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Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, enter
by beambot 6y ago
Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, entertainment, etc all under one roof.
- freddie_mercury 6y agoMalls as coworking space would be literally the arcologies of dystopian cyberpunk. No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world. It wouldn't be "best" for many people. Maybe "convenient" for bosses who don't like how much productivity they lose when a Meat Flavoured Productivity Unit has to go get a haircut or imbibe sustenance....
- samatman 6y agoOk but the perfect isn't the enemy of the good here. Being able to go for a climate-controlled one-kilometer walk every lunch break is a real luxury for a lot of people, it's way better than a cell in some high-rise near the highway. The mall could have a hackerspace too! It has potential.
- ethbr0 6y agoNot to mention less traffic, as malls tend to be more distributed and closer to suburban housing than CBDs.
- vasco 6y agoThe simple solution is work from home because most people already have a home, and simple solutions win. The only reason you're mentioning malls is because they are there, but unless you're a mall-walker on the weekends, I'm pretty sure the average developer's definition of a good lunch break isn't "walking past the mall McDonald's 3 times before returning to your mall wework" or whatever.
- Grimm1 6y agoI don't want to work from home every day though and neither do a lot of people.
- emodendroket 6y agoI have loved not commuting and I have a comfortable setup but I can’t honestly say that it hasn’t been a big problem being unable to get people’s answers to quick questions for days on end.
- Grimm1 6y agoIn my case I live in a 1br apartment where before the pandemic I was basically never home except to sleep and maybe on the weekend. Which I prefer, now having it be everything from office to social space and living space is very uncomfortable.
- harikb 6y ago> because most people already have a home Assuming that everyone has a comfortable and spacious home with a desk&chair area is, well, a bad assumption. A bunch of people I know are now working significantly more time from a couch, in a clearly non-ergonomic position. We will see and hear about the real damage 5 years from now.
- noir_lord 6y agoWe are 3 up (two adults, 1 child) in a 2 bed flat (apartment) with no garden and for the last year both my partner and I have been WFH full time (in my case I changed job to one that is 100% remote forever). I couldn't agree more, the transition for me was trivial - I'm a developer who plays games, I already had a nice chair, two 27" 4K displays and a fast desktop so for me my hardware/comfort improved - for my partner work issued her a just about passable laptop and..well that was it. With the lack of space I used a spare 27" monitor I had putting it on the boys desk with a decent external mouse/keyboard and we bought him a gaming chair - that way my partner can use his room as an office while he's at school/his fathers but yeah it's not be great for her. We are moving next year and my only criteria for the house is at has to have either a large brick built garage or a concrete garage and space for an office pod in the garden, working from home around a near-teenager was challenging (and frankly that's just gonna get worse) and long term not something I want - I need quiet solitude to work most comfortably.
- beambot 6y agoMalls can definitely obtain natural lighting if architected properly (eg sky lights and light pipes) -- malls are no different than other commercial offices. For example: I used to work at GoogleX's "San Antonio station", which was a converted shopping mall, and it had great lighting, even on lower floors. With multiple employers in same building, you'd also have many more socializing options -- including random colleagues who drop by to run errands. Besides, what would you suggest instead -- let them turn into suburban blight?!
- circleit 6y agoVertical aquaponics farms. Organic fresh produce and protein for every area produced locally.
- vkou 6y agoIndoor square footage is not, and will never will be a relevant constraint on food production. At $400/square foot to build a mall, and $XY/square foot/year to maintain it, the only thing that makes financial sense to grow in one is black market marijuana.
- admax88q 6y agoThey're already a suburban blight. Just teat them down. Put a park there instead.
- beambot 6y agoWhere does the money come from? Cities are cash-strapped, which makes demolition & park development unlikely. Existing property owners aren't exactly in the business of giving away prime realestate or operating charities -- they'd probably opt for more suburban housing developments.
- pharmakom 6y agoCities are cash strapped due to low density sprawl, of which malls are just one kind.
- xwdv 6y agoWhat kind of malls do you have in your area to have no natural light? Pretty much every mall I’ve ever been to has tons of skylights and rooftop windows.
- freddie_mercury 6y agoThat's generally only in the common areas, not in the retail spaces that make up the vast majority of the actual floorplan and where any converted offices would actually be.
- chrisco255 6y agoYeah but that could be redesigned. They could punch some holes in the external facing sides of the former retail stores and add some glass. They could add more skylights on the roof and funnel them down too.
- laylomo2 6y agoMalls are already coworking spaces. People already work in them, full time, for different companies.
- beambot 6y agoLet me be more concise: convert some of the dying big-box stores into open-office WeWork/Regus-style workspaces for white-collar desk workers.
- laylomo2 6y agoAccording to the person I was responding to, that apparently would be an “arcology of dystopian cyberpunk”. So it’s not cyberpunk when people work for dying big box stores, but it is when OP works in a WeWork located in the same mall?
- JKCalhoun 6y agoLogan's One On One
- prpl 6y agoI think it’s fairly easy to rebuild an average 2-3 story department store into a large office building with many windows.
- barry-cotter 6y agoI’m not an architect but I doubt that. Refitting a building is expensive and buildings designed for one purpose are not going to be awesome for another unless your extremely lucky. Specialization is real. That said you could definitely retrofit the average department store building into reasonable offices.
- cortesoft 6y agoMost of the malls here in Los Angeles are outdoors. The shops are indoors, but the walkways are outdoors.
- raverbashing 6y ago> No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world. Malls in the US are like that. But not everywhere (I'm gonna be honest, US malls are not the greatest)
- bluepizza 6y agoI would argue that there's very little of "natural world" when you are downtown of any decent sized city. And you don't see any of it on any week day.
- csomar 6y ago> No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. I think it's a US thing. Many malls have significant sun-light, though not for the stores (I think this is done on purpose so that you are not distracted and focus on the goods). This could be re-purposed, however. Concrete walls get removed and replaced by glass.
- ddelt 6y agoI’m not necessarily disagreeing, but have you ever been to the open air mall in Waikiki, Hawaii? It’s pretty great
- SquibblesRedux 6y agoI think you have described Logan's Run. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film)
- emodendroket 6y agoHave you considered that when the mall was prosperous there were already a ton of people working there?
- wlesieutre 6y agoEpic Games bought a nearly 1 million sq-ft mall to convert into a new headquarters https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/4/22213102/epic-games-buys-mall-new-headquarters-cary-towne-center https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/4/22213102/epic-games-buys-ma...
- jffry 6y agoFrom the article: "An Epic Games spokesperson told the Triangle Business Journal that the campus would include office buildings and recreational spaces." That sure gives me the impression that they're tearing down the mall structure and probably parts of the parking lot, and then building new buildings.
- burnte 6y agoI love this idea.
- ilyanep 6y agoI love how in the US, instead of building all these services and offices near each other and walkable from people's homes, we insist on ideas that force people to drive dozens of miles to get a walkable and convenient experience.
- ryukafalz 6y agoRight - I moved to the city because here in the US it's the only option to get any human-scale density. The next level down that you can commonly find is car-centric suburbia. The remaining human-scale places in the US outside of city centers are mostly isolated remnants from before we started knocking them all down to make room for cars. Nobody's building new ones. (Unlike some other countries.)
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoBut human scale density sucks. Everything is expensive and dangerous. You get less space, less greenery, and pay more for the privilege. And much of the human density isn't the kind I want it to be. My faith / ethnic community don't live in city centers. They live in towns 30-40 minutes outside the city.
- bobthepanda 6y agoThe neat thing about malls is that they are 1. Usually already located at a crossroads; you want a mall at a busy junction to attract custom 2. Usually already a local transit hub, since they tend to be a major concentration of jobs 3. Are separated from any pesky residential neighbors by major roads and/or large swathes for parking 4. Have a lot of land in the form of said large swathes of parking These characteristics actually make them ideal for densification into a more walkable oasis; they already have some mixed uses, and the parking lots are developable without much fuss from neighbors. And you can do the whole thing in phases. A bunch of malls in the Seattle area are getting redeveloped in this manner.
- alistairSH 6y ago#1 is a mixed bag. Access by car is "easy", but traffic can be awful. #3 is a negative. The separation from housing makes them LESS suitable for office space. Put the two together, and even if the mall is redeveloped into nice office space with room to walk around, people outside the mall have to drive to do so. For people on the other side of those major arteries, they literally have to drive 1-2 blocks to walk around the mall (or former mall). None of which is to imply we shouldn't redevelop malls into mixed use "urban" hubs. But, we shouldn't assume that redeveloping the mall in isolation will succeed. The surrounding area might need significant changes to fully utilize the former mall zone.
- proc0 6y agoMany malls I've been to had working offices on some floor or section of it, but they're not as visible as the store fronts. I'm sure they are great offices as well.
- pram 6y agoAWS in Dallas was literally in a mall (dunno if it still is)
- DoreenMichele 6y agoThey were originally conceived of along those lines. The implementation didn't match the vision of the inventor.
- acomjean 6y agoIn Natick Mass they build a condo on top of the mall. https://patch.com/massachusetts/natick/see-inside-natick-mall-condo-asking-925k https://patch.com/massachusetts/natick/see-inside-natick-mal... "This condo building was built in 2008 overlooking the Natick Mall. For just $925,000 you get sweeping views, 3 bedrooms, and access to all the shopping you can do (if you have any cash left over)." But massachusetts has a weird relationship with Malls. I visited the Wayfair Offices, which sit above a really high end mall (Copley Place) in Boston. When I visited there was a pretty long line in the mall to get up the escalator to get onto the office floor...
- Shounak 6y agoIn Providence, RI, America’s oldest mall was converted to micro-apartments with some retail on the 1st floor https://youtu.be/HmL2l-bcuUQ https://youtu.be/HmL2l-bcuUQ
- onion2k 6y agoIt's important not to underestimate how many customers a store in a mall needs to survive. Most need tens of thousands of people to visit the mall every week in order to generate sufficient customers to have enough revenue to be viable businesses. Food-based businesses are a bit different because the same customers can visit every day, but you can't operate a hairdresser or a movie theatre by serving the same few hundred co-working space users every day if you have to pay the sort of costs it takes to run a store in a mall.
- Xylakant 6y agoYou're assuming that the economics that work for a mall would still work the same way when it's converted to "office space plus amenities". I know a few office buildings in Berlin that have a food court, barber shops/hairdressers, dry-cleaners etc. inside the building. And I doubt they're paying full price on the rent - they're advertised as amenities that make the office space more attractive, raising the price of the office space in the building.
- pm90 6y agoRackspace actually did this, their San Antonio HQ was a former mall (it had some goofy castle based theme and name, I forget). I thought the idea was brilliant. The mall had a ton of space in which the company plonked a bunch of cubicles that everyone (including the CEO) used, plus many other amenities. On some days there would be delicious food trucks outside.
- newsbinator 6y agoWaydowntown (2000) > The film centres on a group of office colleagues in downtown Calgary, Alberta, who bet a month's salary on who can last the longest without going outside by using the system of covered walkways that connect the buildings. The film takes place over one lunch hour on day 28 of the month-long competition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waydowntown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waydowntown
- christophilus 6y agoThat’s pretty close to the mall’s original intent. They were supposed to be little villages of the future. They turned into uninspired, bland corporate centers.
- ghaff 6y agoThe more or less dead mall fairly near me--there is still a thriving grocery store and Home Depot in the surrounding complex but not part of the mall as such--had as anchor stores JC Penney, Macy's, and Sears. It's in a smaller city. That (and even more rural areas--surrounding the smaller city is a lot of farmland such as where I live). There's nothing there to support significant co-working space. The luxury malls in cities that would support more co-working space--though ask WeWork how things are going--are mostly doing better.
- ehnto 6y agoYou can do that already, a food court is about as good as working in some open plan offices so why not just park up on a court table for a few hours?
- ArtWomb 6y agoI work out of (and take meetings in) Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan all the time. Lunch time crowd is a boisterous mix of Conde Nast fashion editors and Goldman Sachs analysts. All hating their jobs, ready to gossip. The food court is top tier. Blue Ribbon Sushi. MomoFuku japanese fried chicken and beer. You can stroll down to the marina to watch the boats bobbing in the hudson river. Or try on the trenches at Burberry. But the best part is the proximity to the 9/11 memorial. The bottomless reflecting pools gargantuan in size where the former twin towers once loomed. Nothing quite focuses the mind like a few minutes at that historic work of public sculpture. >>> Americans do more of their shopping online and gravitate to specialty brands and discount chains The phenomenal rise of mobile shopping apps like PLT, DePop, Nova, and Shein provides a remarkable case study in instant commerce. One, the merch is so cheap, even teens can afford to wear an item just once. Two, the auxiliary market around creating digital content by fashion influences perpetuates the virtuous cycle. The compensation of course coming in the form of promotions, gift cards, commissions ... Ultra-fast Fashion Is Eating the World https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/ultra-fast-fashion-is-eating-the-world/617794/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/ultra-f...
- emodendroket 6y agoRackspace used to do this a lot but I guess they’ve probably scaled back.