Same thing happened in Kalamazoo, MI back about 1978. The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores

Same thing happened in Kalamazoo, MI back about 1978. The city center closed part of the main street to cars when a four story enclosed mall of boutique stores was built. Within five years most of the mall and nearby stores were dying. This was partly due to the growth of a pair of large enclosed malls 5 miles away which sucked business elsewhere. But I think most of the problem was that shoppers don't wants to walk outdoors in the long Michigan Winter. They needed to somehow enclose the pedestrian piazza to minimize peoples' exposure to the elements, but that wasn't in the budget.