My sense is that surviving and thriving malls in urban areas today are really destination experiences for dining. Valley Fair has extremely high-quality dining

My sense is that surviving and thriving malls in urban areas today are really destination experiences for dining. Valley Fair has extremely high-quality dining options which brings the foot traffic that props up the whole enterprise. The SF Westfield never felt like they cracked that. It's only been open since '88 so it was sort of a latecomer to the mall era and got stuck in the department store, shopping-as-destination model. It required a detour down from Union Square's shopping district and didn't have much to do inside besides shopping, so I'm surprised it hung on this long.