7 ms·

The dying mall’s new lease on life: apartments

109 points by jseliger 6y ago

staycoolboy 6y ago
This is such a great idea. In Vietnam I stayed in a few AirBNB's that were 20 floor buildings: the bottom floor was grocery, gym, bank, restaurants, and the top floors were all residential, with pools on the very top floor of one swanky place. I'm seeing this in Seattle and Portland, too. Converting malls to residential has huge potential for all-in-one living.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The malls that are going bankrupt in the US tend to be those in at least somewhat downscale suburbs/exurbs. The mall that's relatively close to me had a Sears, Macy's, and JC Penney as anchor tenants. All are now closed. There is a close by busy grocery store and Home Depot. But upscale shopping malls in elite cities were actually doing pretty well prior to the current situation.
  - x87678r 6y ago
    > Sears, Macy's, and JC Penney as anchor tenants. All are now closed. Hey coincidentally my local mall has the same! Except our Macy's is kinda open.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Also a Toys R'Us in the immediate vicinity. The complex has traded hands a couple of times in the past few years at a significant devaluation each time. The next mall over isn't much better (K-Mart among other things). There are some reasonably affluent rural/exurban communities in the area but the three nearby small cities are fairly rundown old mill towns.
  - staycoolboy 6y ago
    > But upscale shopping malls in elte cities were actually doing pretty well prior to the current situation. I believe that is called "Retail Therapy" but it only works if you have money to burn. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind-the-buy/201305/why-retail-therapy-works https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind-the-b... As we've seen, most people don't have money to burn, as "most american's have no savings": https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings-coronavirus-f11deffc-b8c1-48e0-a3db-0aeb3ce74fb9.html https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings-coronaviru... or... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-would-be-able-to-cover-1000-dollar-emergency-with-savings.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-woul... https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of-americans-dont-have-enough-emergency.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of-amer...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
      True, though many Americans have access to credit. Though that can't be sustained, it can work for a while.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Some malls have adapted to the situation by adapting to changing demographics and tastes: here's an article about malls being adapted into Hispanic-centered malls: https://adage.com/article/the-big-tent/malls-pitched-hispanics-taking/241616 https://adage.com/article/the-big-tent/malls-pitched-hispani... The major issue that a traditional mall has is that the segment of the market served by Sears, Macy's, and JC Penny does not really compete well with online equivalents that involve less fuss. You need some type of differentiation, whether or not that is upscale exclusivity or niches like catering to specific ethnic needs.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      And those stores also did not compete well with Walmart which AFAIK has never taken the anchor store strategy approach, although of course it is in strip malls.
      - bobthepanda 6y ago
        Yeah, upscale department stores were saved by the fact that a standalone Gucci store would not work in most places, unlike a standalone Gap or Old Navy or Home Depot. The big box format is also interesting, because the big boxes were not built to last and a good deal of what made the finances work was local governments of rural and new-growth suburban areas falling over themselves to provide tax breaks for jobs. This strategy didn't pan out too well when they tried expanding into urban areas using the exact same format (they are now changing it up), and now the big box stores are at the end of their useful lives and a lot are being abandoned as well.
        wolco 6y ago
        Big box stores dominate us more than ever. Walmarts everywhere. I consider amazon to be an online big box store.
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        Generally speaking, today's big box stores are actually not the same physical ones as the first generation. Walmart has not really opened new stores, mostly closing them in recent years: https://www.mashed.com/148703/the-real-reason-walmart-is-closing-down-stores/ https://www.mashed.com/148703/the-real-reason-walmart-is-clo... And to be clear, when I say big box store, I do mean the physical store itself; Amazon has a lot of the same market segments, but they are not themselves opening stores in large amounts.
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    The malls are going down because their key tenants are going under. Sears, JC Penny's, Macy's and plenty of small entities. Malls aren't exciting enough. They're not special enough. It's a 20th Century experience that hasn't been updated in too long. At this point there's no time or money for a makeover. They're too focused on staying alive.
- paulcole 6y ago
  Where are you seeing this in Portland in a way that’s different than any other city? Mixed use ground floor with residential above isn’t that revolutionary.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    This type of land use would be illegal to build new, or saddled with so much parking requirement to be financially unviable, in most of the country. It is the historical form of the American city, but the midcentury turned its nose up at dirty noisy cities and promoted single-use Euclidean zoning to the extreme.
  - staycoolboy 6y ago
    True: first-floor retail is as old as multi-story buildings. What is different about it now is the large number of stores that are accessible only from inside a single building. I was in Portland last fall and there were these buildings on the river and one had a restaurant, a coffee shop, a spin class, and a work space in the same building, with the entrances near the elevators where tenants get immediate access. I've never see in that in Boston, San Fran or NYC, where the first floor is a business, but faces the outside street. The portland thing was like its own mothership on a block, rather than a bunch of mixed used places on a mile-long street.
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
> some developers are betting that empty malls can mix housing with stores and community space. it was developers and city councils who caused this mess in the first place. no one wanted to separate home and work / business / industry. no one except developers and auto manufacturers.
- crmrc114 6y ago
  Personally I like the suburbs and my cars.
  - TremendousJudge 6y ago
    Congratulations. It is well known that the plural of "anecdote" is "data".
    - dang 6y ago
      Please don't be a jerk in HN comments, even when someone else has a mere anecdote. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - kiba 6y ago
    Your car rides on public roads and the car you drive impose a cost on everyone else.
    - twblalock 6y ago
      Public transit also imposes a cost on everyone else -- most of it is subsidized by taxes and will never be profitable. Public roads and public transit are both funded by taxes, so I don't see why it would be right to use one but wrong to use the other.
      - danbolt 6y ago
        I think you could make an argument for the cost-effectiveness of transit and walkability compared to car culture. It lowers the base economic hurdle to be productive in society and is more environmentally friendly to boot. I think it's fine to enjoy public roads and driving a car as a personal activity, but I think it gets too much public funding as "the default" in North America. I'd rather my tax dollars go to a train line than a highway lane.
msla 6y ago
In my ideal world, the mall housing would be aimed at old people and anyone with handicaps such that they're taking a greater-than-normal risk navigating icy sidewalks or bad weather in general. Imagine being able to walk to and from shopping, gyms, and third spaces without worrying about falling and breaking a hip. That is the idea which ought to sell this.
- kiba 6y ago
  "OK, on your form you said you're sixty, but you're forty". Seriously, I hate unnecessary bureaucracy. Ideally, we'll build enough housing for everyone, regardless if they have a handicap or not, or old for that matter. Our society is very wealthy, we can do this. Done right, it won't be a burden for everyone, because we'll get lower cost of living and as a side effect, healthier humans.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    That's quite a jump. The OP said "aimed at" which in my mind just means the picture on the front cover of the brochure has a pair of smiling seniors.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  On the contrary, I just met an 81-year old guy that still runs through Griffith Park, 2+ miles every day. In my ideal world, less old people would be decrepit. At least, I am hoping that I will be anywhere near that agile at 81.
benatkin 6y ago
I was thinking about these being good for freelancers and startups, then I realized they'll be expensive. There was a recent thread about housing for startup employees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398 Liability kind of ruins any opportunity of making cheap living spaces. Edit: did some more browsing, found this update on Zeus, a co-living startup https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus-living-sees-valuation-halved/ https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus-living...
- ghaff 6y ago
  Zeus sounds like furnished corporate apartments -- i.e. a competitor to something like Marriott Residence Inn -- rather than "co-living." (These apartments have historically been used for relocation or for when an exec or someone else needs to spend a lot of time in a location away from their home base.)
- Keverw 6y ago
  Maybe buy an old cruise ship and put it in international waters lol. That'd probably help get rid of some of the liability and zoning issues.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    If you have no liability / jurisdiction then contracts with you are unenforceable. And if a customer can't get a valid contract with you, that means no customers.
    - Keverw 6y ago
      Yeah, not sure how the cruise lines deal with this... I know some of them have offices in the US, some major ones pick Miami but the ships are owned and registered to off-shore nations. One of the reasons they didn't get a bailout due to COVID, they pay little taxes and then also can avoid more stricter US labor laws.
      - 6y ago
nordsieck 6y ago
I've seen news that some big companies have bought/leased up malls and converted them into office space. Probably doesn't do much for suburban culture (although it's arguably better than having a failing mall in the neighborhood), but it's super good for employees since malls tend to be located very near to housing. https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-google-office-space https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-go...
- bluedino 6y ago
  Works great if there’s a pressing need for office space. Many places with dying malls have plenty of abandoned retail real estate and not much in the way of new or growing office real estate needs.
twblalock 6y ago
Malls are generally just one or two stories tall and therefore a massive waste of space compared to other possible uses of the same land. Building them higher and putting housing on top is a great way to add more housing without using more land.
- throwlogon 6y ago
  Most empty malls are in places where economic demand, including demand for land, is very low. Investing money to make efficient use of something that cheap is unlikely to be a profitable move.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- CalRobert 6y ago
  The real waste of space is generally the ocean of parking that dwarfs the mall itself.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    I wonder if there was an analysis of demand of parking space or if it was always at significant undercapacity
    - ghaff 6y ago
      "Significant undercapacity" means that people don't leave when they can't immediately find a parking space (modulo maybe right before Christmas). Yes, I'm sure it's analyzed. Also adding space retroactively (especially in the form of parking garages that a lot of people don't really like) can be expensive.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Always wanted to live in a Cinnabon!
- klyrs 6y ago
  My middle school was adjacent to a donut factory. Can confirm, it never gets old. (whereby "never" I mean "over the span of 3 years as a voracious teenager" ymmv)
  - throw03172019 6y ago
    It’s all fun until the metabolism slows down :)
- mauvehaus 6y ago
  Worked at one. Ate Cinnabons for lunch when I forgot to bring one. I wouldn't want to make a regular thing of it, but they remained pretty good once every week or two. The one I worked at changed from baking the rolls from things that bore some resemblance to things you could buy at the supermarket to pre-made frozen stuff two years after I graduated high school. I sort of lost interest after that. I reckon if you don't see a mixer, a sheeter, or anybody rolling out rolls, it's probably a safe bet that their product comes in pre-made. Note that it's a strong possibility that nobody will be making rolls at a slow time like a weekday afternoon. Still, there should be signs of loose brown sugar/cinnamon mix somewhere in the cooking area if they aren't using pre-made. Disclaimer: I don't know how this works at e.g. airports, where the food service stuff is much tighter for frontage. Also, it's been almost 20 years now since I've been on that side of the counter.
bob1029 6y ago
Considering the footprint+location of your typical American shopping mall, office space is a really good 2nd life for this type of facility. One other possibility could be to retrofit the structures to serve as data centers. Every small town in America could have a JCPenny's worth of servers racked up for ultra-low-latency application & content delivery to the local residents. I think every American in the lower 48 is within 5 milliseconds of a Walmart at this point. I am surprised they (and other retailers) haven't attempted to leverage this geographic capability. 5ms is certainly fast enough to fool me into thinking that a remote workstation is sitting under my desk.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  There aren't a ton of good pictures that I can find, but Rackspace famously moved their headquarters into a derelict San Antonio mall in 2012: 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...
- el-salvador 6y ago
  Actually that has happened in my country. The movie theater of an old mall was repurpused as a call center for a canadian company. It brought new life to the mall.
michaelbuckbee 6y ago
Here's a detailed examination of one mall that converted to apartments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ Interesting mostly for how they weighed the marketing and economic aspects of it: "commercial renters think in terms of $/sq foot and individuals think of monthly costs"
- btmorex 6y ago
  So, instead of ugly commercial monstrosities we're going to get rows of tiny, dark apartments in a weird building that doesn't really use space efficiently. And this is a best case conversion: historic building in an urban area. Imagine how awful a suburban mall would be.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  This is creative, and for "malls" built into tall midrises with strong materials like the one in the video shown, it makes sense. However, most malls look something more like this - https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/scenery-shopping-mall-260nw-394308586.jpg https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/scenery-shopping-... or https://live.staticflickr.com/4500/23555440258_4bdf03a818_b.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/4500/23555440258_4bdf03a818_b.... I wonder what the plan would be for adapting a "regular" mall to residential use.
x87678r 6y ago
Bulldoze and subdivide would be more sensible I'd think.
ixtli 6y ago
I find this sort of funny in an “everything old is new again” sort of way. There are some up—and-coming areas around downton LA that we’re partially covered high streets (somewhat mall-like) that are having their second and third floors turned into apartments the thing is, that’s what they used to be. It strikes me that we should consider the mall as more of an aberration which is finally fading away.
- inamberclad 6y ago
  The mall always struck me as a horrible place because unlike a town square, it's only a public space to those who are there to spend money.
  - alexbanks 6y ago
    Not really. I spent countless hours at a mall as a kid - it was just where my parents would drop us off to waste some time while they had to go run errands.
    - noobermin 6y ago
      Yes, but you know that wasn't the intended purpose of malls, it was to get kids and adults in there because the longer they're there the most likely you'll spend money.
    - smelendez 6y ago
      Yeah, I think a critical part of their success was that they were fun. Look at photos of malls from the 80s and 90s. People were there to hang out, even to see and be seen, and of course they shopped while they were there.
      - DangitBobby 6y ago
        Malls were definitely only for peddling Shit You Don't Need by the time I was old enough to frequent them. Nothing interesting, just overpriced stores and people yelling at you from kiosks trying to get you to buy a watch.
rdiddly 6y ago
"Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable developments rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to these needs." Kind of interesting to watch the mall trend fold in on itself. They were trying to recreate "towns" all along. I mean that's what a walkable "development" with mixed residential & commercial activity is.
- Tade0 6y ago
  Because a mall is essentially a mockup of a town. Just without the clock tower so that you don't remember what time it is.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    It's been like this from the beginning, just perverted: > Gruen had meant well. He wanted to import the pedestrian experience of modernist, European cities like Vienna and Paris into America, where the automobile was king. By creating places for community in the deserts of suburbia, he hoped to lure people from their cars and into contact with one another. The malls would be for shopping, yes, but also offer food, relaxation, and green space. In his original conception, malls would also connect to residential and commercial space, medical care, libraries, and other public spaces. Even though unrealized, this idea was not that different from today’s New Urbanists, who advocate denser, more walkable mixed-use development in cities broken up by the dominance of the automobile. > Gruen would eventually disavow his creation, expressing disgust for how malls had exacerbated rather than ameliorated urban sprawl—not to mention exporting it globally, infecting the Old World with this land-use virus of the New. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/when-malls-saved-cities-from-capitalism/553610/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/when-...
    - irrational 6y ago
      That is so interesting. I hate going to malls because there are so many people there. But that seems to have been part of Gruen’s original intent - to bring people in close proximity to each other. No thank you.
newsbinator 6y ago
Reminds me of a Canadian movie: > The world of interconnected office buildings, apartment complexes and food courts (shot in all its fluorescent glory on digital video) is the backdrop for "Waydowntown," where young office workers Tom, Sandra, Randy and Curt, have all staked a month's salary on a bet to see who can stay indoors the longest. It's lunch hour on day 24 of the wager and everyone's pretty much reached their breaking point. https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/ https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/
- munificent 6y ago
  Only 24 days? Amateurs.
- sradman 6y ago
  Toronto's 30km PATH system [1] makes staying "indoors" less of a challenge if you can afford to live in one of the connected buildings. According to IMDB the movie takes place in Calgary. The abandoned mall conversions feels more like the trend of converting old inner city factory buildings into lofts, except applied to suburbia. [1] https://www.torontopath.com/ https://www.torontopath.com/
  - jhbadger 6y ago
    Also, Montreal has its "Underground City" (La Ville Souterraine) which is claimed to be the largest such network in the world.
microtherion 6y ago
Obviously, conversion can be somewhat tricky, but purpose built mixed use has sometimes proven quite popular, e.g. at Santana Row. My experience of living there was limited to a few weeks in a hotel, but it certainly had its advantages.
- ohazi 6y ago
  I'd like Santana Row more if the people there weren't so obnoxious. Their pecking order seems to be determined by: 1) How rare and expensive your car is 2) Having the exhaust modified to be as loud as possible 3) Demonstrating (1) and (2) every thirty seconds
- ghaff 6y ago
  I'd observe that living in any small area whether it's a "fake town" like Santana Row or a real town like gentrified areas of many old small New England cities can get old. I worked in downtown Nashua NH--not the strip mall, the old downtown--for quite a few years. It was nice. But you maybe had a dozen square blocks of nice restaurants and interesting shops and that was it. Fine to commute to a few days a week. Less interesting IMO to live in.
dathinab 6y ago
In Germany we have a slow dying of mall and similar, now accelerated because of corona. I have considered this before when seeing some empty buildings (turned out they just moved...). One thing I see as a problem is sunlight. Any apartment must have reasonable sources of natural sun light and many mall's are build in ways which have much less entries for sunlight. Outer walls can be changed but the "inner space" which has no contact to an outer wall is stuck.
- LyndsySimon 6y ago
  I’d think large skylights in the public spaces could help a great deal with that issue.
seemslegit 6y ago
Lack of sunlight might be a problem
smt88 6y ago
This is not going to be common. I have a lot of large commercial real estate clients, and they all see malls becoming distribution centers. In the US, most malls are not in high-density, expensive areas. It's much more expensive to build 100 condos out of a mall than to just build condos. Where do you even get windows for most of the stores? A lot of space in a mall is away from anywhere that natural light can enter. As distribution centers though, you have giant spaces, large bays for trucks to enter, and last-mile access to suburban customers. Retailers expect to want the space, they just expect they'll want it for distribution of online sales instead of in-person sales.
Keverw 6y ago
Haha one of my uncles said cruise ships are like sleeping in the mall... but I like this idea... Have shops, restaurants, entertainment/activities office buildings and residential. I think I'd love to live somewhere where I could walk to grab a bite of eat, to the gym or some office space... A pool too. Co-working spaces be nice too if you work from home and want a separate spot to work. I kinda been interested in moving to downtown Austin since the most walkable city in Texas, but still not prefect from what I've read. As someone who's always been in the suburbs, always kinda been jealous that most apartments seem to have pools haha. but idk if i'd like apartment life, I'd be worried about hearing other people or being too loud if I wanted to listen to music or watch tv... I guess depends on if the walls are paper thin.
voisin 6y ago
In most municipalities, zoning will restrict the ability of developers to make changes of use like this.
TheRealSteel 6y ago
I know I'm commenting on the site and not the story -- maybe this is against the spirit of HN -- but hasn't Bloomberg lost credibility here ever since "The Big Hack"? Are we still okay with them? Are we just okay with them as long as it's not a tech story? If so, is this an example of Gell-Mann Amnesia? [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton...
- perl4ever 6y ago
  Option 1 is people forgot, option 2 is they reserved judgment, finding it inconclusive, and option 3 is they don't regard Bloomberg as a monolith. At least, those are the possibilities that I can think of, and I think they could plausibly cover most people.
non-entity 6y ago
In the city I used to live, the state government bought up many such dead malls and turned them into office space for various agencies.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/jIk9w https://archive.is/jIk9w
softfalcon 6y ago
Seems like a solid plan if they focus on opening restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores, banks, registries, etc in the commercial lots. Every neighborhood strip mall seems to succeed by proximity to the people. If you put a good restaurant near a neighborhood with a school, it gets a steady traffic of regulars. Same goes for a little bank, pharmacy, gas station, etc.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  In New Haven CT there's a downtown mall that was converted to an apartment building, but none of the commercial space was left unconverted It felt like the most oddly gloomy place I've ever seen apartments: https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_20170405_130955.jpg https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp-content/...
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Yes, very gloomy indeed. I wonder who’ll want to live there
siculars 6y ago
Oh, so you mean like most of Europe and NYC? Ya, I guess that's a thing people are into. (Disclaimer: I'm from NYC where this is just so bloody obvious.)
morninglight 6y ago
Sunshine City in Tokyo, Ikebukuro started out like this around 1978. https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/ https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/ The Sunshine City building is about 60 stories. The lower floors are mall. I considered renting there around 1988, but the apartments in my price range were shabby. Nearby conventional apartments were much less expensive. It appears to be very successful, but I haven't been there for 18 years. Has anyone else seen it recently?
dylan604 6y ago
"Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable developments rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to these needs." This is a broad statement, that clearly isn't true. If it was true, then the suburbs would not exist. Housing prices show that there is clearly a desire by people to not living in smaller spaces. After the pandemic, I tend to think a lot of people will be re-thinking their dense living conditions. This really smells like a put up job by a hopeful developer
pragmatic 6y ago
I was kicking around the idea of trying to turn empty retail spots into co-working locations. This work be a good halfway spot between the burbs and the congested downtowns where co-working spots typically exist. Plus you have access to amenities and you can take a walk, hangout in the main area in winter. Thoughts?
- nwienert 6y ago
  Check Bespoke in SF. Problem: no natural light, and depression sinks in after some time due to being forced through the zoo that is a busy mall every day (also somewhat of a food desert in that area). Not a bad idea though overall.
- postingawayonhn 6y ago
  I think it would be hard to scale while occupying small spaces. You need the scale to afford the marketing overhead in order to keep occupancy rates up.
biztos 6y ago
In Bangkok, a city pretty serious about its malls, some of them have apartment complexes attached. Here's one I happened to notice that seems to have pretty normal prices: https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion-mall https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion-mall https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the-platinum-fashion-mall-1-ห้องนอน-45-ตร-ม-ชั้นสูง-วิว-central-world-แต่งครบ-rw272-for-sale-7745355 https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the-platinum-... There are complexes attached to some of the high-end malls too like IconSiam, if you happen to be really rich and like malls: https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences So, maybe the death of malls is not a requirement for living in malls?
pontifier 6y ago
Separation of land usage through zoning is a huge problem in my opinion. We'd all be better off if they just let people do whatever they wanted on their own land.
- tartoran 6y ago
  How about an outdoor 24/7 disco in your quiet neighborhood?
  - pontifier 6y ago
    That's always the go-to argument (I literally had someone say "rock crushing business" when talking about this issue). The standard should be are they disturbing your quiet enjoyment of your property? If not then mind your own damn business.
    - tartoran 6y ago
      Im not for zoning laws, just gave an example of mixing zones. It’s probably better for the business as well to be in commercial zone. But if the impact was zero i wouldnt mind a business operating in my residential neighborhood: quiet, no extra trafic, etc
pkaye 6y ago
I noticed the type of mall which is not enclosed is getting more popular in California. Basically a collect of stores with a shared parking lot so you can park right next to the store of interest. I think nobody wants to park and walk by dozens of stores nobody cares about.

109 points by jseliger 6y ago

This is such a great idea. In Vietnam I stayed in a few AirBNB's that were 20 floor buildings: the bottom floor was grocery, gym, bank, restaurants, and the top floors were all residential, with pools on the very top floor of one swanky place. I'm seeing this in Seattle and Portland, too. Converting malls to residential has huge potential for all-in-one living.

ghaff 6y ago
The malls that are going bankrupt in the US tend to be those in at least somewhat downscale suburbs/exurbs. The mall that's relatively close to me had a Sears, Macy's, and JC Penney as anchor tenants. All are now closed. There is a close by busy grocery store and Home Depot. But upscale shopping malls in elite cities were actually doing pretty well prior to the current situation.
- x87678r 6y ago
  > Sears, Macy's, and JC Penney as anchor tenants. All are now closed. Hey coincidentally my local mall has the same! Except our Macy's is kinda open.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Also a Toys R'Us in the immediate vicinity. The complex has traded hands a couple of times in the past few years at a significant devaluation each time. The next mall over isn't much better (K-Mart among other things). There are some reasonably affluent rural/exurban communities in the area but the three nearby small cities are fairly rundown old mill towns.
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  > But upscale shopping malls in elte cities were actually doing pretty well prior to the current situation. I believe that is called "Retail Therapy" but it only works if you have money to burn. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind-the-buy/201305/why-retail-therapy-works https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind-the-b... As we've seen, most people don't have money to burn, as "most american's have no savings": https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings-coronavirus-f11deffc-b8c1-48e0-a3db-0aeb3ce74fb9.html https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings-coronaviru... or... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-would-be-able-to-cover-1000-dollar-emergency-with-savings.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-woul... https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of-americans-dont-have-enough-emergency.aspx https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of-amer...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - blacksmith_tb 6y ago
    True, though many Americans have access to credit. Though that can't be sustained, it can work for a while.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Some malls have adapted to the situation by adapting to changing demographics and tastes: here's an article about malls being adapted into Hispanic-centered malls: https://adage.com/article/the-big-tent/malls-pitched-hispanics-taking/241616 https://adage.com/article/the-big-tent/malls-pitched-hispani... The major issue that a traditional mall has is that the segment of the market served by Sears, Macy's, and JC Penny does not really compete well with online equivalents that involve less fuss. You need some type of differentiation, whether or not that is upscale exclusivity or niches like catering to specific ethnic needs.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    And those stores also did not compete well with Walmart which AFAIK has never taken the anchor store strategy approach, although of course it is in strip malls.
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      Yeah, upscale department stores were saved by the fact that a standalone Gucci store would not work in most places, unlike a standalone Gap or Old Navy or Home Depot. The big box format is also interesting, because the big boxes were not built to last and a good deal of what made the finances work was local governments of rural and new-growth suburban areas falling over themselves to provide tax breaks for jobs. This strategy didn't pan out too well when they tried expanding into urban areas using the exact same format (they are now changing it up), and now the big box stores are at the end of their useful lives and a lot are being abandoned as well.
      - wolco 6y ago
        Big box stores dominate us more than ever. Walmarts everywhere. I consider amazon to be an online big box store.
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        Generally speaking, today's big box stores are actually not the same physical ones as the first generation. Walmart has not really opened new stores, mostly closing them in recent years: https://www.mashed.com/148703/the-real-reason-walmart-is-closing-down-stores/ https://www.mashed.com/148703/the-real-reason-walmart-is-clo... And to be clear, when I say big box store, I do mean the physical store itself; Amazon has a lot of the same market segments, but they are not themselves opening stores in large amounts.
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  The malls are going down because their key tenants are going under. Sears, JC Penny's, Macy's and plenty of small entities. Malls aren't exciting enough. They're not special enough. It's a 20th Century experience that hasn't been updated in too long. At this point there's no time or money for a makeover. They're too focused on staying alive.
paulcole 6y ago
Where are you seeing this in Portland in a way that’s different than any other city? Mixed use ground floor with residential above isn’t that revolutionary.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  This type of land use would be illegal to build new, or saddled with so much parking requirement to be financially unviable, in most of the country. It is the historical form of the American city, but the midcentury turned its nose up at dirty noisy cities and promoted single-use Euclidean zoning to the extreme.
- staycoolboy 6y ago
  True: first-floor retail is as old as multi-story buildings. What is different about it now is the large number of stores that are accessible only from inside a single building. I was in Portland last fall and there were these buildings on the river and one had a restaurant, a coffee shop, a spin class, and a work space in the same building, with the entrances near the elevators where tenants get immediate access. I've never see in that in Boston, San Fran or NYC, where the first floor is a business, but faces the outside street. The portland thing was like its own mothership on a block, rather than a bunch of mixed used places on a mile-long street.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

> some developers are betting that empty malls can mix housing with stores and community space. it was developers and city councils who caused this mess in the first place. no one wanted to separate home and work / business / industry. no one except developers and auto manufacturers.

crmrc114 6y ago
Personally I like the suburbs and my cars.
- TremendousJudge 6y ago
  Congratulations. It is well known that the plural of "anecdote" is "data".
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't be a jerk in HN comments, even when someone else has a mere anecdote. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- kiba 6y ago
  Your car rides on public roads and the car you drive impose a cost on everyone else.
  - twblalock 6y ago
    Public transit also imposes a cost on everyone else -- most of it is subsidized by taxes and will never be profitable. Public roads and public transit are both funded by taxes, so I don't see why it would be right to use one but wrong to use the other.
    - danbolt 6y ago
      I think you could make an argument for the cost-effectiveness of transit and walkability compared to car culture. It lowers the base economic hurdle to be productive in society and is more environmentally friendly to boot. I think it's fine to enjoy public roads and driving a car as a personal activity, but I think it gets too much public funding as "the default" in North America. I'd rather my tax dollars go to a train line than a highway lane.

msla 6y ago

In my ideal world, the mall housing would be aimed at old people and anyone with handicaps such that they're taking a greater-than-normal risk navigating icy sidewalks or bad weather in general. Imagine being able to walk to and from shopping, gyms, and third spaces without worrying about falling and breaking a hip. That is the idea which ought to sell this.

kiba 6y ago
"OK, on your form you said you're sixty, but you're forty". Seriously, I hate unnecessary bureaucracy. Ideally, we'll build enough housing for everyone, regardless if they have a handicap or not, or old for that matter. Our society is very wealthy, we can do this. Done right, it won't be a burden for everyone, because we'll get lower cost of living and as a side effect, healthier humans.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  That's quite a jump. The OP said "aimed at" which in my mind just means the picture on the front cover of the brochure has a pair of smiling seniors.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
On the contrary, I just met an 81-year old guy that still runs through Griffith Park, 2+ miles every day. In my ideal world, less old people would be decrepit. At least, I am hoping that I will be anywhere near that agile at 81.

benatkin 6y ago

I was thinking about these being good for freelancers and startups, then I realized they'll be expensive. There was a recent thread about housing for startup employees: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398 Liability kind of ruins any opportunity of making cheap living spaces. Edit: did some more browsing, found this update on Zeus, a co-living startup https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus-living-sees-valuation-halved/ https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus-living...

ghaff 6y ago
Zeus sounds like furnished corporate apartments -- i.e. a competitor to something like Marriott Residence Inn -- rather than "co-living." (These apartments have historically been used for relocation or for when an exec or someone else needs to spend a lot of time in a location away from their home base.)
Keverw 6y ago
Maybe buy an old cruise ship and put it in international waters lol. That'd probably help get rid of some of the liability and zoning issues.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  If you have no liability / jurisdiction then contracts with you are unenforceable. And if a customer can't get a valid contract with you, that means no customers.
  - Keverw 6y ago
    Yeah, not sure how the cruise lines deal with this... I know some of them have offices in the US, some major ones pick Miami but the ships are owned and registered to off-shore nations. One of the reasons they didn't get a bailout due to COVID, they pay little taxes and then also can avoid more stricter US labor laws.
    - 6y ago

nordsieck 6y ago

I've seen news that some big companies have bought/leased up malls and converted them into office space. Probably doesn't do much for suburban culture (although it's arguably better than having a failing mall in the neighborhood), but it's super good for employees since malls tend to be located very near to housing. https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-google-office-space https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-go...

bluedino 6y ago
Works great if there’s a pressing need for office space. Many places with dying malls have plenty of abandoned retail real estate and not much in the way of new or growing office real estate needs.

twblalock 6y ago

Malls are generally just one or two stories tall and therefore a massive waste of space compared to other possible uses of the same land. Building them higher and putting housing on top is a great way to add more housing without using more land.

throwlogon 6y ago
Most empty malls are in places where economic demand, including demand for land, is very low. Investing money to make efficient use of something that cheap is unlikely to be a profitable move.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
CalRobert 6y ago
The real waste of space is generally the ocean of parking that dwarfs the mall itself.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  I wonder if there was an analysis of demand of parking space or if it was always at significant undercapacity
  - ghaff 6y ago
    "Significant undercapacity" means that people don't leave when they can't immediately find a parking space (modulo maybe right before Christmas). Yes, I'm sure it's analyzed. Also adding space retroactively (especially in the form of parking garages that a lot of people don't really like) can be expensive.

BurningFrog 6y ago

Always wanted to live in a Cinnabon!

klyrs 6y ago
My middle school was adjacent to a donut factory. Can confirm, it never gets old. (whereby "never" I mean "over the span of 3 years as a voracious teenager" ymmv)
- throw03172019 6y ago
  It’s all fun until the metabolism slows down :)
mauvehaus 6y ago
Worked at one. Ate Cinnabons for lunch when I forgot to bring one. I wouldn't want to make a regular thing of it, but they remained pretty good once every week or two. The one I worked at changed from baking the rolls from things that bore some resemblance to things you could buy at the supermarket to pre-made frozen stuff two years after I graduated high school. I sort of lost interest after that. I reckon if you don't see a mixer, a sheeter, or anybody rolling out rolls, it's probably a safe bet that their product comes in pre-made. Note that it's a strong possibility that nobody will be making rolls at a slow time like a weekday afternoon. Still, there should be signs of loose brown sugar/cinnamon mix somewhere in the cooking area if they aren't using pre-made. Disclaimer: I don't know how this works at e.g. airports, where the food service stuff is much tighter for frontage. Also, it's been almost 20 years now since I've been on that side of the counter.

bob1029 6y ago

Considering the footprint+location of your typical American shopping mall, office space is a really good 2nd life for this type of facility. One other possibility could be to retrofit the structures to serve as data centers. Every small town in America could have a JCPenny's worth of servers racked up for ultra-low-latency application & content delivery to the local residents. I think every American in the lower 48 is within 5 milliseconds of a Walmart at this point. I am surprised they (and other retailers) haven't attempted to leverage this geographic capability. 5ms is certainly fast enough to fool me into thinking that a remote workstation is sitting under my desk.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mikepurvis 6y ago
There aren't a ton of good pictures that I can find, but Rackspace famously moved their headquarters into a derelict San Antonio mall in 2012: 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...
el-salvador 6y ago
Actually that has happened in my country. The movie theater of an old mall was repurpused as a call center for a canadian company. It brought new life to the mall.

michaelbuckbee 6y ago

Here's a detailed examination of one mall that converted to apartments - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ Interesting mostly for how they weighed the marketing and economic aspects of it: "commercial renters think in terms of $/sq foot and individuals think of monthly costs"

btmorex 6y ago
So, instead of ugly commercial monstrosities we're going to get rows of tiny, dark apartments in a weird building that doesn't really use space efficiently. And this is a best case conversion: historic building in an urban area. Imagine how awful a suburban mall would be.
maxsilver 6y ago
This is creative, and for "malls" built into tall midrises with strong materials like the one in the video shown, it makes sense. However, most malls look something more like this - https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/scenery-shopping-mall-260nw-394308586.jpg https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/scenery-shopping-... or https://live.staticflickr.com/4500/23555440258_4bdf03a818_b.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/4500/23555440258_4bdf03a818_b.... I wonder what the plan would be for adapting a "regular" mall to residential use.

x87678r 6y ago

Bulldoze and subdivide would be more sensible I'd think.

ixtli 6y ago

I find this sort of funny in an “everything old is new again” sort of way. There are some up—and-coming areas around downton LA that we’re partially covered high streets (somewhat mall-like) that are having their second and third floors turned into apartments the thing is, that’s what they used to be. It strikes me that we should consider the mall as more of an aberration which is finally fading away.

inamberclad 6y ago
The mall always struck me as a horrible place because unlike a town square, it's only a public space to those who are there to spend money.
- alexbanks 6y ago
  Not really. I spent countless hours at a mall as a kid - it was just where my parents would drop us off to waste some time while they had to go run errands.
  - noobermin 6y ago
    Yes, but you know that wasn't the intended purpose of malls, it was to get kids and adults in there because the longer they're there the most likely you'll spend money.
  - smelendez 6y ago
    Yeah, I think a critical part of their success was that they were fun. Look at photos of malls from the 80s and 90s. People were there to hang out, even to see and be seen, and of course they shopped while they were there.
    - DangitBobby 6y ago
      Malls were definitely only for peddling Shit You Don't Need by the time I was old enough to frequent them. Nothing interesting, just overpriced stores and people yelling at you from kiosks trying to get you to buy a watch.

rdiddly 6y ago

"Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable developments rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to these needs." Kind of interesting to watch the mall trend fold in on itself. They were trying to recreate "towns" all along. I mean that's what a walkable "development" with mixed residential & commercial activity is.

Tade0 6y ago
Because a mall is essentially a mockup of a town. Just without the clock tower so that you don't remember what time it is.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  It's been like this from the beginning, just perverted: > Gruen had meant well. He wanted to import the pedestrian experience of modernist, European cities like Vienna and Paris into America, where the automobile was king. By creating places for community in the deserts of suburbia, he hoped to lure people from their cars and into contact with one another. The malls would be for shopping, yes, but also offer food, relaxation, and green space. In his original conception, malls would also connect to residential and commercial space, medical care, libraries, and other public spaces. Even though unrealized, this idea was not that different from today’s New Urbanists, who advocate denser, more walkable mixed-use development in cities broken up by the dominance of the automobile. > Gruen would eventually disavow his creation, expressing disgust for how malls had exacerbated rather than ameliorated urban sprawl—not to mention exporting it globally, infecting the Old World with this land-use virus of the New. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/when-malls-saved-cities-from-capitalism/553610/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/02/when-...
  - irrational 6y ago
    That is so interesting. I hate going to malls because there are so many people there. But that seems to have been part of Gruen’s original intent - to bring people in close proximity to each other. No thank you.

newsbinator 6y ago

Reminds me of a Canadian movie: > The world of interconnected office buildings, apartment complexes and food courts (shot in all its fluorescent glory on digital video) is the backdrop for "Waydowntown," where young office workers Tom, Sandra, Randy and Curt, have all staked a month's salary on a bet to see who can stay indoors the longest. It's lunch hour on day 24 of the wager and everyone's pretty much reached their breaking point. https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/ https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/

munificent 6y ago
Only 24 days? Amateurs.
sradman 6y ago
Toronto's 30km PATH system [1] makes staying "indoors" less of a challenge if you can afford to live in one of the connected buildings. According to IMDB the movie takes place in Calgary. The abandoned mall conversions feels more like the trend of converting old inner city factory buildings into lofts, except applied to suburbia. [1] https://www.torontopath.com/ https://www.torontopath.com/
- jhbadger 6y ago
  Also, Montreal has its "Underground City" (La Ville Souterraine) which is claimed to be the largest such network in the world.

microtherion 6y ago

Obviously, conversion can be somewhat tricky, but purpose built mixed use has sometimes proven quite popular, e.g. at Santana Row. My experience of living there was limited to a few weeks in a hotel, but it certainly had its advantages.

ohazi 6y ago
I'd like Santana Row more if the people there weren't so obnoxious. Their pecking order seems to be determined by: 1) How rare and expensive your car is 2) Having the exhaust modified to be as loud as possible 3) Demonstrating (1) and (2) every thirty seconds
ghaff 6y ago
I'd observe that living in any small area whether it's a "fake town" like Santana Row or a real town like gentrified areas of many old small New England cities can get old. I worked in downtown Nashua NH--not the strip mall, the old downtown--for quite a few years. It was nice. But you maybe had a dozen square blocks of nice restaurants and interesting shops and that was it. Fine to commute to a few days a week. Less interesting IMO to live in.

dathinab 6y ago

In Germany we have a slow dying of mall and similar, now accelerated because of corona. I have considered this before when seeing some empty buildings (turned out they just moved...). One thing I see as a problem is sunlight. Any apartment must have reasonable sources of natural sun light and many mall's are build in ways which have much less entries for sunlight. Outer walls can be changed but the "inner space" which has no contact to an outer wall is stuck.

LyndsySimon 6y ago
I’d think large skylights in the public spaces could help a great deal with that issue.

seemslegit 6y ago

Lack of sunlight might be a problem

smt88 6y ago

This is not going to be common. I have a lot of large commercial real estate clients, and they all see malls becoming distribution centers. In the US, most malls are not in high-density, expensive areas. It's much more expensive to build 100 condos out of a mall than to just build condos. Where do you even get windows for most of the stores? A lot of space in a mall is away from anywhere that natural light can enter. As distribution centers though, you have giant spaces, large bays for trucks to enter, and last-mile access to suburban customers. Retailers expect to want the space, they just expect they'll want it for distribution of online sales instead of in-person sales.

Keverw 6y ago

Haha one of my uncles said cruise ships are like sleeping in the mall... but I like this idea... Have shops, restaurants, entertainment/activities office buildings and residential. I think I'd love to live somewhere where I could walk to grab a bite of eat, to the gym or some office space... A pool too. Co-working spaces be nice too if you work from home and want a separate spot to work. I kinda been interested in moving to downtown Austin since the most walkable city in Texas, but still not prefect from what I've read. As someone who's always been in the suburbs, always kinda been jealous that most apartments seem to have pools haha. but idk if i'd like apartment life, I'd be worried about hearing other people or being too loud if I wanted to listen to music or watch tv... I guess depends on if the walls are paper thin.

voisin 6y ago

In most municipalities, zoning will restrict the ability of developers to make changes of use like this.

TheRealSteel 6y ago

I know I'm commenting on the site and not the story -- maybe this is against the spirit of HN -- but hasn't Bloomberg lost credibility here ever since "The Big Hack"? Are we still okay with them? Are we just okay with them as long as it's not a tech story? If so, is this an example of Gell-Mann Amnesia? [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton...

perl4ever 6y ago
Option 1 is people forgot, option 2 is they reserved judgment, finding it inconclusive, and option 3 is they don't regard Bloomberg as a monolith. At least, those are the possibilities that I can think of, and I think they could plausibly cover most people.

non-entity 6y ago

In the city I used to live, the state government bought up many such dead malls and turned them into office space for various agencies.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/jIk9w https://archive.is/jIk9w

softfalcon 6y ago

Seems like a solid plan if they focus on opening restaurants, pharmacies, grocery stores, banks, registries, etc in the commercial lots. Every neighborhood strip mall seems to succeed by proximity to the people. If you put a good restaurant near a neighborhood with a school, it gets a steady traffic of regulars. Same goes for a little bank, pharmacy, gas station, etc.

BoorishBears 6y ago
In New Haven CT there's a downtown mall that was converted to an apartment building, but none of the commercial space was left unconverted It felt like the most oddly gloomy place I've ever seen apartments: https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_20170405_130955.jpg https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp-content/...
- tartoran 6y ago
  Yes, very gloomy indeed. I wonder who’ll want to live there

siculars 6y ago

Oh, so you mean like most of Europe and NYC? Ya, I guess that's a thing people are into. (Disclaimer: I'm from NYC where this is just so bloody obvious.)

morninglight 6y ago

Sunshine City in Tokyo, Ikebukuro started out like this around 1978. https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/ https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/ The Sunshine City building is about 60 stories. The lower floors are mall. I considered renting there around 1988, but the apartments in my price range were shabby. Nearby conventional apartments were much less expensive. It appears to be very successful, but I haven't been there for 18 years. Has anyone else seen it recently?

dylan604 6y ago

"Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable developments rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to these needs." This is a broad statement, that clearly isn't true. If it was true, then the suburbs would not exist. Housing prices show that there is clearly a desire by people to not living in smaller spaces. After the pandemic, I tend to think a lot of people will be re-thinking their dense living conditions. This really smells like a put up job by a hopeful developer

pragmatic 6y ago

I was kicking around the idea of trying to turn empty retail spots into co-working locations. This work be a good halfway spot between the burbs and the congested downtowns where co-working spots typically exist. Plus you have access to amenities and you can take a walk, hangout in the main area in winter. Thoughts?

nwienert 6y ago
Check Bespoke in SF. Problem: no natural light, and depression sinks in after some time due to being forced through the zoo that is a busy mall every day (also somewhat of a food desert in that area). Not a bad idea though overall.
postingawayonhn 6y ago
I think it would be hard to scale while occupying small spaces. You need the scale to afford the marketing overhead in order to keep occupancy rates up.

biztos 6y ago

In Bangkok, a city pretty serious about its malls, some of them have apartment complexes attached. Here's one I happened to notice that seems to have pretty normal prices: https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion-mall https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion-mall https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the-platinum-fashion-mall-1-ห้องนอน-45-ตร-ม-ชั้นสูง-วิว-central-world-แต่งครบ-rw272-for-sale-7745355 https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the-platinum-... There are complexes attached to some of the high-end malls too like IconSiam, if you happen to be really rich and like malls: https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences So, maybe the death of malls is not a requirement for living in malls?

pontifier 6y ago

Separation of land usage through zoning is a huge problem in my opinion. We'd all be better off if they just let people do whatever they wanted on their own land.

tartoran 6y ago
How about an outdoor 24/7 disco in your quiet neighborhood?
- pontifier 6y ago
  That's always the go-to argument (I literally had someone say "rock crushing business" when talking about this issue). The standard should be are they disturbing your quiet enjoyment of your property? If not then mind your own damn business.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    Im not for zoning laws, just gave an example of mixing zones. It’s probably better for the business as well to be in commercial zone. But if the impact was zero i wouldnt mind a business operating in my residential neighborhood: quiet, no extra trafic, etc

pkaye 6y ago

I noticed the type of mall which is not enclosed is getting more popular in California. Basically a collect of stores with a shared parking lot so you can park right next to the store of interest. I think nobody wants to park and walk by dozens of stores nobody cares about.