17 ms·

The reason the local mall is failing (2018)

55 points by maxwell 6y ago

prepend 6y ago
Is it fair to compare value and tax revenue of the 9 downtown blocks to the mall? Aren’t malls usually built in cheap areas because the land has low value, while downtown is typically, well, down town. Also the mall space is including parking lots and the 9 blocks have parking somewhere but not in those 9 blocks.
- kiba 6y ago
  Is it fair to compare value and tax revenue of the 9 downtown blocks to the mall? Aren’t malls usually built in cheap areas because the land has low value, while downtown is typically, well, down town. Well, downtown have something going for it if it's valuable. Land that are of low value aren't exactly prime estate. Also the mall space is including parking lots and the 9 blocks have parking somewhere but not in those 9 blocks. Why would that in itself be valuable use of lands? Remember, even the roads are a land use choice.
  - prepend 6y ago
    Parking lots are not very valuable. I meant that the mall parcel includes retail space and parking while the 9 blocks is only retail space. So it’s comparing different densities. I was thinking that there is probably some parking lots for the people doing that shopping that should be included when comparing taxes per area. I think it would be an accurate comparison if those 9 blocks were replaced by a mall, but this seems like apples to oranges if the goal is to see which brings in more tax revenue to the community. I suppose sales tax would be really important too.
    - quickthrowman 6y ago
      > Parking lots are not very valuable. ??? It depends entirely on the location of the parking lot. The land value of a downtown parking lot which is the same size as a high-rise building lot next door is going to be similar. Obviously the high-rise is worth more money since there’s a building with leasable space, but the land value of both lots will be very close. A parking lot doesn’t need to remain a parking lot forever, you could borrow money and build a building on it.
- gregwebs 6y ago
  The downtown could have good public transportation options along with many living or working close by as well. When there is parking it is more likely to be a denser parking garage.
- bostonvaulter2 6y ago
  But the whole business model of the mall is not viable without the parking lot, so I think it makes sense to include the parking lot in the analysis.
  - prepend 6y ago
    Yes, that is true. I’m not contending that parking lots aren’t required for malls to work. I just think it’s comparing different densities of commercial areas. It doesn’t factor in the parking lots needed to support the 9 blocks of downtown. So the level of spatial resolution seems off to make an accurate comparison. It seems to me the point was “downtown shopping is better for tax base than malls” and shows the tax for those two areas. But my not including the parking needed for downtown those aren’t really comparable areas in that there is additional space needed to support the downtown area. But the bigger area is comparing downtown to whatever land was turned into a mall since I’m not aware of any malls that were literally used to replace town squares. In the small to middle towns I’m familiar with the mall was built away from the center of town frequently on farmland or similar empty space.
lurquer 6y ago
Having lived through the peak of the US Mall years, I blame the downfall on... Nintendo. The mall was a social center for teens. A lot of money got pumped into the malls from that age group. Teen boys would go for the arcade. Teen girls would follow, checking out the guys. Many stores catered to that demographic (Spencers, HotTopic, makeup and cheap jewelry stores, etc.) In short, it was a place to go on casual dates, find dates, hook up, and the like. My peer group quit going as frequently as we could play SuperMario Brothers for free at home. And, once the internet emerged, that was it... teens rarely leave their houses now, don’t date, and shun all face-to-face contact. So, in short, Nintendo destroyed the Malls.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  Can't tell if satire or woefully unaware.
  - jcims 6y ago
    That's rude. It's a valid perspective. I dumped thousands of dollars in arcade games in the 70's and 80's and spent at least as much buying tshirts and toys and pizza or walking down to the theater and watching a movie.
    - Guest42 6y ago
      For me there was a sense of adventure going to the mall because the products would change unpredictably. It was like a living art piece that served great food and could lead to unexpected purchases. It was also fun in the pre-internet era of having the chance to run into someone you knew randomly whereas social media creates a seemingly constant contact.
      - dagw 6y ago
        For many it was also the only place around where parents/adults would be happy to let kids hang out completely unattended.
jcims 6y ago
This seems like a woefully incomplete analysis. The same basic evolution happened in manufacturing and for largely the same reasons. Boutique job shops replaced by industralized mass production facilities replaced by abstracted labor and infrastructure in offshore contracts. Boutique stores worked downtown because there was no better option, not because it was great. Who wants to drive downtown to get shoes or a tie? Going in and out of building after building, dealing with traffic, trying to keep your packages out of the rain, etc. sucks. Malls took over because you could socialize, you were out of the elements, there was a mix of attractions and shopping, it was comfortable and safe to walk everywhere. You also didn't have to deal with driving in and out of downtown, they were almost always right off of some major highway. But malls aren't great either. There’s been zero innovation in the business model since the beginning. Relative to the Internet, the selection sucks, prices suck and the logistics suck. Shopping is an event rather than an impulse. Back when you could download your entire Amazon order history, my chart of orders and spending nearly had an expoential curve in it from 2006 to 2018 as the superior (to me) experience gradually drained my business away from brick and mortar. And guess what's back? Boutique shops. My daughter opened up an Etsy store when she was 14 and has sold custom sculptures and stickers to people all over the world. No way she could have done that downtown or in the local mall.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  I recently ordered something from Newegg and it was shipped from China to some place 500 miles away from me. They don’t even charge me... the seller does. They only guarantee. So if the seller doesn’t refund me then I have to file a claim through them. Screw that. My Amazon orders have dropped precipitously and I’m trying to get my girlfriend to stop ordering from there as well. I’ve gotten too many obvious someone-else’s-returns and fake items. Amazon has always been mostly okay with returns. (Once they wanted to charge me for a low value item I had them reship when their system said it was delivered but it wasn’t, but otherwise refunds and returns have been no problem.) I find myself going to brick-and-mortar stores more often lately, especially since they seem to have gotten curbside pickup down. Otherwise o tend to go straight to the manufacturer when possible.
  - 6y ago
rootusrootus 6y ago
Our local mall went through a period of decline, as old stalwarts like Sears, Montgomery Ward, and JC Penny went out of business or left. But then it got renovated, new stores moved in, and it's as busy as ever. I think it just took a different selection of stores to attract customers back. And the redesign made space for a number of medium-size anchor stores like REI who have doors facing out rather than into the mall itself.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  I saw someone say the problem is there are just too many malls in America. In Australia it seems every mall is packed to the point where you can hardly walk through them, but all so that the number of malls per person in Australia is much lower than in America.
- starik36 6y ago
  REI might work in a well populated area. This town has 11k inhabitants. The neighboring town which sports Walmart and Costco (the one the author laments driving to) has a population of 8k. I don't think there is enough population to support a profitable REI in an age where you can order everything it sells for cheaper elsewhere.
anonymousiam 6y ago
Perhaps the company was debt-loaded so it would fail and be liquidated. The (complicit) lenders collected lots of interest payments, and the parent company gets the proceeds from the asset sales, along with a nice tax write-off because of the "loss".
axaxs 6y ago
One interesting article I read but can't be bothered to find now mentioned how we could better utilize malls by making top floors of condos. It was such a simple but seemingly good suggestion. Already have huge amounts of parking, tons of floor area for convenience, and stores would change to those that better served the tenants. And as that happens, more people from outside would be incentivized to visit. Perhaps there are reasons it wouldn't work, or is a bad idea. Perhaps I was enamored with the idea of rolling out of bed and getting Chick Fil A or Cinnabon in my pajamas.
- freeone3000 6y ago
  Having residential above retail is super common in non-American cities. It works pretty well in Montreal -- condo buildings usually have a grocery store and coffee shop in the lobby, while a strip of three-story buildings might have two stories of residential above things like a collectibles store or a martial arts dojo, with a grocery store on the corner. The problem with doing this with malls is you have minimum quality requirements for residences. Daylight requirements are a particular concern -- you can sell corners and edges, but you're left with a big space in the middle you can't use, unless you're willing to make the corner apartments expand that far. Once you start doing that, the condo costs comparable to detached houses, and there you lose out to The American Dream(TM). The real wins here would be in splitting apart the stores and putting housing above each one, and replacing "destination" shopping with neighborhood shopping.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    The American Dream(TM) If I could have a condo that was as quiet and accessible as a house (buying groceries, whether in person or by delivery, was a huge hassle in my SF apartment), with a "backyard" I could reserve for an hour or two of total quiet and privacy, I'd take that over a detached house. But my experience so far in two separate tower buildings was noise, a lack of mutual respect in amenity spaces, frequently breaking elevators, and overcrowding.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    > Daylight requirements are a particular concern -- you can sell corners and edges, but you're left with a big space in the middle you can't use, unless you're willing to make the corner apartments expand that far. Or, since you're talking about the top floor, use skylights. You could even make it the top two floors, but each center unit is on both floors and has a "basement" without natural light. > Once you start doing that, the condo costs comparable to detached houses, and there you lose out to The American Dream(TM). Prices are set by supply and demand. If people like something else better then the price is lower. It's hardly going to be lower than the construction cost. The real thing preventing things like this is that it's all too often prohibited by zoning for no good reason.
m463 6y ago
I think this is obvious if you watch the walmart movie[1] There was an interesting scene in the movie where a small town was getting a new walmart, and they drove around downtown. They pointed at each of the stores and assigned values like "6 months" or "3 months" as an estimate of survival after they lost all their business to walmart. Another wave of change has been moving in slow motion for years with online purchases and local stores, but the pandemic has been a tsunami in comparison. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart:_The_High_Cost_of_Low_Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart:_The_High_Cost_of_Low...
- jimbob45 6y ago
  To be fair to Wal-Mart, that seems to have less to do with Wal-Mart being a devious corporation and more that the lower class can scarcely afford to live anymore without the ultra-efficient economies of scale Wal-Mart provides. In a world with a livable minimum wage, I imagine Wal-Mart would have less of a captive consumer base.
  - stormbrew 6y ago
    I mean, part of why that is the case is that walmart itself depresses wages. It comes to town, undercuts other businesses, those businesses close, people need jobs, they go to work at walmart (possibly at a loss of income but probably a loss of hours even if not), and then they can't afford to shop anywhere but walmart anymore. And the cycle continues. It's not like they're doing this in a snidely whiplash scheme-y sort of way but they are still doing it, and they're not unaware of or innocent in the effect they have.
    - batekush 6y ago
      I don’t know, I think the decision to pay workers in literal company scrip had some mustache-twirling behind it. https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-walmex-idUSN0546591320080905 https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-walmex-idUSN054659132...
      - 6y ago
cycomanic 6y ago
I think this is a very US perspective. In the town where I grew up in Germany they created a pedestrian zone downtown when I was a teenager. There was a lot of protests from businesses saying that people would drive to malls in the outskirts because they can't drive to the shops anymore. The exact opposite happened, if you look at the city centre it's busy every day and absolutely jam packed on nice days (except for covid restrictions). It's also an absolute tourist magnet. The funny thing is, the city government is talking about expanding the zones and make the whole town centre pedestrian only and the businesses are protesting with the same arguments as 20 years ago.
- lazerpants 6y ago
  To be fair, there's probably an efficient frontier problem in pedestrianizing neighborhoods. If you closed off the entirety of Manhattan to cars, it would probably destroy Manhattan, but if you closed off specific areas such that people could still move themselves and goods around the city, it would be much improved.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Most of Manhattan’s daytime population don’t get in by cars, so making it less car friendly is in the realm of possibility. Really, south of Central Park, the parking rates alone are so expensive I wouldn’t bother driving in. Monthly rates in a garage are easily $300-500.
    - lazerpants 6y ago
      That's pretty reasonable! I'm in Brooklyn and the garage by me is $500/month. Which is part of why I don't own a car.
effnorwood 6y ago
Government FIAT and Amazombie

55 points by maxwell 6y ago

Is it fair to compare value and tax revenue of the 9 downtown blocks to the mall? Aren’t malls usually built in cheap areas because the land has low value, while downtown is typically, well, down town. Also the mall space is including parking lots and the 9 blocks have parking somewhere but not in those 9 blocks.

kiba 6y ago
Is it fair to compare value and tax revenue of the 9 downtown blocks to the mall? Aren’t malls usually built in cheap areas because the land has low value, while downtown is typically, well, down town. Well, downtown have something going for it if it's valuable. Land that are of low value aren't exactly prime estate. Also the mall space is including parking lots and the 9 blocks have parking somewhere but not in those 9 blocks. Why would that in itself be valuable use of lands? Remember, even the roads are a land use choice.
- prepend 6y ago
  Parking lots are not very valuable. I meant that the mall parcel includes retail space and parking while the 9 blocks is only retail space. So it’s comparing different densities. I was thinking that there is probably some parking lots for the people doing that shopping that should be included when comparing taxes per area. I think it would be an accurate comparison if those 9 blocks were replaced by a mall, but this seems like apples to oranges if the goal is to see which brings in more tax revenue to the community. I suppose sales tax would be really important too.
  - quickthrowman 6y ago
    > Parking lots are not very valuable. ??? It depends entirely on the location of the parking lot. The land value of a downtown parking lot which is the same size as a high-rise building lot next door is going to be similar. Obviously the high-rise is worth more money since there’s a building with leasable space, but the land value of both lots will be very close. A parking lot doesn’t need to remain a parking lot forever, you could borrow money and build a building on it.
gregwebs 6y ago
The downtown could have good public transportation options along with many living or working close by as well. When there is parking it is more likely to be a denser parking garage.
bostonvaulter2 6y ago
But the whole business model of the mall is not viable without the parking lot, so I think it makes sense to include the parking lot in the analysis.
- prepend 6y ago
  Yes, that is true. I’m not contending that parking lots aren’t required for malls to work. I just think it’s comparing different densities of commercial areas. It doesn’t factor in the parking lots needed to support the 9 blocks of downtown. So the level of spatial resolution seems off to make an accurate comparison. It seems to me the point was “downtown shopping is better for tax base than malls” and shows the tax for those two areas. But my not including the parking needed for downtown those aren’t really comparable areas in that there is additional space needed to support the downtown area. But the bigger area is comparing downtown to whatever land was turned into a mall since I’m not aware of any malls that were literally used to replace town squares. In the small to middle towns I’m familiar with the mall was built away from the center of town frequently on farmland or similar empty space.

lurquer 6y ago

Having lived through the peak of the US Mall years, I blame the downfall on... Nintendo. The mall was a social center for teens. A lot of money got pumped into the malls from that age group. Teen boys would go for the arcade. Teen girls would follow, checking out the guys. Many stores catered to that demographic (Spencers, HotTopic, makeup and cheap jewelry stores, etc.) In short, it was a place to go on casual dates, find dates, hook up, and the like. My peer group quit going as frequently as we could play SuperMario Brothers for free at home. And, once the internet emerged, that was it... teens rarely leave their houses now, don’t date, and shun all face-to-face contact. So, in short, Nintendo destroyed the Malls.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
Can't tell if satire or woefully unaware.
- jcims 6y ago
  That's rude. It's a valid perspective. I dumped thousands of dollars in arcade games in the 70's and 80's and spent at least as much buying tshirts and toys and pizza or walking down to the theater and watching a movie.
  - Guest42 6y ago
    For me there was a sense of adventure going to the mall because the products would change unpredictably. It was like a living art piece that served great food and could lead to unexpected purchases. It was also fun in the pre-internet era of having the chance to run into someone you knew randomly whereas social media creates a seemingly constant contact.
    - dagw 6y ago
      For many it was also the only place around where parents/adults would be happy to let kids hang out completely unattended.

jcims 6y ago

This seems like a woefully incomplete analysis. The same basic evolution happened in manufacturing and for largely the same reasons. Boutique job shops replaced by industralized mass production facilities replaced by abstracted labor and infrastructure in offshore contracts. Boutique stores worked downtown because there was no better option, not because it was great. Who wants to drive downtown to get shoes or a tie? Going in and out of building after building, dealing with traffic, trying to keep your packages out of the rain, etc. sucks. Malls took over because you could socialize, you were out of the elements, there was a mix of attractions and shopping, it was comfortable and safe to walk everywhere. You also didn't have to deal with driving in and out of downtown, they were almost always right off of some major highway. But malls aren't great either. There’s been zero innovation in the business model since the beginning. Relative to the Internet, the selection sucks, prices suck and the logistics suck. Shopping is an event rather than an impulse. Back when you could download your entire Amazon order history, my chart of orders and spending nearly had an expoential curve in it from 2006 to 2018 as the superior (to me) experience gradually drained my business away from brick and mortar. And guess what's back? Boutique shops. My daughter opened up an Etsy store when she was 14 and has sold custom sculptures and stickers to people all over the world. No way she could have done that downtown or in the local mall.

cgriswald 6y ago
I recently ordered something from Newegg and it was shipped from China to some place 500 miles away from me. They don’t even charge me... the seller does. They only guarantee. So if the seller doesn’t refund me then I have to file a claim through them. Screw that. My Amazon orders have dropped precipitously and I’m trying to get my girlfriend to stop ordering from there as well. I’ve gotten too many obvious someone-else’s-returns and fake items. Amazon has always been mostly okay with returns. (Once they wanted to charge me for a low value item I had them reship when their system said it was delivered but it wasn’t, but otherwise refunds and returns have been no problem.) I find myself going to brick-and-mortar stores more often lately, especially since they seem to have gotten curbside pickup down. Otherwise o tend to go straight to the manufacturer when possible.
- 6y ago

rootusrootus 6y ago

Our local mall went through a period of decline, as old stalwarts like Sears, Montgomery Ward, and JC Penny went out of business or left. But then it got renovated, new stores moved in, and it's as busy as ever. I think it just took a different selection of stores to attract customers back. And the redesign made space for a number of medium-size anchor stores like REI who have doors facing out rather than into the mall itself.

SilverRed 6y ago
I saw someone say the problem is there are just too many malls in America. In Australia it seems every mall is packed to the point where you can hardly walk through them, but all so that the number of malls per person in Australia is much lower than in America.
starik36 6y ago
REI might work in a well populated area. This town has 11k inhabitants. The neighboring town which sports Walmart and Costco (the one the author laments driving to) has a population of 8k. I don't think there is enough population to support a profitable REI in an age where you can order everything it sells for cheaper elsewhere.

anonymousiam 6y ago

Perhaps the company was debt-loaded so it would fail and be liquidated. The (complicit) lenders collected lots of interest payments, and the parent company gets the proceeds from the asset sales, along with a nice tax write-off because of the "loss".

axaxs 6y ago

One interesting article I read but can't be bothered to find now mentioned how we could better utilize malls by making top floors of condos. It was such a simple but seemingly good suggestion. Already have huge amounts of parking, tons of floor area for convenience, and stores would change to those that better served the tenants. And as that happens, more people from outside would be incentivized to visit. Perhaps there are reasons it wouldn't work, or is a bad idea. Perhaps I was enamored with the idea of rolling out of bed and getting Chick Fil A or Cinnabon in my pajamas.

freeone3000 6y ago
Having residential above retail is super common in non-American cities. It works pretty well in Montreal -- condo buildings usually have a grocery store and coffee shop in the lobby, while a strip of three-story buildings might have two stories of residential above things like a collectibles store or a martial arts dojo, with a grocery store on the corner. The problem with doing this with malls is you have minimum quality requirements for residences. Daylight requirements are a particular concern -- you can sell corners and edges, but you're left with a big space in the middle you can't use, unless you're willing to make the corner apartments expand that far. Once you start doing that, the condo costs comparable to detached houses, and there you lose out to The American Dream(TM). The real wins here would be in splitting apart the stores and putting housing above each one, and replacing "destination" shopping with neighborhood shopping.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  The American Dream(TM) If I could have a condo that was as quiet and accessible as a house (buying groceries, whether in person or by delivery, was a huge hassle in my SF apartment), with a "backyard" I could reserve for an hour or two of total quiet and privacy, I'd take that over a detached house. But my experience so far in two separate tower buildings was noise, a lack of mutual respect in amenity spaces, frequently breaking elevators, and overcrowding.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Daylight requirements are a particular concern -- you can sell corners and edges, but you're left with a big space in the middle you can't use, unless you're willing to make the corner apartments expand that far. Or, since you're talking about the top floor, use skylights. You could even make it the top two floors, but each center unit is on both floors and has a "basement" without natural light. > Once you start doing that, the condo costs comparable to detached houses, and there you lose out to The American Dream(TM). Prices are set by supply and demand. If people like something else better then the price is lower. It's hardly going to be lower than the construction cost. The real thing preventing things like this is that it's all too often prohibited by zoning for no good reason.

m463 6y ago

I think this is obvious if you watch the walmart movie[1] There was an interesting scene in the movie where a small town was getting a new walmart, and they drove around downtown. They pointed at each of the stores and assigned values like "6 months" or "3 months" as an estimate of survival after they lost all their business to walmart. Another wave of change has been moving in slow motion for years with online purchases and local stores, but the pandemic has been a tsunami in comparison. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart:_The_High_Cost_of_Low_Price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wal-Mart:_The_High_Cost_of_Low...

jimbob45 6y ago
To be fair to Wal-Mart, that seems to have less to do with Wal-Mart being a devious corporation and more that the lower class can scarcely afford to live anymore without the ultra-efficient economies of scale Wal-Mart provides. In a world with a livable minimum wage, I imagine Wal-Mart would have less of a captive consumer base.
- stormbrew 6y ago
  I mean, part of why that is the case is that walmart itself depresses wages. It comes to town, undercuts other businesses, those businesses close, people need jobs, they go to work at walmart (possibly at a loss of income but probably a loss of hours even if not), and then they can't afford to shop anywhere but walmart anymore. And the cycle continues. It's not like they're doing this in a snidely whiplash scheme-y sort of way but they are still doing it, and they're not unaware of or innocent in the effect they have.
  - batekush 6y ago
    I don’t know, I think the decision to pay workers in literal company scrip had some mustache-twirling behind it. https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-walmex-idUSN0546591320080905 https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-walmex-idUSN054659132...
    - 6y ago

cycomanic 6y ago

I think this is a very US perspective. In the town where I grew up in Germany they created a pedestrian zone downtown when I was a teenager. There was a lot of protests from businesses saying that people would drive to malls in the outskirts because they can't drive to the shops anymore. The exact opposite happened, if you look at the city centre it's busy every day and absolutely jam packed on nice days (except for covid restrictions). It's also an absolute tourist magnet. The funny thing is, the city government is talking about expanding the zones and make the whole town centre pedestrian only and the businesses are protesting with the same arguments as 20 years ago.

lazerpants 6y ago
To be fair, there's probably an efficient frontier problem in pedestrianizing neighborhoods. If you closed off the entirety of Manhattan to cars, it would probably destroy Manhattan, but if you closed off specific areas such that people could still move themselves and goods around the city, it would be much improved.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Most of Manhattan’s daytime population don’t get in by cars, so making it less car friendly is in the realm of possibility. Really, south of Central Park, the parking rates alone are so expensive I wouldn’t bother driving in. Monthly rates in a garage are easily $300-500.
  - lazerpants 6y ago
    That's pretty reasonable! I'm in Brooklyn and the garage by me is $500/month. Which is part of why I don't own a car.

effnorwood 6y ago

Government FIAT and Amazombie