacity problems of the US but shopping habits are definitely changing.

projectramo 8y ago

I remember learning that in the 90s some companies had this useless asset: gas pipelines that spanned the country, but had dried up and were not being used. Other companies had a problem: how to acquire the rights to lay fiber from one end of the country to the other. Some very smart person realized you could lay the fiber in the old pipes. Question: what can be done with all that retail space? Is there a new use of space that will come up? Related question: what are the properties of malls that we might use? (parking, close to residences, easy to walk through)

schnevets 8y ago
I'm surprised no one has proposed a vertical farm yet. You've got plenty of storage/shipment zones, diverse levels of sunlight, an intricate climate-control system, and plenty of parking to expand/convert into a solar farm. Then you maintain the food court as a locavore destination
- olliej 8y ago
  Return on farming basically return on acreage, which means it’s directly tied to the cost of the land. There’s no real way to make a farm economically viable in a high land value area. Going vertical would make the land even more expensive
stevenwoo 8y ago
On the Bay Area peninsula we saw : a.) San Antonio/El Camino outdoor mall rebuilt as mixed used retail/residential b.) Sunnyvale Town Center mall - mixed use retail/residential? c.) Cupertino Vallco Mall - in litigation/negotiation for mixed use retail/residential d.) some 50 year old movie theaters with huge parking lots on the edge of existing Santana Row mixed use development were torn down recently to make room for more mixed use development
excalibur 8y ago
Adults-only entertainment venue. Fill it with bars, bowling alleys, hookah lounges, marijuana dispensaries (where legal), dance clubs, adult bookstores, places that rent rooms by the hour, other places where you can sleep it off more cheaply with maybe less privacy. Car keys deposited at the door into a machine that won't release them until you pass a breathalyzer.

frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago

In the common conception of markets no seller has enough power to sit on their laurels, they must sell their product in order to survive. It seems wrong to me that in the real estate market liquidity would drop as prices drop. There needs to be a cost associated with holding real estate so that there is turnover in good times and bad times.

theamk 8y ago
Like property taxes, perhaps? (unfortunately(?), many states do not have them)
jessaustin 8y ago
Owners of real estate already pay property taxes. Are you just proposing that those be increased? And you think that will make real estate more valuable? I'm missing something here...
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  >Are you just proposing that those be increased? Sure, or an additional tax on unused or barely used real estate if we wanted to be targeted, but really I like the broad property tax. >And you think that will make real estate more valuable? No, I'm not trying to make real estate more valuable, actually I'm trying to make it less valuable by ensuring that the high levels of competition we see in booming real estate times carries over to the busts. If the costs are so low that people are just sitting on these properties and waiting for a magical moment when prices rise then obviously costs need to be increased to pressure these people to enter the market. Liquidity shouldn't drop when prices drop.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Increasing property tax in general is less bad than this "unused or barely used" tax idea. That sounds like a good way to turn all old malls into flea markets. That is, big messy places where anyone can sell anything she wants out of the back of her van, for $5 a day. "Anything she wants" will include a wide variety of items to which neighbors will object strenuously. In addition to the unsavory sales activity, other unsavory activity will also take place. There's no way any taxation scheme will pay for the required extra policing. I won't be surprised if we don't see this happen...

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

I wonder if it makes sense to turn malls into office spaces. That'd keep the food court busy, too.

fuball63 8y ago
I was thinking the same thing. Co-working is on the rise, as are small rental office units with shared assets. Maybe they could turn a mall into a Googleplex for small business, with a game area, food court, pub/bar, gym, grocery/drug stores. I think a creative person with good business sense could pull it off.

NedIsakoff 8y ago

Stupid ClickBait Headline: "That’s proving difficult, with just a shallow pool of investors who are willing to take on a declining mall and even fewer who would pay what the landlords want." How is that practically giving way? You know what? I'll sell anything you can find in my garage for $2M USD. Anything and all things. Is that pratically giving away?

HillaryBriss 8y ago
totally agree. my favorite line is: and even fewer who would pay what the landlords want alternatively, a journalist could interpret the situation with: "Investors face a drastic shortage of declining mall properties and are lobbying American legislators to ease restrictions on declining malls so that more can be made available."
excalibur 8y ago
Depends on what's in your garage.

Spooky23 8y ago

Declining retail is one factor, but bad balance sheets are the other. This type of development is fueled by favorable up-front tax and accounting treatments for development, but it requires constant growth for the companies to survive. When you get to the back-end of the 30 year loans, you're paying principal on a depreciated asset... the bag of tax tricks isn't enhancing profit anymore. The fact that the operators are desperate is a good thing -- they'll be bankrupt soon and useful redevelopment of these massive properties can start taking place.

track02 8y ago

I've been watching a lot of videos recently on visiting abandoned or dying malls in America and was wondering if it could be possible to convert them into residential/communal areas? They could be almost self-contained; with housing, shops, entertainment, etc all under one roof.

bsenftner 8y ago

“It’s a tough environment. I don’t think anybody really anticipated the decline of the department store to happen as quickly as it did,” Yeah, right, all you ostriches ignoring the advance of online retail for the last 15 years.

choward 8y ago
It's happening a lot slower than I expected.

jonknee 8y ago

Bloomberg had a fun little game a while back where you could play a mall owner trying to keep your property profitable... Lovely retro experience, worth checking out: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/american-mall-game/

learc83 8y ago

When I was a kid in the 90s, I remember malls being much more of a destination--they had big atriums with fountains and indoor trees. By the early 2000s, when I was in high school, they were much more utilitarian. This was way before online shopping was killing their profits. I'm assuming it had something to do with consolidation and the new owners trying to extract maximum short term profits.

H1Supreme 8y ago
As a teen in the 90's, "the mall" was absolutely a destination. Our parents would drop us off on a Friday or Saturday, and we'd spend hours there with our friends.
- amdelamar 8y ago
  Recently, a local mall near me (Lansing, MI) updated their policy to limit the number of "unsupervised youths" roaming their mall Fri/Sat evenings. Apparently the complaints have gone up, regarding teens and younger children running and being loud. https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2016/02/09/lansing-mall-limits-unaccompanied-teens/80026866/ https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2016/02...
Mithorium 8y ago
I also distinctly remember enjoying going to the mall as a kid because of the fountains and glass ceiling atrium, lots of seating spaces, is that not a thing anymore?
- learc83 8y ago
  None of the malls in the Atlanta area that I can think of have fountains or lots of seating anymore. Many of them do still have the glass ceilings.
- master_ant 8y ago
  Portland's Clackamas Town Center used to have a beautiful skating rink, large fountains next to escalators, and foliage. This has mostly been replaced with a seating area, a larger food court, and more shops. It's considerably less appealing to just _be_ in, at least for me. I miss stuff like that.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bcrescimanno 8y ago

Here's an anecdote about my experience at a mall yesterday. I needed some new shoes: I went to the Skechers store. There were 4 people working. Not a single one ever offered to help me. I had to walk up to the counter and the girl looked shocked when I asked her to get me my size to try on. She handed me the box and walked away. I never saw her again and walked out without making a purchase. I went over to Macy's to the men's shoe section. The section was about 5x the size of the Skechers store. There was one person working who was busy with a customer at the checkout. After waiting for 10+ minutes with no one to help, I left without ever trying on a pair of shoes. Then I went to Ecco--they are a small shop with only a small number of shoes. While the salesperson was quite attentive and helped me out, the one pair of shoes they had in the store that were interesting to me didn't fit right so I left. Tried to go to one more store only to discover that this particular location only carried women's shoes. All told, this adventure had me in the mall for about 90 minutes and I had managed to try on 2 pairs of shoes. Throw in the drive and it was over 2 hours for nothing. I went home, spent 20 minutes on Amazon Wardrobe, and I have 8 pairs of shoes in my size arriving at my house in a few days to try on. Stores in a mall have a real opportunity to win on personal service and instant gratification. Hire someone to help me find shoes that fit me well and go with my own sense of style and who makes sure I go home happy. But if my choices are spend over 2 hours for nothing or go online, I'm choosing the latter every time.

mdorazio 8y ago
To play devil's advocate here... 1) Are you incapable of finding the right size shoes yourself? The boxes are usually laid out fairly logically and it's pretty rare for there to actually be anything of use "in the back". 2) Hiring people to provide the level of service you're asking for would significantly increase the cost of labor over the minimum wage kids that usually staff these stores. I'm fairly certain the cost increase would guarantee the store goes out of business with the razor thin margins they usually have. Put another way, do you really think paying 50% more for higher quality employees would guarantee 50% more sales revenue? A big reason online shopping wins is because no one has the expectation that an actual human will help them purchase things, and the labor and rent costs are tiny in comparison to retail.

notadoc 8y ago

Maybe they can turn large vacant malls into housing for the vast homeless populations found living in shantytowns and tent-cities throughout the west coast?

honopu 8y ago

Just turn them into community colleges, or satellite university locations. Put up some apartments and offer the full experience. You have plenty of parking.. plenty of land.

futileboy 8y ago
I would be a big fan of them converting the locations in to mixed use housing and retail.

duxup 8y ago

There are several nice fancy style strip mall type places near me. All of them reportedly have sky high rents and several are largely empty and have been for years and all cycle through stores at a surprising rate. They keep up the malls just fine as if they're occupied, but they're mostly empty. It seems like such a waste to not have something operating in there.

jdonaldson 8y ago

It's hard to explain how important malls were to some of my younger colleagues, or to folks who didn't grow up in some no-name midwestern suburb like I did. Malls were temples and town squares. They were facebook. They were the internet. Virtually all of your exposure to the "outside world" happened there. Malls were incredibly well built and thought through. They were the crown jewel for many mid-size towns (perhaps next to sports stadiums). They boasted large, secure, climate controlled areas, often in places that had dramatic seasonal weather changes. They were a constant. I think they represent a tremendous bargain, provided a good deal is struck, and someone knows what to do with the space. However, the window for this to happen is small. Spaces that are that large that fall into disrepair often are unsalvageable.

nicoburns 8y ago
I think this might be US-centric phenomena. While we have some Malls in the UK, I believe most shops never really left the high-streets here (until the rise of the internet).
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  We did get a lot of out of town supermarkets though and they killed off lots of butchers, bakers, greengrocers and such like in town centres.
- sethhochberg 8y ago
  OP mentioned a "no-name midwestern suburb" - in places like that, the main shopping street in the town often never existed in the first place. The land use goes straight from farms or ranch land to massive suburban housing developments with no functional town having ever existed in between. Thats not how all of the US works thankfully, but in huge parts of the country which are still doing the suburban sprawl thing, its a pretty common pattern. The nearest city which existed before the 1950s might be an hour's drive away, everything is new and purpose-built by large scale commercial developers.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Yes, I'd say it's among the most characteristic of the American suburb.

tunap 8y ago

Scottsdale AZ's Galleria struggled as a retail mall, tried other purposes and then it went business park. Seems to be working, do not read headlines about it being sold for pennies on the dollar anymore... http://galleriascottsdale.com/ http://galleriascottsdale.com/

polski-g 8y ago

1) Do malls exist in Europe? 2) If yes, are they also failing?

pascalxus 8y ago

Malls, yuck! I find little attractive about them, and I'm not surprised no one's going any more. malls are dying because they're all based on materialist consumerism: something millennials want no part of. Here's my suggestion. Fill them with Libraries, Gyms, yoga centers, Cafes, Restaurants, movie theaters, science museums, bike repair shops, ceramic hobby shops and indoor swimming pools, theaters and historic museums. That would get me going back in a heartbeat! And for crying out loud, put those massive cement filled parking spaces underground. Replace all that extra space with Green trees, bushes, parks, bike lanes and outdoor gyms.

rayiner 8y ago
Funnily enough, the malls near where I live are packed. Go to a suburb of a with a large immigrant or minority population (the folks who are still having kids), and you’ll see tons of older millennial pushing strollers around the mall.
prolepunk 8y ago
Ironically enough the malls were envisioned to be that by the person who came up with the idea, the devil's bargain here was letting cars be the part of the equation. https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-gruen-effect/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-gruen-effect/ Also I'm not sure about the egalitarianism of the millenials. Millenials shop at Amazon, and we've seen article after article reporting on deplorable ways the company in treats its workers.
throwawayjava 8y ago
> they're all based on materialist consumerism... Libraries, Gyms, yoga centers, Cafes, Restaurants, movie theaters, science museums, bike repair shops, ceramic hobby shops and indoor swimming pools, theaters and historic museums Aside from libraries and (some but certainly not all) museums, aren't all of these examples of things that fit well within materialist consumerism? I also prefer yoga studios, expensive coffee, fancy restaurants to specialty knives, clothes shopping, shoe shopping, and food courts. But those sorts of personal preferences are just matters of choosing what to consume, which doesn't seem like a fundamental or important difference.

markaskey 8y ago

My suggestion would be to rebuild the existing set of retail locations and target a group or niche to drive more traffice. For Example: Focus on Moms with kids from zero to 6. All the stores would cater to this group. You wouldn't see Athletic Shoe Stores or Abercrombies but store lke Baby Gap, Carters, Gymboree or Childrens Place. Add in Starbucks and a few other children friendly restaurants. Put in one or two play spaces for kids. Offer Free Babysitting if the Moms schedule appointments at a Yoga Center, Nail or Hair Salon. Make it a destination for Mom's to One Stop Shop for all their needs and a place where kids can play while they sit and watch or shop. Put in a couple of Pediatricians, Eye Doctors and a few Kids focused Dental Services. A Kids focused Movie Theatre and maybe even an aquatic center attached but for young kids. Make the entire place a desitination. "THE" go to place in town to shop for Moms with kids from infant to 6.

markaskey 8y ago

Malls need to move from Everything to Everyone to targeted segments of the consuming public. My suggestion would be to rebuild the existing set of retail locations and target a group or niche to drive more traffic. For Example: Focus on Moms with kids from zero to 6. All the stores would cater to this group. You wouldn't see Athletic Shoe Stores or Abercrombie but store like Baby Gap, Carters, Gymboree or Children's Place. Add in Starbucks and a few other children friendly restaurants. Put in one or two play spaces for kids. Offer Free Babysitting if the Moms schedule appointments at a Yoga Center, Nail or Hair Salon. Make it a destination for Mom's to One Stop Shop for all their needs and a place where kids can play while they sit and watch or shop. Put in a couple of Pediatricians, Eye Doctors and a few Kids focused Dental Services. A Kids focused Movie Theatre and maybe even an aquatic center attached but for young kids. Make the entire place a destination. "THE" go-to place in town to shop for Moms with kids from infant to 6. Or take an existing Mall and put in an indoor Skate Park. Fill it with stores catered to 16 to 25 year olds. Set the expectation that you expect Youth to "cruise" the locations. Add some security to make it safe and create a hangout where they will shop.