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Epic will be redeveloping the entire 87-acre site, for reopening in 2024. The mall is in Cary, NC (Raleigh-Durham / RTP area). Ironically, I was thinking it'd

Epic will be redeveloping the entire 87-acre site, for reopening in 2024. The mall is in Cary, NC (Raleigh-Durham / RTP area). Ironically, I was thinking it'd be kind of cool to work in an old mall building (with the typical US indoor shopping mall layout). Inefficient in many ways (parking, space utilization, HVAC), but the idea of locating teams in small (fishbowl?) office-like pods seems interesting. Natural light would be a problem. The food court could be appealing... Some of the complaints you mention sound like they might be specific to that building? Commercial floors should be standard build slab/tray concrete in a mall or office building. Retail HVAC should be adequate if inefficient.. Then again, a failed mall might have failed for a long list of reasons, and a crappy physical plant is definitely one of them!

xnyan 6y ago
I did some construction work at this mall in college. Of the many many problems, natural light is probably number 1. It's an absolute dungeon, dark and oppressive. I don't see how you fix it besides blowing it up and starting over.
- Grazester 6y ago
  Anything can be done especially if you have the will and the money.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    I thought Epic was moving there because of the money savings...
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Money's not infinite (not even Epic's money). Much of the time, it's better (cost-effective) to demolish and start fresh, especially if the foundation and infrastructure are even remotely sketchy. Demolishing isn't really that expensive, at this kind of scale.
    - jbverschoor 6y ago
      It actually is! The reserve requirements are 0%, which makes money effectively infinite
  - ACow_Adonis 6y ago
    actually there's a case of problems that involve natural evolution, survivorship over time and distributed actors. It can be argued this is also possible if you have the will and the money, but it practically never happens (arguably a minority of vc money maybe?) that people with will and money give it away to a large number of distributed decision makers over a time period to produce a single specific goal. It might seem like I'm splitting hairs, but actually urban design and working/living environment is exactly hypothesised to be one of those cases. It's why some people argue successful downturn areas and urban environments with walkability and diversity of use/design/ spectacle (so not most US cities), because they have evolved that way from lots of little distributed inconsistent designs, but with individual members tested, repurposed and surviving due to evolution over time. When a big developer or mega Corp develops or designs, you don't get natural evolution and diversity of design over time, you get mass sameness and waterfall design. It's why you get planned community aesthetics and corporate brand + policy rather than what organically works. The best of them might be bright and shiny (see Apple office/campus), but they still have the overarching ethos of singular design and absolute central/corporate control. Some people like that environment, personally I don't like working in it (don't get me wrong, i'd rather work in a good one rather than a bad one though). In practice they don't get it perfect. I imagine a lot of people could list problems with the Apple campus in practice, and I'd be good money this isn't going to be the Apple campus...
vanilla_nut 6y ago
The article mentions that "some structures" will be demolished, but that other plans are far from certain. I'll definitely keep an eye on this to see if they do a better job converting this mall than the converted mall that I've experienced!

xnyan 6y ago

I did some construction work at this mall in college. Of the many many problems, natural light is probably number 1. It's an absolute dungeon, dark and oppressive. I don't see how you fix it besides blowing it up and starting over.

Grazester 6y ago
Anything can be done especially if you have the will and the money.
- r00fus 6y ago
  I thought Epic was moving there because of the money savings...
- falcolas 6y ago
  Money's not infinite (not even Epic's money). Much of the time, it's better (cost-effective) to demolish and start fresh, especially if the foundation and infrastructure are even remotely sketchy. Demolishing isn't really that expensive, at this kind of scale.
  - jbverschoor 6y ago
    It actually is! The reserve requirements are 0%, which makes money effectively infinite
- ACow_Adonis 6y ago
  actually there's a case of problems that involve natural evolution, survivorship over time and distributed actors. It can be argued this is also possible if you have the will and the money, but it practically never happens (arguably a minority of vc money maybe?) that people with will and money give it away to a large number of distributed decision makers over a time period to produce a single specific goal. It might seem like I'm splitting hairs, but actually urban design and working/living environment is exactly hypothesised to be one of those cases. It's why some people argue successful downturn areas and urban environments with walkability and diversity of use/design/ spectacle (so not most US cities), because they have evolved that way from lots of little distributed inconsistent designs, but with individual members tested, repurposed and surviving due to evolution over time. When a big developer or mega Corp develops or designs, you don't get natural evolution and diversity of design over time, you get mass sameness and waterfall design. It's why you get planned community aesthetics and corporate brand + policy rather than what organically works. The best of them might be bright and shiny (see Apple office/campus), but they still have the overarching ethos of singular design and absolute central/corporate control. Some people like that environment, personally I don't like working in it (don't get me wrong, i'd rather work in a good one rather than a bad one though). In practice they don't get it perfect. I imagine a lot of people could list problems with the Apple campus in practice, and I'd be good money this isn't going to be the Apple campus...

vanilla_nut 6y ago

The article mentions that "some structures" will be demolished, but that other plans are far from certain. I'll definitely keep an eye on this to see if they do a better job converting this mall than the converted mall that I've experienced!