9 ms·

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. Ot

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.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  > Car keys deposited at the door into a machine that won't release them until you pass a breathalyzer. So, basically, "don't bother coming here because you can't leave"? You'd need to make sure it was either accessible by public transit, or that there's cheap and effective semi-public transit like Lyft or taxi cabs - and it has to be cheap and effective for two trips, since you'll have to come back to pick up your car in the morning.
  - excalibur 8y ago
    Those things already serve most shopping malls. The idea was that the venue would provide everything people needed to keep them happy until they sober up, but they would of course be free to leave by means that don't involve DUI.
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      > The idea was that the venue would provide everything people needed to keep them happy until they sober up Then they should offer up sleeping accommodations, too. While I know that in most places, you legally can't serve someone who's already intoxicated, in practice few people go to a bar to get slightly tipsy. If I'm going for a night out, I'm not going to be ready to drive again until morning.
      - excalibur 8y ago
        Agreed. That's why I suggested two different types of sleeping accommodations: A nice one for occasions where you're not necessarily alone (or sleeping), and a more bare-bones one for when you just want a place to crash.
- nighthawk1 8y ago
  Give the people what they want!
- jandrese 8y ago
  I think that probably works better in theory than practice. In the real world it's going to be sleazy and run down in a few short years. I'd also like to be at the city council meeting where you propose adding hooker hotel rooms in the original plans.
megaframe 8y ago
Apartments on the second floor, it's worked in some places, but mostly where the mall was already centrally located http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-first-shopping-mall-is-now-micro-apartments-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-first-shopping-mall-...
throwaway435388 8y ago
Exactly, turning them into parking spaces comes to mind in areas where parking is awful. Museums or even a botanical garden. It's hard to feel bad for landlords who throw in the towel before thinking outside the box. I'm sure online retail giants wouldn't mind buying more warehouse space in prime locations either.
- macintux 8y ago
  I don't blame a mall operator for not wanting to invest huge sums of money in renovations in order to run an entirely different, probably much less profitable, kind of business.
  - lostapathy 8y ago
    Much less profitable than owning an empty building?
    - drblast 8y ago
      No, less profitable than not owning it.
    - macintux 8y ago
      Owning an empty building can be cheaper than owning a building that requires maintenance and more insurance because it's in use.
- coredog64 8y ago
  Retail could turn their model on it's head. Rather than consumers coming to the mall, retailer has micro depot and delivers to local customers. The only question is whether or not you can make use of all the parking. If not, then probably not capturing the entire value of the existing infrastructure.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kozhevnikov 8y ago
Small commuter apartments and/or mixed space. [1] https://youtu.be/HmL2l-bcuUQ https://youtu.be/HmL2l-bcuUQ [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mall-of-the-future-will-have-no-stores-1497268801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mall-of-the-future-will-hav...
- bryondowd 8y ago
  I would think zoning laws would get in the way there. You'd have to get the area re-zoned from commercial to residential. Which gets into whatever the local politics of that happen to be.
codingdave 8y ago
It could be a whole new flavor for YC or other incubators - don't come to SF and fight to find housing... come to the new Coding Mall - offices are in the East Wing, apartment in the West Wing, demos and sales kiosks in the former Sears, VC offices in the former JC Penney, and everyone meets up in the food court (which is still running, btw, to keep everyone fed) for informal discussions.
- kozikow 8y ago
  I would move into such place.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Living in such place I would be plagued by zombie attack nightmares...
    - i_am_nomad 8y ago
      Not to worry. The real zombies are the people who used to shop there. Now they’re at home, clicking on the apps you’ll build for them.
    - jschwartzi 8y ago
      Just hire Ving Rhames to provide security. Problem solved.
- spiderfarmer 8y ago
  That’s a great idea.
- aloisdg 8y ago
  Station F with apartments?
- richmarr 8y ago
  Arcology! I'm so glad we opted for the William Gibson distopian future. A Mad Max apolocalyptic hellscape would have been terrible for my skin.
mawburn 8y ago
I don't think the question is if the space can be used, but whether or not there are legitimate uses of the space that can also make up for ongoing maintenance costs of such large structures. I honestly don't think it can. I've seen them turned into office spaces, but it's really not an efficient use of space and the lack of sunlight/windows just makes it depressing. As far as demolishing goes, most malls really aren't in areas where the space for parking is needed. If they are, then that land is probably highly valuable anyway.
- buildbuildbuild 8y ago
  Rackspace purchased a mall a few years back and transformed it into an office space I've found pleasant during visits. Natural light in their space is mostly from above but there aren't exactly scenic surroundings anyways. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace-revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rac...
  - mawburn 8y ago
    I hadn't heard of that, but that is really cool use of the space. That actually looks a lot like the facility I work in, but our's was built for the purpose. That is definitely proof that good space can be built out of it, but are there enough companies who want to build spaces like that compared to the number of dead malls? There are a lot of dead malls. The ones I've seen are much more corporate-like.
heckanoobs 8y ago
The land is probably more valuable than the building configuration. It's a little different from the pipe example in that way. You can't easily tear up the pipes and do something else with the pipeway, but you could demolish a mall and build an entire live/work district.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  Pipelines offer uninterrupted right-of-way continuity from point to point. Shopping malls are distinctly noncontinuous, and better resemble ports (which is what they are). That's the tricky bit in physically-routed infrastructure: pipelines, canals, rail, expressways, media (vs. transmission-based) comms links. None of them abide well with airgapping. The comms-transport link goes back at least to the rail era when telegraph lines sprang up along them. You might have heard of one such venture: the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications, better known as SPRINT. https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162963607/sprint-born-from-railroad-telephone-businesses https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162963607/sprint-born-from-ra... A delivery-based fulfillment service, say, Amazon, might have interest in some (though hardly all) of these as local distribution hubs.
- Tiktaalik 8y ago
  Yeah the land is valuable. The building (and sea of parking) on it is built using last century thinking. Rezone and densify, and build a mixed use walkable community of residential commercial and office.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Some comment here on HN a month or so ago clarified this for me. It's more efficient to have a delivery truck go around to ten different houses than it is to have each of ten different vehicles drive from their houses to a central location. Now if only there were some way to do that with people, not just with stuff (cough mumble public transit cough).
    - seanp2k2 8y ago
foobarian 8y ago
A local mall in Natick MA recently lost one of their anchor stores (JCPenney) and replaced it with a Wegman's, which the first I saw a supermarket as an anchor store. I would love to know how desperate they must have been or how sweet of a deal they gave Wegman's to make this happen.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  If I had a Wegman's I'd go to the mall. They're in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, but seem to have something against Connecticut. :( On the malls note, the Chapel Square Mall in downtown New Haven got turned into apartments before I moved here. It's weird and seriously depressing looking, though I haven't seen the interior courtyard area myself. There has to be a better way to do it than this: https://betweentworocks.com/welcome-new-havens-strangest-apartment-building/ https://betweentworocks.com/welcome-new-havens-strangest-apa... If anyone's curious to see the location on google maps/satellite, this is just behind the Omni New Haven hotel, the row of skylights is easy to pick out.
  - heartbreak 8y ago
    Wegman's are further south as well. There are multiple in Virginia (NoVa, Richmond, Charlottesville).
    - wlesieutre 8y ago
      Yeah, I listed just the nearby states. Connecticut + Rhode Island are a hole in the middle of PA/MA/NY/NJ. They're even expanding to multiple locations in North Carolina, but nothing around here. I think my closest one is >2 hours away in Woodbridge, NJ. Used to live in PA and had a Wegmans, so it bums me out. Stop 'n Shop isn't the same.
- rjsw 8y ago
  Having a supermarket as the anchor in a mall is fairly common in Europe.
- emodendroket 8y ago
greyfox 8y ago
When i was between the ages of 18-21 in the middle of the 07+ economic crisis i noticed all these "abandoned" car dealerships in my area... grocery stores, etc. I always thought a good repurposing of these buildings would've been: -Skate parks or other athletic venue (maybe a gym if the building was the right size?) -Clubs/Dancehalls -Concert Venues -Intermittent Rental for Parties/Weddings things of that nature (you setup you break down, just an empty building to host a party) I guess the rental idea could be used for a number of practical purposes if one had an idea that they thought it would be good for.
- madcaptenor 8y ago
  One example of this: there's an animal shelter north of Atlanta that used to be a car dealership. http://bgarchitects.com/project/atlanta-humane-society/ http://bgarchitects.com/project/atlanta-humane-society/
  - greyfox 8y ago
    yeah in my hometown-Houston there was already a popular nightclub from the 90's (The Roxy?) that was a reused car dealership or some-such so it wasn't too out of the box to be done...its just nightclubs are one thing... healthy athletic alternatives for kids is another (which was my primary idea) edit: this is a moot point now, but back in the late 90's and early 00's Houston had a serious lack of skateparks which is no longer an issue. Luckily im now an adult and dont really have the time to make use of them like i would've as a kid
- bluedino 8y ago
  We have tons of abandoned big-box stores. There's a old Builders Square in our town that's been empty for...20 years? We have a Pep Boys that's been empty for at least 15. New stores go up, these just sit with 'for rent' signs in front of them. How this is financially possible I don't even know.
jasode 8y ago
>Question: what can be done with all that retail space? Is there a new use of space that will come up? If they can't attract traditional retail tenants, some dead-mall owners have resorted to transforming them into community event centers, offices, or even apartments.[1] I don't know about the profitability of apartments but the community centers do not make enough money relative to the expenses of property taxes and upkeep. The mall is still dying. The other option is for a new buyer to purchase the mall solely for the land value and demolish the buildings. Two malls in my area were demolished. One was replaced by a Wal-Mart supercenter with some adjacent strip malls sharing the same large parking lot. Another mall was razed and replaced by a Target store. The Wal-Mart and Target have drawn more shoppers than the dead malls they replaced. This is the free market telling us that the locations were commercially viable but the retail configuration (the indoor mall) was worthless. [1] https://gizmodo.com/7-dead-shopping-malls-that-found-surprising-second-live-1634073681 https://gizmodo.com/7-dead-shopping-malls-that-found-surpris...
- pofilat 8y ago
  Those examples tell me that people don't want to buy as much expensive products anymore; they prefer cheap stuff.
  - Can_Not 8y ago
    Especially if the expensive products are the same low quality as the cheap stuff.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
It might in some ways be closer to repurposing an old military installation because of the way mall interiors are designed to be intentionally confusing, disorienting e.g. [0]. It’s a highly specialized facility, in which the layout is optimized to serve a heavily researched purpose. [0]: < https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer >
alanfalcon 8y ago
The best AR theme parks :-)
jccooper 8y ago
Many are moving towards entertainment. Restaurants, games, that sort of thing. It's a bit hard, though, as those typically don't need as much space as retail, and if they do they can't afford the rates retail could.
guyzero 8y ago
Zoning can be an issue - there's an abandoned mall in Cupertino that's probably half a mile from the new Apple HQ. And to say it's prime land is an understatement - the entire area is desperate for new housing. Current proposal is for 2,400 housing units on the land. But previous zoning proposal that were ballot initiatives got defeated (hurray democracy) and it's required a state bill to force the city's hand for zoning. (https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/02/community-reacts-to-developers-plan-for-old-vallco-mall/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/02/community-reacts-to-d...) But still no agreement between the city and the developers. I'm sure most malls will be trivial to rezone as cities would rather have something paying taxes rather than nothing but that's not the case everywhere.
- pofilat 8y ago
  Cities don't want housing. They want other cities to fund residents, while they extract their pound of flesh from business offices.
- niftich 8y ago
  Residential vs. non-residential zoning always tries to tilt towards non-residential, because it has a better potential of return. Although both pay property taxes and both require utility services like water, sewer, and waste collection, non-residential properties attract both in-town residents and outsiders from other jurisdictions, who then typically spend some money in your town. Meanwhile, residential attracts new residents, who may or may not take jobs in your town, could be spending money in other towns, but need high-cost social services like public schools and community programs in your town.
  - seanp2k2 8y ago
    Or even worse, they transfer their Prop 13 to a “replacement property”: https://blog.yonathan.org/posts/2017-10-transferring-prop13-assessed-value.html https://blog.yonathan.org/posts/2017-10-transferring-prop13-...
  - touristtam 8y ago
    That explains why Edinburgh allowed the St james centre to exist right in the city centre instead of keeping the existing housing stock there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Centre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Centre. The whole thing has been pulled down and a mixed development should be take its place in the next few years (alreayd underway).
0xfeba 8y ago
Coworking space?
orbitingpluto 8y ago
The executive branch of the government has found a use: concentration camps for children
- orbitingpluto 8y ago
  Downvoted because I didn't provide a source? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-jeff-merkley-barred-brownsville-texas-detention-center-refugee-children-2018-06-04/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-jeff-merkley-barred-bro...
taurath 8y ago
We need community spaces. Now more than ever. But the whole corporate mall situation is really bad - I’d rather see farmers markets, a grocery store and drug store, maybe some local food vendors (Bangkok style single vendors?). Someplace people actually want to hang out - not just to shop.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  Hmm, there is usually lot of open space for tables and chairs in a mall -- throw in some free wifi and turn what was a problem for starbucks into an attraction...
- monksy 8y ago
  One of the things that I would complain about Bangkok, at least from what I saw, they have sidewalk vendors: but it's really crunched for space. At times it felt like homeless tent, homeless tent, food stand, homeless tent, food stand. (Again this varies about where you're at)
beiller 8y ago
Build Houses, just a thought.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
Many of China’s ghost malls were transformed into incubator workspaces over the last few years, including the one next to Microsoft’s office in Beijing. I’m not sure how successful they were, but since the mall was subterranean I wouldn’t think it would be a good place to code.
emodendroket 8y ago
Rackspace uses a bunch of abandoned mall space, as I recall.

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.

pavel_lishin 8y ago
> Car keys deposited at the door into a machine that won't release them until you pass a breathalyzer. So, basically, "don't bother coming here because you can't leave"? You'd need to make sure it was either accessible by public transit, or that there's cheap and effective semi-public transit like Lyft or taxi cabs - and it has to be cheap and effective for two trips, since you'll have to come back to pick up your car in the morning.
- excalibur 8y ago
  Those things already serve most shopping malls. The idea was that the venue would provide everything people needed to keep them happy until they sober up, but they would of course be free to leave by means that don't involve DUI.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    > The idea was that the venue would provide everything people needed to keep them happy until they sober up Then they should offer up sleeping accommodations, too. While I know that in most places, you legally can't serve someone who's already intoxicated, in practice few people go to a bar to get slightly tipsy. If I'm going for a night out, I'm not going to be ready to drive again until morning.
    - excalibur 8y ago
      Agreed. That's why I suggested two different types of sleeping accommodations: A nice one for occasions where you're not necessarily alone (or sleeping), and a more bare-bones one for when you just want a place to crash.
nighthawk1 8y ago
Give the people what they want!
jandrese 8y ago
I think that probably works better in theory than practice. In the real world it's going to be sleazy and run down in a few short years. I'd also like to be at the city council meeting where you propose adding hooker hotel rooms in the original plans.

megaframe 8y ago

Apartments on the second floor, it's worked in some places, but mostly where the mall was already centrally located http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-first-shopping-mall-is-now-micro-apartments-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/americas-first-shopping-mall-...

throwaway435388 8y ago

Exactly, turning them into parking spaces comes to mind in areas where parking is awful. Museums or even a botanical garden. It's hard to feel bad for landlords who throw in the towel before thinking outside the box. I'm sure online retail giants wouldn't mind buying more warehouse space in prime locations either.

macintux 8y ago
I don't blame a mall operator for not wanting to invest huge sums of money in renovations in order to run an entirely different, probably much less profitable, kind of business.
- lostapathy 8y ago
  Much less profitable than owning an empty building?
  - drblast 8y ago
    No, less profitable than not owning it.
  - macintux 8y ago
    Owning an empty building can be cheaper than owning a building that requires maintenance and more insurance because it's in use.
coredog64 8y ago
Retail could turn their model on it's head. Rather than consumers coming to the mall, retailer has micro depot and delivers to local customers. The only question is whether or not you can make use of all the parking. If not, then probably not capturing the entire value of the existing infrastructure.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

kozhevnikov 8y ago

Small commuter apartments and/or mixed space. [1] https://youtu.be/HmL2l-bcuUQ https://youtu.be/HmL2l-bcuUQ [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mall-of-the-future-will-have-no-stores-1497268801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mall-of-the-future-will-hav...

bryondowd 8y ago
I would think zoning laws would get in the way there. You'd have to get the area re-zoned from commercial to residential. Which gets into whatever the local politics of that happen to be.

codingdave 8y ago

It could be a whole new flavor for YC or other incubators - don't come to SF and fight to find housing... come to the new Coding Mall - offices are in the East Wing, apartment in the West Wing, demos and sales kiosks in the former Sears, VC offices in the former JC Penney, and everyone meets up in the food court (which is still running, btw, to keep everyone fed) for informal discussions.

kozikow 8y ago
I would move into such place.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Living in such place I would be plagued by zombie attack nightmares...
  - i_am_nomad 8y ago
    Not to worry. The real zombies are the people who used to shop there. Now they’re at home, clicking on the apps you’ll build for them.
  - jschwartzi 8y ago
    Just hire Ving Rhames to provide security. Problem solved.
spiderfarmer 8y ago
That’s a great idea.
aloisdg 8y ago
Station F with apartments?
richmarr 8y ago
Arcology! I'm so glad we opted for the William Gibson distopian future. A Mad Max apolocalyptic hellscape would have been terrible for my skin.

mawburn 8y ago

I don't think the question is if the space can be used, but whether or not there are legitimate uses of the space that can also make up for ongoing maintenance costs of such large structures. I honestly don't think it can. I've seen them turned into office spaces, but it's really not an efficient use of space and the lack of sunlight/windows just makes it depressing. As far as demolishing goes, most malls really aren't in areas where the space for parking is needed. If they are, then that land is probably highly valuable anyway.

buildbuildbuild 8y ago
Rackspace purchased a mall a few years back and transformed it into an office space I've found pleasant during visits. Natural light in their space is mostly from above but there aren't exactly scenic surroundings anyways. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace-revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rac...
- mawburn 8y ago
  I hadn't heard of that, but that is really cool use of the space. That actually looks a lot like the facility I work in, but our's was built for the purpose. That is definitely proof that good space can be built out of it, but are there enough companies who want to build spaces like that compared to the number of dead malls? There are a lot of dead malls. The ones I've seen are much more corporate-like.

heckanoobs 8y ago

The land is probably more valuable than the building configuration. It's a little different from the pipe example in that way. You can't easily tear up the pipes and do something else with the pipeway, but you could demolish a mall and build an entire live/work district.

dredmorbius 8y ago
Pipelines offer uninterrupted right-of-way continuity from point to point. Shopping malls are distinctly noncontinuous, and better resemble ports (which is what they are). That's the tricky bit in physically-routed infrastructure: pipelines, canals, rail, expressways, media (vs. transmission-based) comms links. None of them abide well with airgapping. The comms-transport link goes back at least to the rail era when telegraph lines sprang up along them. You might have heard of one such venture: the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications, better known as SPRINT. https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162963607/sprint-born-from-railroad-telephone-businesses https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162963607/sprint-born-from-ra... A delivery-based fulfillment service, say, Amazon, might have interest in some (though hardly all) of these as local distribution hubs.
Tiktaalik 8y ago
Yeah the land is valuable. The building (and sea of parking) on it is built using last century thinking. Rezone and densify, and build a mixed use walkable community of residential commercial and office.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Some comment here on HN a month or so ago clarified this for me. It's more efficient to have a delivery truck go around to ten different houses than it is to have each of ten different vehicles drive from their houses to a central location. Now if only there were some way to do that with people, not just with stuff (cough mumble public transit cough).
  - seanp2k2 8y ago

foobarian 8y ago

A local mall in Natick MA recently lost one of their anchor stores (JCPenney) and replaced it with a Wegman's, which the first I saw a supermarket as an anchor store. I would love to know how desperate they must have been or how sweet of a deal they gave Wegman's to make this happen.

wlesieutre 8y ago
If I had a Wegman's I'd go to the mall. They're in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, but seem to have something against Connecticut. :( On the malls note, the Chapel Square Mall in downtown New Haven got turned into apartments before I moved here. It's weird and seriously depressing looking, though I haven't seen the interior courtyard area myself. There has to be a better way to do it than this: https://betweentworocks.com/welcome-new-havens-strangest-apartment-building/ https://betweentworocks.com/welcome-new-havens-strangest-apa... If anyone's curious to see the location on google maps/satellite, this is just behind the Omni New Haven hotel, the row of skylights is easy to pick out.
- heartbreak 8y ago
  Wegman's are further south as well. There are multiple in Virginia (NoVa, Richmond, Charlottesville).
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    Yeah, I listed just the nearby states. Connecticut + Rhode Island are a hole in the middle of PA/MA/NY/NJ. They're even expanding to multiple locations in North Carolina, but nothing around here. I think my closest one is >2 hours away in Woodbridge, NJ. Used to live in PA and had a Wegmans, so it bums me out. Stop 'n Shop isn't the same.
rjsw 8y ago
Having a supermarket as the anchor in a mall is fairly common in Europe.
emodendroket 8y ago

greyfox 8y ago

When i was between the ages of 18-21 in the middle of the 07+ economic crisis i noticed all these "abandoned" car dealerships in my area... grocery stores, etc. I always thought a good repurposing of these buildings would've been: -Skate parks or other athletic venue (maybe a gym if the building was the right size?) -Clubs/Dancehalls -Concert Venues -Intermittent Rental for Parties/Weddings things of that nature (you setup you break down, just an empty building to host a party) I guess the rental idea could be used for a number of practical purposes if one had an idea that they thought it would be good for.

madcaptenor 8y ago
One example of this: there's an animal shelter north of Atlanta that used to be a car dealership. http://bgarchitects.com/project/atlanta-humane-society/ http://bgarchitects.com/project/atlanta-humane-society/
- greyfox 8y ago
  yeah in my hometown-Houston there was already a popular nightclub from the 90's (The Roxy?) that was a reused car dealership or some-such so it wasn't too out of the box to be done...its just nightclubs are one thing... healthy athletic alternatives for kids is another (which was my primary idea) edit: this is a moot point now, but back in the late 90's and early 00's Houston had a serious lack of skateparks which is no longer an issue. Luckily im now an adult and dont really have the time to make use of them like i would've as a kid
bluedino 8y ago
We have tons of abandoned big-box stores. There's a old Builders Square in our town that's been empty for...20 years? We have a Pep Boys that's been empty for at least 15. New stores go up, these just sit with 'for rent' signs in front of them. How this is financially possible I don't even know.

jasode 8y ago

>Question: what can be done with all that retail space? Is there a new use of space that will come up? If they can't attract traditional retail tenants, some dead-mall owners have resorted to transforming them into community event centers, offices, or even apartments.[1] I don't know about the profitability of apartments but the community centers do not make enough money relative to the expenses of property taxes and upkeep. The mall is still dying. The other option is for a new buyer to purchase the mall solely for the land value and demolish the buildings. Two malls in my area were demolished. One was replaced by a Wal-Mart supercenter with some adjacent strip malls sharing the same large parking lot. Another mall was razed and replaced by a Target store. The Wal-Mart and Target have drawn more shoppers than the dead malls they replaced. This is the free market telling us that the locations were commercially viable but the retail configuration (the indoor mall) was worthless. [1] https://gizmodo.com/7-dead-shopping-malls-that-found-surprising-second-live-1634073681 https://gizmodo.com/7-dead-shopping-malls-that-found-surpris...

pofilat 8y ago
Those examples tell me that people don't want to buy as much expensive products anymore; they prefer cheap stuff.
- Can_Not 8y ago
  Especially if the expensive products are the same low quality as the cheap stuff.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

It might in some ways be closer to repurposing an old military installation because of the way mall interiors are designed to be intentionally confusing, disorienting e.g. [0]. It’s a highly specialized facility, in which the layout is optimized to serve a heavily researched purpose. [0]: < https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer >

alanfalcon 8y ago

The best AR theme parks :-)

jccooper 8y ago

Many are moving towards entertainment. Restaurants, games, that sort of thing. It's a bit hard, though, as those typically don't need as much space as retail, and if they do they can't afford the rates retail could.

guyzero 8y ago

Zoning can be an issue - there's an abandoned mall in Cupertino that's probably half a mile from the new Apple HQ. And to say it's prime land is an understatement - the entire area is desperate for new housing. Current proposal is for 2,400 housing units on the land. But previous zoning proposal that were ballot initiatives got defeated (hurray democracy) and it's required a state bill to force the city's hand for zoning. (https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/02/community-reacts-to-developers-plan-for-old-vallco-mall/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/02/community-reacts-to-d...) But still no agreement between the city and the developers. I'm sure most malls will be trivial to rezone as cities would rather have something paying taxes rather than nothing but that's not the case everywhere.

pofilat 8y ago
Cities don't want housing. They want other cities to fund residents, while they extract their pound of flesh from business offices.
niftich 8y ago
Residential vs. non-residential zoning always tries to tilt towards non-residential, because it has a better potential of return. Although both pay property taxes and both require utility services like water, sewer, and waste collection, non-residential properties attract both in-town residents and outsiders from other jurisdictions, who then typically spend some money in your town. Meanwhile, residential attracts new residents, who may or may not take jobs in your town, could be spending money in other towns, but need high-cost social services like public schools and community programs in your town.
- seanp2k2 8y ago
  Or even worse, they transfer their Prop 13 to a “replacement property”: https://blog.yonathan.org/posts/2017-10-transferring-prop13-assessed-value.html https://blog.yonathan.org/posts/2017-10-transferring-prop13-...
- touristtam 8y ago
  That explains why Edinburgh allowed the St james centre to exist right in the city centre instead of keeping the existing housing stock there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Centre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Centre. The whole thing has been pulled down and a mixed development should be take its place in the next few years (alreayd underway).

0xfeba 8y ago

Coworking space?

orbitingpluto 8y ago

The executive branch of the government has found a use: concentration camps for children

orbitingpluto 8y ago
Downvoted because I didn't provide a source? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-jeff-merkley-barred-brownsville-texas-detention-center-refugee-children-2018-06-04/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-jeff-merkley-barred-bro...

taurath 8y ago

We need community spaces. Now more than ever. But the whole corporate mall situation is really bad - I’d rather see farmers markets, a grocery store and drug store, maybe some local food vendors (Bangkok style single vendors?). Someplace people actually want to hang out - not just to shop.

cellularmitosis 8y ago
Hmm, there is usually lot of open space for tables and chairs in a mall -- throw in some free wifi and turn what was a problem for starbucks into an attraction...
monksy 8y ago
One of the things that I would complain about Bangkok, at least from what I saw, they have sidewalk vendors: but it's really crunched for space. At times it felt like homeless tent, homeless tent, food stand, homeless tent, food stand. (Again this varies about where you're at)

beiller 8y ago

Build Houses, just a thought.

seanmcdirmid 8y ago

Many of China’s ghost malls were transformed into incubator workspaces over the last few years, including the one next to Microsoft’s office in Beijing. I’m not sure how successful they were, but since the mall was subterranean I wouldn’t think it would be a good place to code.

emodendroket 8y ago

Rackspace uses a bunch of abandoned mall space, as I recall.