13 ms·

Are Malls Over?

• pessimizer 13y ago
  Yes. They were a horrible substitute for public spaces anyway. Now the malls aren't the only alternative to teenagers wandering the streets engaging in aimless vandalism; they can stare into screens 12 hours a day, yet still shop and gossip (and engage in aimless vandalism.) Also, Amazon.com doesn't have to pay taxes, because Internet, so that's accelerating the decline of all physical retail. Malls weren't doing great before Amazon - deadmalls is nearly a dead site, it's been around so long. The only good places for malls are cute little cities that attract a lot of small town tourists, and places with a lot of people too old to understand the internet but rich enough to not have to work.
• thrush 13y ago
  What do malls offer that regular shops do not (besides lots of stores being located closely together, but thanks to Yelp and local transportation, that doesn't seem like too big of a benefit). UPDATE: So I am from NYC, and I have lived in urban areas my entire life. Finding the right stores so that I could make immediate purchases has never been an issue for me, but based on early comments, I clearly have a myopic view. I can see how a mall could potentially offer an "urban" experience (meaning that food, stores, people are all conveniently located in a nearby area) in a non-urban area.
  • bliti 13y ago
    A mall is a gathering place for many people of various age types. One does not simply go to the mall to shop. Sometimes it is to socialize.
    • thrush 13y ago
      Nice. So how can we recreate the gathering place in an era where the mall as a shopping center is no longer necessary or successful?
      • Gracana 13y ago
        I think the direction to take would be to focus on the things that online stores can't provide. Clothes fitting, product repair, demo products to look at and play with, etc. Apple stores seem to do this quite well: they don't have hundreds of products on the shelves (online stores will always have you beat there), everything is nicely spaced out and you are free to walk around and play with the products. If you need advice or want to buy, you can talk to a sales rep. If you need something repaired, they do that too.
    • ZanyProgrammer 13y ago
      I was going to say something snarky about the 80s being the last time people did that, but there are occasional times I've had to go to a mall in the past few years, and I notice teenagers hanging out (usually in the summer).
    • meddlepal 13y ago
      You mean just like our downtown's used to be before we murdered them?
  • mildtrepidation 13y ago
    Aside from the facts that not all malls are dying and that there are still new malls being built, they offer exactly the benefit you stated: "lots of stores being located closely together." I don't believe the existence of services like Yelp offsets this much if at all. People who don't mind spending the extra time to use it and then to travel around to the places they find (or even wait for shipment) are not necessarily the shoppers a mall caters to, as they're obviously not so concerned with getting what they need quickly with minimal travel. There's also the social and entertainment aspect to consider. Many malls have food courts and restaurants and/or include movie theaters (or even theme parks, which I find hilarious, but it's there). Malls do often exist for and serves purposes other than just providing goods in a centralized location... but that purpose itself hasn't lost its utility.
  • kemayo 13y ago
    I'd say a mall is a place to go when your intention is to shop as an activity not just as a means to an end. It allows you to constantly browse, with nothing requiring you to stop -- the next store is meters away, food is right there... Yelp and local transport doesn't meet this niche. Or, it only meets it in a handful of big dense cities that have decent shopping districts. Malls replicate that sort of experience for a spread out suburban area. Is all that sustainable? Apparently not.
• hansy 13y ago
  I can't even remember the last time I set foot in a mall. I think it was to try on a suit, but even trying on clothes will be virtualized with augmented reality. Other than being a destination place to hang out, I don't see much utility in malls.
  • lttlrck 13y ago
    Whether a suit fits you and you like how it feels are two different things.
    • jrockway 13y ago
      So the online retailer sends you five different suits to try on, and you send back the four you don't like. The extra $30 worth of shipping is nothing compared to paying employees and rent.
  • hibikir 13y ago
    Augmented reality won't tell me that two pairs of pants, from the same store, that say they are 30 inches long at the waist, are really 29 and 31. Different colors mean different suppliers and different results. The technology that will tell us if some pants are a good fit or not is still nowhere near where it need to be. Many other stores will die quickly though.
    • spiralpolitik 13y ago
      Actually technology will make sure that your pants fit just perfectly from the 1000s of measurement taken by the full body scanner in the retail store you ordered them from. The future of retail will be where it is fully integrated into the manufacturing chain to enable just in time manufacturing and delivery of the perfect item with the cost savings from such automation passed onto the consumer due to competition.
      • aestra 13y ago
        No. It won't tell you if the fabric is too itchy/uncomfortable, just one example.
• sergiotapia 13y ago
  I sure hope not. Some of my fondest memories when I was growing up in the States was visiting stores like JC Penny, the random Electronics store or Jack's Joke Shop with my parents, then swinging by the food court and eating some Sbarros pizza. When I come back home, I would like to take my son to the mall as well and spend the morning just browsing around and buying trinkets. It's fun! Amazon may be cheaper but come on, going to the mall is not all about shopping, it's about the experience!
  • jimktrains2 13y ago
    What about if you did all that, but in your city center? I'd argue that that would have been a better experience than the mall.
    • k-mcgrady 13y ago
      1. Not everyone lives in or near a city. 2. Parking 3. Convenience. It's much easier to walk around a mall in winter than it is a city centre.
      • jimktrains2 13y ago
        Doesn't have to be a big city. Imagine if a small town center had stores and restaurants now! I think parking can be dealt with in a city center. I like winter :-p I know not everyone does, though.
      • bskap 13y ago
        4. Weather. Occasionally a concern for those who live outside the bay area. Sometimes, you need to get shopping done and don't want to be walking around outside all day.
    • ryanhuff 13y ago
      I live in Southern California suburbia. The nearest true city center is an hour metro train ride away, while the nearest mall is a ten minute drive. For me (and millions of others here) the malls are more convenient.
• mildtrepidation 13y ago
  Obligatory: No, they're not. More relevant to HN: The comments so far suggest that many of us are pretty far removed from not only the demographics that use malls, but also the people who run them and the shop owners and managers that are their tenants. It's important to remember, though, that this doesn't mean they don't exist or that they're somehow wrong. Many malls are still successful, and to suggest that because some are closing the model is dead is baseless.
• mrharrison 13y ago
  No. Come on silly question. They are still alive and well in many cities. Even in SF, where you are suppose to order a single dental floss through google shopping express to be part of the cool crowd. Going to the mall allows you to quickly search many stores at once, which will be a need for some time.
• 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  Instead of "reinventing malls", how about "reinventing" what's left of the downtown shopping district in cities and towns? I think the only way to compete with online shopping and with Wal-Mart, is with an experience that goes beyond efficient commerce. Some people, some of the time, will gravitate toward an authentic in-person social environment that is interesting overall, and which happens to include interesting shops. This also tends to make the place more interesting for tourists, which at least up to a point can have a beneficial impact
  • meddlepal 13y ago
    You get it. We need to fix a lot of American mass transit infrastructure though to make this feasible. Getting into the city is not easy or cheap in many places in the United States. And we cannot just rely on the cheap trick of using parking garages and highways to get people into the city anymore - that's part of what killed cities in the first place.
    • 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
      I agree, and I'm definitely thinking of larger cities, in part. I'm also thinking of smaller towns. People may drive there, park, then walk around and enjoy it -- and spend money. There are towns like this around New England, for example. They're destinations people want to visit or live in. If instead the town had a Wal-Mart, it wouldn't be the same economic benefit to the town. Who would visit for that? Of course even better if there were rail service to the town. I'm not disagreeing with you, there. I'm just pointing out that this isn't only an urbanista issue. I think it matters as much, maybe even more so, for smaller cities and towns.
    • ams6110 13y ago
      Mass transit is OK for commuters who can tolerate the homeless-shelter-on-wheels aspect of it, but not good for shoppers, since it limits your per-trip purchases to what you can carry.
      • chrismonsanto 13y ago
• badman_ting 13y ago
  I don't go to them much anymore, but every time I do, I notice what a strange place it is. The stores are mostly bad, the food is of course terrible, very limited natural light, the list goes on. I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years. True, there is a human need to congregate. But why do it in there? -- There is a reluctance among posters here to consider a "yes" to the question in the title. Which seems strange and perhaps self-conscious. Consider: "Mall traffic, for a number of years, has been slowing down. Whether it continues to decline somewhat over time, I think that’s realistic to assume." People from companies as large as the Gap rarely get more explicit than that when talking about dying aspects of their business. The writing is on the wall, folks.
  • sliverstorm 13y ago
    I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years. Did you actually attend malls in their heyday? Today's mall is a sad shadow of their former selves, and as a result a poor way to judge how or why we enjoyed them in decades past.
    • sillysaurus3 13y ago
      What were they like?
      • colkassad 13y ago
        Pre-internet, if you wanted to peruse music, toys, books, movies, and/or video games and software, you essentially had to go to a mall. Or at least you wanted to because it was so convenient to access one or more of these sources of entertainment. Now it's pretty much only a good source for clothes.
        • dragonwriter 13y ago
          > Pre-internet, if you wanted to peruse music, toys, books, movies, and/or video games and software, you essentially had to go to a mall. Or at least you wanted to because it was so convenient to access one or more of these sources of entertainment. Well, actually, as I recall, malls were typically where you went for stores for those things that tended to be overpriced and had limited selection, but were conveniently located together along with restaurants and places for the kids to be entertained (like arcades and sometimes play areas, carousels, etc.)
• thrill 13y ago
  I don't care for shopping in general, but malls are far from dead. I had to pick my daughter up from a modeling gig at the mall yesterday - I literally could not find a parking space. There were people waiting in nearly every row for someone - anyone - to pull out. It's the middle of March and it was as bad as Christmas.
  • meddlepal 13y ago
    Some malls are thriving, but many are dead. In the city I grew up in I can name at least two that are dead or close to dead. On the other hand if you go just outside the city then there are two that are still going strong.
• tsunamifury 13y ago
  Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not. Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef-driven eateries. What people have abandoned is indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza and Chinese chains and the same terrible jewelry stores. People want shopping centers to reflect regional and local character, be in town centers, and offer high quality unique options with a few staples. Get rid of the huge parking lots and add a grocer. However tacitly this article is pointing to a possible larger problem in the Midwest where cold weather, and permanently depressed economy and a talent drain is leaving them without the tools to build interesting gathering places. This is a far larger and sadder issue.
  • wahsd 13y ago
    What happened is more of a change in cultural expectations that malls and their stale corporate overlords did not and were not able to adapt to. There is no reason that malls could not have been revamped and renovated to adjust, but I think that ship has sailed. People have given up on those areas where malls are located, which makes the extensive capital investments necessary to make any such changes even more impossible now than when they should have been made.
  • blackjack48 13y ago
    I've even noticed that Stonestown, a parking-lot surrounded anachronism in SF, has remained quite busy, despite being close to neighborhood commercial corridors. They've moved towards offering more community events: movie nights, Chinese New Year celebrations, etc. They also added Trader Joe's a few years ago, which has been a major draw. The entire place used to be an outdoor mall, but a skylight was added to keep out the notorious SF fog while retaining natural light. The next logical step in its transformation would be moving more of the parking into structures or underground, and building apartments on the land. But that would require the blessing of neighbors and activists in the area, not an easy task.
  • xcrunner529 13y ago
    Yep, we have Easton Town Centre around here (Columbus). It was one of the first of its kind, I believe and is very nice and a great place just to hang out.
• woofyman 13y ago
  The Atlanta metro area has 17 malls. A third are struggling and a third are thriving.
  • bluedino 13y ago
    Is that based on the average income of the area they are located?
• thrush 13y ago
  How does the profit hierarchy work in a mall? Do the owners of the real estate see a larger margin than they would if owning an aggregate of locations outside of the mall?
• untog 13y ago
  NYTimes had an article a few days ago[1] about Sbarro's bankruptcy that touched on this topic - basically, Sbarro bet big on shopping mall food courts, and that bet has not paid off. But the more interesting part is at the end - as shopping malls become less desirable, rents will go down. This could lead to a radical reinvention of what a mall looks and feels like. So malls as we know them might be dead, but "the mall" isn't done yet. [1] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/this-is-the-real-reason-sbarro-is-in-bankruptcy/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/this-is-the-rea...
  • yasth 13y ago
    Rents may well go down, and many malls may live a second life as anything from indoor paintball arena ( http://www.specialopspaintball.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=151375 http://www.specialopspaintball.com/forum/index.php?showtopic... ), megachurch ( http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/report-megachurch-in-boynton-beach-mall-could-be-a/nL4GK/ http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/report-megachurch-in-... ) to a secure datacenter ( http://www.lifelinedatacenters.com/data-center/indianapolis%E2%80%99-emergency-operations-center-anchors-former-dead-mall-turned-data-center/ http://www.lifelinedatacenters.com/data-center/indianapolis%... ) , but will anyone build new malls? I mean carriage houses have been renovated into everything from B & Bs to pubs to studios, but the carriage house is still dead. If no one is willing to spend the money to seriously build a new mall then the mall is dead. It will still be part of the landscape for a while, just as you can see the remains of failed fast food chains, nuclear weapon launch sites, and pre-bussing decentralized high schools, but that is just reuse.
    • vidarh 13y ago
      Lots of places in the world malls are still being built at a rapid pace. London, for example, is seeing an ongoing stream of enlargment, redevelopment and new mall developments. For an example local to me, the Australian developer/mall operator Westfields has formed a joint venture with another developer to combine two local malls and redevelop them into one huge mall, which make Westfields 3rd huge mall in London: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/croydon-westfield-set-to-go-ahead-after-planners-support-1bn-scheme-8963792.html http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/croydon-westfield-set-... Maybe large parts of the US just has too many/too large ones, given how many of them were developed pre-online shopping. And a problem with malls is of course that population shifts are far harder to accommodate when such a large area is operated as one unit. If the mall owner does not actively manage changes due to changes in the surrounding area, it can easily become obsolete as a whole.
• stephen_g 13y ago
  Not in Australia. We've probably had over $2 billion in re-development and upgrades integer biggest six shopping centres around the city I live in over the last three years... The one a ten minute drive from my house is wrapping up a two year, $450 million upgrade this half of the year. Pretty crazy, but they are doing pretty well making them places where you might actually want to be, which is important now online shopping has meant they are no longer places you need to go.
• Tiktaalik 13y ago
  In Vancouver two malls (Oakridge and Brentwood) are being redeveloped, pivoting away from their car oriented, suburban roots and becoming the anchor of transit oriented complete communities. In 2010 Oakridge got a transit connection for the Olympics which has helped it stay relevant. Now the city is taking advantage of the connection to build a transit oriented community around the site, doing away with outside parking, adding several towers, planning for surrounding mid rises, and turning the roof of the mall into a park. Nearby Burnaby is doing this same with their mall, which has had a rapid transit connection since 2001. http://www.straight.com/news/608306/vancouver-approves-oakridge-centre-redevelopment-plan http://www.straight.com/news/608306/vancouver-approves-oakri...
  • cperciva 13y ago
    There's also a lot of office office space going in at Brentwood and Oakridge. In short, they're shifting from "shopping area to which people drive" to "miniature downtowns connected by rapid transit". (Arguably Metrotown was the first of these, although it was a bit too early to benefit from the condoization shift.) I think we're going to see a lot more developments like Burnaby's "SOLO District" -- underground parking, 10 acres of ground floor retail, ~7 acres of park space on the roof of the retail space, 1-2 acres of 6-storey office space, and 2-3 acres of 30-50 storey residential space. If you're lucky, you could live, work, and shop without leaving the building -- and if you do need to go somewhere, the skytrain is right across the street, so you probably won't need to drive.
• bhauer 13y ago
  This again? I remember reading malls were over 15 years ago and yet all of the malls in my corner of Los Angeles are still open and thriving. All have been renovated at least once since the first batch of "malls are over" articles many years back. Some have converted a bit of their indoor space to outdoor (such as Del Amo in Torrance, which was one of the largest in the United States). Some have converted from outdoor then back to partially indoor when they realized that shoppers don't like being cold. Yes, retailers face heated competition from the likes of Amazon, and yes I am not the typical mall demographic. But the malls I know—assuming they have a spectrum of trendy retailers—tend to be just as busy as ever when I have reason to visit. I hate the crowded parking lots as much as I ever did. If they're stuck in the 1990s with Sbarro, Foot Locker, and JC Penney, yeah, they're probably suffering. But that's just not keeping current with consumer demand and isn't really an indictment of the model in general.
  • analog31 13y ago
    The imminent demise of shopping malls has been a feature of every recession that I can remember, and I'm old enough to have lost count.
  • mikeleeorg 13y ago
    I think the malls in LA and Southern California in general have done a good job in reinventing themselves as destinations rather than merely shopping centers. Especially for teens. Downtown Disney is a good example. A lot of those outdoor destinations even seem centered around a movie theater now, which one might predict is also on the decline - though every time I've visited these places, they seem pretty packed. (At least, on weekends.)
    • vidarh 13y ago
      Our local movie theatre (suburb of London) does much more than just show the latest blockbusters these days. They have special, low priced, early morning showings for families with kids, late night 18+ showings for movies with lower ratings, autism friendly showings, showings with subtitles, a lot of movies that previously wouldn't be shown much here (Bollywood movies in particular), and of course the 3D movies are helping them, as well as showing live transmissions of operas and plays from various locations around the world and a variety of other events. They've also put in two rows of larger, comfier seats in all their screens, that goes for a higher price, and I expect to see more of that... The theatres too are reinventing themselves.
• nick2 13y ago
  Yep, can't remember the last time I bought something from a mall. Maybe 5 years ago or more.
• greggman 13y ago
  Come to Singapore. There's places where there are 7 or more malls all right next to each other and more being built. Kuala Lumpur seems to have lots of shopping centers being built and many of them get full as in the there's no parking left.
  • dageshi 13y ago
    Probably the climate? I'd imagine in summer Singapore and KL are ferociously humid and hot?
    • kalleboo 13y ago
      Even outdoor malls in Singapore have air conditioning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke_Quay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke_Quay
      • ulfw 13y ago
        That's not a mall. It's a collection of restaurants (mostly for tourists). Not a single shop there.
        • kalleboo 13y ago
          The point isn't that Clarke Quay itself is a mall (even though the owners, CapitaMall Trust themselves call it a mall...) but that the weather doesn't have to be an obstacle for outdoor shopping.
    • ulfw 13y ago
      Undoubtfully the climate. This leads to Singaporean malls being 100x more interesting, convenient, high-end and better looking than any US mall. Pretty much all large malls have direct or adjacent to public train transport (MRT at Vivo, Ion, 313, nex...), have high-end restaurants, mid-range and fast-food offerings (local and international) and a wider variety of stores. They also have air conditioning, which is pretty much the only reason why all life happens in malls and you can barely walk around on weekends ;)
• mbillie1 13y ago
  I hope they're dying - malls are miserable places to spend time.
  • interstitial 13y ago
    As opposed to the DMV, the post office, the ER waiting room and other paragons of bureaucracy?
    • astrodust 13y ago
      Some malls are indistinguishable from Soviet Era waiting rooms.
    • mbillie1 13y ago
      How are shopping malls paragons of bureaucracy? Paragons of shallow consumerism, if anything... and while the DMV et all are surely dehumanizing and Kafkaesque, the mall is a special and unique sort of revolting to me. But different strokes...
• carsongross 13y ago
  If only there was some way to organically grow outdoor shopping areas, in central, easy to reach locations, with a distributed ownership structure ensuring that no single entity can ruin the whole area. Maybe some historically significant structures (town halls, parks, etc.) could even add a sense of civitas to the whole thing. We could call these things something catchy... like "downtowns".
  • jessedhillon 13y ago
    Wouldn't be as profitable as "The Downtown™ by Westfield"
    • malandrew 13y ago
      It would be if they also invested in the residential real estate around it. If you only focus on commercial properties, you're ignoring the value you are adding to other real estate investments in the area.
• justinph 13y ago
  Yes and no. Crappy malls are dying. Decent malls in more affluent areas are diversifying their experiences and thriving. In some places, indoor malls make a lot of sense. I live in Minnesota (home of the original indoor mall, Southdale). It's cold here a good chunk of the year, and an indoor mall isn't a half bad idea.
• bluedino 13y ago
  Malls are on life support. Our local mall has 3 anchor stores: Macys, JC Penny, and Sears. Two of those three have reported sales increases in the last quarter but it's a mystery on how Sears stays in business. The other popular stores are all gone - American Eagle, The Gap, etc. Instead, new tenants have replaced them which make the place look like an indoor flea market. Also enhancing the flea market look are the kiosks of people reselling things from cell phone cases to cheap sunglasses and worse jewelry than the mall jewelry stores, which are half gone as well. There's even a store that's almost like a 7-11, they sell candy bars and bottles of soda and chips.
  • interstitial 13y ago
    Those anchor stores are on life support. New channel anchors: American Girl, Apple Stores, etc, etc. What is dead is price-based stores the internet has replaced.
    • res0nat0r 13y ago
      I think Betteridge's law of headlines applies to this article. I live in Indy where the (billionaire) Simon's live, who own Simon Property Group. Their stock is currently @ 161, up 100 points over 5 years ago. Their stock has just been upgraded: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140312006497/en/Fitch-Upgrades-Simon-Property-Groups-IDR-Outlook#.UyXX1q1dWJU http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140312006497/en/Fitc... I used to live between two of their major malls for years. I could barely leave my apartment for 2 months before xmas due to traffic. They just spent millions remodeling their high end mall adding capacity and additional room for high end stores like Sacks and Restoration Hardware. Non generic crap malls are fine. Junk stores that have generic brand cheapish clothes and the like (JCPenny) are being replaced by Amazon, but overall malls are doing fine.
    • ceejayoz 13y ago
      Our local mall has realized that, I think. Most of the new stores are designer stuff - think Coach bags - and a new anchor called Von Maur which is an old-style department store - attentive staff, live piano in the lobby, etc. They seem to be doing much better than the JC Pennys of the area.
• bluedino 13y ago
  One of the more interesting solutions to malls is transforming them into office space, one good example is Rackspace converting the Windsor mall into their HQ - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace-revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rack... It's easy when you have 3,200 employees that you need under one roof, but malls would work great for for 20-500 employee businesses as well. The larger companies would take the spots used by anchor stores and of course the smaller companies could subdivide or take the smaller stores. There's plenty of parking, they're located in the suburbs where many people live - and the food courts can even stay open, those employees have to eat lunch somewhere.
• kimmel 13y ago
  The city I live in now only has 2 traditional style malls left. When I moved here numerous years ago it had 7 malls, all of which were accessible by bus. That is a major change and there has been no new malls built. The buildings just stand there like relics of a time gone past. Retail and restaurants have moved into existing strip malls that had space available due to businesses folding. Back where I grew up it is the same story. I miss the tradition malls because some had unique and good food places. As well as arcades, movie theaters, and places to hang out. Malls that are thriving do so because there is enough population around to support the businesses and they have new stores coming in to fill out the empty spaces.
• giantrobothead 13y ago
  When I was a wee lad, my Grandmother used to spend days with me while my parents were working, and after say, a morning in the park, we'd go to the mall and get lunch at the restaurant in JC Penney's. It was run by a gentleman of Greek descent, whom my Grandmother knew, as she seemed to know everyone, and served brunch, lunch, dinner, like any other small cafe. I would routinely get a hot dog, served on toasted white bread. It was tremendous. I miss those days, and the subsequent teen years of the nineties spent mall-ratting with my friends, hitting the record store, book store, the arcade (don't get me started on the demise of the video game arcade) people-watching... Times change, and I assume, so will these structures, whether it be to fade into irrelevance or transform into something vibrant and communal again.
• jimmaswell 13y ago
  The malls around me are doing just fine. My friends and I find them to be a fine place to go occasionally. I've always found them to be a nice place to be around. I don't really get the complaints about them in this thread. That law of headlines thing applies here.
• blahedo 13y ago
  I'd like to mention three malls that don't purely fit the "greybox" model and may point to a likely future for malls in general. - West Edmonton Mall (Edmonton, AB). In one sense, it is the mother of all greybox malls, surrounded by an asphalt moat. But: it's accessible via local transit, and it's very much in the model of an artificial downtown: it contains hotels, apartments, a hockey rink, an aquarium, and a variety of other things not in the simple greybox mall. This is because it gets really freaking cold in Edmonton in the winter and it's nice to go "outside" without going "outside"; and the diversity of stuff that's there keeps it more alive than at, say, Woodfield (outside Chicago, IL). The food court felt less like a food court and more like a street that had a bunch of little food shops on it. Basically, they've adapted "downtown" to the needs of their climate. - The Ala Moana Mall (Honolulu, HI). I mention this mostly to contrast the previous one. It's laid out like a greybox mall, but since it's Honolulu, they just skip the whole "roof" thing on the central ways. So it's really more like a pedestrian street with a lot of shops on it. Also, it contains (or is adjacent to?) some non-shop things, and it's well-connected by transit. EDIT to add: There are outdoor malls other places, too, and they're sort of in vogue right now. What makes this one different is how well-adapted it is to its surroundings. - Providence Place Mall (Providence, RI). Built much more recently (1999 or so), it does include a parking deck but isn't surrounded by asphalt in all directions. It's got entrances that are right off a relatively walkable street, with a couple transit connections (and it's about two blocks from the main central transit station). Internally, it feels nothing like a classic greybox mall: it's five stories with shops on both sides, and lots of windows give it plenty of natural light. It felt much more like a part of downtown than an alternative to it. So basically, it's possible to set up your mall in such a way that it steers clear of the major problems plaguing malls; and there's certainly reason to think that reinvention rather than abandonment is the mall's likeliest future.
  • ams6110 13y ago
    Combining residential spaces with malls is an interesting idea. There are a lot of builing codes that now require ground-floor retail on any residential buildings over a certain number of floors, but I've never seen or thought about revitalizing malls by adding a residential component. One downside would be that the parking starts to get taken up by residents rather than shoppers.
• plumeria 13y ago
  I think the best model so far is the mixed development: offices, residences, and commercial stores all in one. That's what you see in developing countries.
• Patrick_Devine 13y ago
  Maybe it's because I live in Palo Alto, but it seems, at least here, that there is a hollowing out of the middle end of the spectrum. On the low end, there are still the Target's and the Walmart's, and on the high end you have things like Stanford Shopping Center, Union Square, Santa Row, etc. The middle has taken a real beating though, as has the low middle. I'm not sure who shops at JC Penny, Sears, or even K-Mart for that matter.
  • ams6110 13y ago
    K-mart's problem is that their merchandise is no better than what Wal-Mart carries, their selection is worse, and the shopping experience in their stores is, in my experience, worse than at Wal-Mart as hard as that may be to believe. Target seems to be a step above Wal-Mart/K-Mart, and I'm guessing that has been a big part of JC-Pennys' and Sears' problem. The local JC Penny's here has gone, and going to Sears feels like stepping into the 1970s, the store literally has not had a serious rennovation since then. Target stores are new, bright and well-organized and reasonably pleasant to visit.
    • Patrick_Devine 13y ago
      I definitely agree. I think Target has positioned themselves as the low end place you go to shop if you don't want to be associated with the crowd that shops at Walmart. I'm not sure anyone even knew that that segment existed. You can see this playing out in the airlines as well. JetBlue/Virgin America/EasyJet are all low cost alternatives to the majors, but more upscale than RyanAir, Allegiant or Southwest. Actually, in many cases they're even nicer than the majors, but they can't offer great connections or as comprehensive business travel.
• z92 13y ago
  Reminds me of this op-ed from 1995 "...how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month?" http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306 http://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirva...
  • dasil003 13y ago
    LOL, that's good for a chuckle... at least as long as Newsweek is able to keep the lights on :)
  • astrodust 13y ago
    Some people, even technically inclined writers, fail to understand exponential growth.
• jccooper 13y ago
  The demographics have changed around the first- and second-generation malls enough that many of them are no longer viable. Since they're huge properties, they tend to rot slowly. They're finally dying. There's probably some fundamental challenges wrt online shopping, and preference for more "natural" environments, but there are plenty of malls that are doing very well, especially the more upscale ones. Just because not every mall is succeeding, it doesn't mean the whole category is doomed. (Not that I actually like them, but enough people certainly do.)
• bane 13y ago
  This is really an important question as malls are usually massive holders of lots of valuable real estate in many towns. Where I live, there are...maybe around a dozen proper stereotypical malls within an hour drive. Of those, the two malls I literally grew up in have had very different trajectories. The one next to my highschool is a veritable empty shell. I think it sits at 40% occupancy, with entire wings boarded up, lights turned off and otherwise abandoned. When I was in High School it was the city center, so bustling and full of people it was often hard to walk in a straight line. I'd leave school and go to the mall instead of taking the bus home, mill around in the arcade for a bit, eat some cheap Chinese food in the food court, bum around in Radio Shack or the electronics section at JC Penny or just hang around with friends mallrats style. It seemed like it would stay this way forever. But some key demographic shifts happened in the 2000s and the entire city changed, leaving the mall a grotesque enlarged gangrenous tumor hanging off of the attached Walmart. Strangely, the arcade that was there, then closed, is back open again and one of the few signs of life in the entire place. I've thought a lot about what happened, and the basic conclusion is that it had to do with the housing boom and bust. In the 2000s as the housing market was exploding, people who had lived in this older city suddenly found out their houses had doubled in value. They sold them off and turned the equity into a down payment on a new house in new suburbs. Those new suburbs came complete with new malls (the two new malls near the new suburb I live in are pretty jam packed all the time) and everybody left. So who bought those old houses? The people who were working on building the new suburbs. In this case largely immigrant workers from Hispanic countries. They needed the cheapest possible housing, and these older areas, though now much more expensive, were still lower cost than the new suburbs. Because of the higher housing costs and the lower pay these new immigrants had, expensive mall shopping just wasn't on their regular agenda. Better bargains were the draw and Walmart boomed, outgrew their original store and struck an agreement with the mall for cheap property and rent if they could become the new anchor at the mall. If you drive a circle around the mall these days, the parking lot outside of the Walmart is packed to the gills, there are maybe 2 dozen cars in any other lot at the mall combined. A walk through the mall tells the same story, Walmart is buzzing with activity, but right outside the doors, nobody goes anywhere else. To give you an idea what a huge shift this is and that I'm not imagining it, when I graduated, my highschool was something like 85% White, and 3% Hispanic. In 2012 it was less than 30% white, and 42% Hispanic. For comparison, the demographics of the entire region are 55.41% White and 16.3% Hispanic. The other mall, in another nearby town, is doing well. It's a larger mall, and the demographics of the area didn't really change all that much. It's not quite as busy as it used to be, the anchor stores seem to be the most empty, but it seems to be getting along fine. Now in the 2000s, two new malls sprung up in the newly built suburbs. One, a traditional all under one roof enclosed 1.4 million sq ft mall. It's new and pleasant and does pretty well. It's not packed at all times, but business is obviously doing well enough there. The other is an open air discount outlet mall and it's packed, shoulder to shoulder, at all times. I bet if I were to go there right now I'd have trouble finding parking. It's booming, and there's talk of them expanding the property to a sister mall across the main town thoroughfare with a connecting pedestrian tunnel. There's also a pair of high-end luxury malls in another nearby town that have been through all of this pretty much without hiccup. A time traveler from 1998 to today wouldn't notice much difference except for the fashion. So yes, I think some malls are dead or dying. That much is clear. But I think the reasons for it are more than just Amazon. There's still lots of services I get from my local malls. I don't go every week, but the 3 or 4 times I do go I inevitably walk out with a few hundred dollars worth of clothes and other goods. And looking at the other people there, the demographics span from young to old, I don't think Amazon has quite replaced the kind of buying where you have to go see the product. Some stores have caught on to this, and have a seamless exchange program from their online stores. They know that you'll end up buying something you don't like or can't fit into, so they let you bring it back to their physical store, because that's less hassle than shipping it back. They'll even time online sales to preceed in-store sales a bit, so when you come to the store to return the ill-fitting item, why don't you browse the 50% of sale they're offering right now? edit Thinking about this more, I think a similar effect can be seen in the midwest. As agriculture labor shifted to much cheaper migrant workers and automation, the people who used to live in these places year round either became less affluent, or moved away. Either way the local malls had a smaller pool of eligible customers and they die off.
• kingkawn 13y ago
  I think the time to turn these all into public mural projects and community spaces has finally come.
• trekky1700 13y ago
  I think the American model of malls may be over. The model where there are crazy numbers of huge malls everywhere, even in relatively small populations. But malls are still hugely popular. In Canada, where we have a lot less malls, they seem to be growing more popular. With renovations and extensions being built to attract and accommodate more shoppers. But there aren't that many major malls here, and they stick to major population areas. I'm always surprised the size of malls in small towns when I visit the US. Northwood, Ohio has a population of 5,000. That doesn't seem like it could sustain a mall the size described, even if you include the surrounding area and assume there's no other malls in the area. I think the model will change, but malls will stay around for a long time. You'll have larger malls servicing more population, rather than malls for every town.
• slashmasterx 13y ago
  The thing I found most surprising about this article >Internet sales reached six per cent of total retail spending in the fourth quarter of 2013 I thought that would be a bit higher.
  • astrodust 13y ago
    Remember that the fashion industry has revenue that absolutely dwarfs the tech industry. It's so far beyond that it's not even funny. People can't go naked, they need clothes, and most of the time they prefer to try them on, see how they look and fit, then purchase in person. Then there's food which is even larger. The online ordering of groceries is a drop in the bucket. You want fresh food, you're going to have to go and hand pick it. Not surprisingly Wal-Mart has a foot in both camps.
    • mikeash 13y ago
      Does the fashion industry really "dwarf" the tech industry? Random googling tells me that the global fashion industry does about $1.2 trillion in revenue per year. Microsoft, Google, Apple, and IBM together do a bit over $400 billion per year, so about a third of that, and that's only four (albeit large) tech companies. I'd be surprised if you couldn't more than triple that number after you accounted for all the other tech companies in the world.
      • astrodust 13y ago
        That's still a fraction of the fashion industry. It's long-tail from there.
        • mikeash 13y ago
          Samsung's electronics division does almost $200 billion/year. Foxconn does $120 billion. Hitachi is also about $120 billion. HP is about $110 billion. Amazon is $75 billion. Intel is $50 billion. Need I go on?
• ulfw 13y ago
  If US malls want to survive they need to start copying international malls, which are a lot more upscale, better looking (new or significantly renovated) and above all offer a much better mix between entertainment (movie theaters etc) and food (actual restaurants you would WANT to go to instead of chain/fast-food places) as well as stores. The problem with many malls is that they are copy cats of each other. Uninspiring 'practical' architecture, inedible food, the exact same stores at every mall, not much to do besides shopping and having a fast-foody coffee.
  • maxerickson 13y ago
    U.S. malls do tend to have movie theaters. But they aren't going to pay high rent to get into a mall if there is open commercial land anywhere nearby. It's a similar thing with decent restaurants, they don't necessarily gain much from the association. I saw a thing in a local paper that the bankrupt mall should 'bring in' good stores. Of course this is backwards, the stores mentioned in the comment have no interest in running a store in a run down mall in a small market.
    • ulfw 13y ago
      Very true actually. It's just sad that malls had to get all the way to the state of being run-down. What I suggested should have been down 10 or even more years ago. Right now I'd agree with you that many malls have to work hard to find tenants who'd be unwilling to be associated with a mall.
  • lucaspiller 13y ago
    One of the big things about most malls outside the US is that they aren't usually built in the middle of nowhere. You don't need to drive for an hour then struggle to find a place to park just to buy some jeans. In some cases this is a because the transport links were built afterwards, but in most cases this is because they are built in areas that are already connected. Obviously space is restricted so they are smaller (250,000 sq ft is a pretty average size), this means you often end up with the same well known brands in each mall which can be a bit boring. Due to space and as malls are usually in the 'town centre' you don't always have cinemas in the mall, but they can usually be found nearby.
• deleted 13y ago
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• egypturnash 13y ago
  Basically my feeling is that malls are "over" for people who are too poor to shop anywhere but the deep discount world of Walmart. If we get minimum wage raised to a high enough place that they can actually pay for anything more than the barest minimum to pay rent and eat and whatnot, then they'll have the funds to start shopping at places that actually have nice things and well-paid employees. I live in Seattle. There's a lot of malls, shopping districts, and other kinds of collections of shops. There's also a lot of money in the town, to support all these stores of all sizes. Malls are dying all over because money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people. People who want their malls to thrive should be campaigning for a living wage for everyone (or eve better, a basic income) - because all those people will have enough money to happily buy all their pretty trinkets.
• Eleutheria 13y ago
  Malls as shopping centers may be over, but those who transmute into amusement parks will survive. I rarely go to the mall for shopping, but I go many times a week for a walk, a fancy dinner, or just to meet people.
  • Zigurd 13y ago
    When I bought a house just outside route 495, I had to plan grocery shopping carefully or I'd be stuck with no pizza delivery and a can of beans in the pantry. Now I have a new shopping center with a BJs, a supermarket, and soon a Cabelas so I can shoot all the food I won't be able to buy after Immanent Collapse (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404923 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404923) about 12 minutes away, door to door. Clearly there was demand. The supermarket is often packed, even though it isn't as big or nice as the Wegmans that opened a bit farther away. There are malls even farther out that appear to be prospering, including some old ones that are less seedy than they used to be. Curiously, there is still a lot of empty office space off 495. The newly built then mostly evacuated Sun campus off Route 3 is still very slack. So people out here are making and spending money, but not filling up the old Digital and HP buildings.
• gdilla 13y ago
  one thing missing in these predictions is the fact that we are still social animals. It certainly is convenient to buy online, but teenagers, busy parents (where they can amuse there little ones in play areas or Santa) and people (increasingly) seeking relief from the heat (as in socal), gather at malls, and engage in both planned and impulse buys by just being there. I'm not saying malls are good, or efficient, or will survive in current form, but, there's a reason why Barnes and Noble has converted into a coffee shop with books - people like to hang. We may see malls take on more experiential offerings to make up for underutilized retail space. Additionally, I know that best buy and guitar center will price match any price I show from an online retailer on my phone (this is so not obvious, but just ask). Just knowing that, I will occaisonally go to the mall or physical shop to actually look at things & try them out.
• praetorian84 13y ago
  Half the problem is that every single mall where I live has basically the same shops. I find that often new malls seem to be built largely as speculative investments by property developers, rather than to fulfill an actual need. All that happens is that that the new mall is either a disaster, or gradually replaces an older one, simply because the demand doesn't exist for yet another collection of the same chain stores.
• malandrew 13y ago
  Or you know they could try to promote more mixed use properties, which is what most people actually want. It's very clear that city centers are growing everywhere because that's what young people are gravitating towards. It's a lifestyle thing and if they don't consider the lifestyle people aspire to in their future plans, they are going to go bankrupt again. Take a look at SF for an example. Many people would love to live in the few blocks surrounding the commercial areas of the Mission, the Haight (upper and lower), North Beach, Union Street, Hayes Valley, etc. Those areas are desirable because they are supremely convenient. They are the "modern mall" because they are also the "timeless mall", i.e. the mall that naturally forms when people decide where they want to shop instead of corporate overseers. It's a pattern that exists everywhere in the world in big modern cities to small towns designed before the advent of the car. Betting on mixed use buildings creates "captive demand", since your commercial store customers conveniently live right upstairs. And they are happy to live in such buildings because they provide the ultimate access by foot to food, bars, supermarkets and other businesses that enrich their lifestyle. There are a few thing they need to do to make such mixed use properties desirable. * Mixed use properties need authentic business with unique identity instead of franchises (e.g. a building with a starbucks and a moe's underneath it isn't as desirable as one with a neighborhood coffee shop and a local burrito joint). * The deals struck by commercial owner's associations (COAs) need to consider the needs of the HOA which is often formed after the COA for any mixed use property. Any property (like the Beacon in SF) where the COA has unfair deals that prejudice the residents of a building often end up in litigation that suppresses the value of the the property in the building causing the building to move to having more renters than owners. Unfortunately many of the new building projects in SF don't take this into account. There are a ton of new projects going up south of the ballpark. All those properties will be filled because of the extremely limited stock of housing, but they are not going to be desirable places to live because of how few of those properties are designed to be mixed use, which is what will make that area feel like a neighborhood instead of a vertical suburb that you need to leave in order to visit a commercial center.
• hawkharris 13y ago
  I enjoy two things about going to my local mall...things that I can't get from online retailers: instant gratification and ceremony. 1. Instant gratification....If I'm excited about a new product, I can get up immediately and travel to the store, find and pick up the item. Sure, this entails an effort of its own, but at least I'm taking action instead of waiting for a package to come. 2. Ceremony: You may not appreciate this unless you're a videogame buff, too, but there was nothing like waiting in line for GTA5. It was truly ceremonial... High school students, construction workers, businessmen, etc., all stood with me because we were so excited to tear off the packaging of that game. The store even hosted a party featuring competitions and prizes. Will malls survive? I don't know....the prices, selection and convenience of Amazon are hard to beat. But my advice is to capitalize on the instant gratification and the ceremonial aspects of shopping in-person. Online retailers haven't yet found a way to duplicate this IMHO.
  • twerquie 13y ago
    What you describe as "ceremony" I take to mean socialization, that you are shopping with the public in a market atmosphere and I think that's something absolutely intrinsic in all human cultures and isn't going anywhere. The mall is the perfect style of market for shopping for clothes, media, fast food, housewares.
• smadge 13y ago
  What's with all the hate for brutalist architecture in this thread?
• royaljelly 13y ago
  The US is lucky to have its malls. TFA mentions growth coming from Asia, where pretty much every new development - and there are a lot - is a luxury mall that positions itself as an 'integrated' destination i.e. retail, entertainment, lifestyle, office space and residential. The problem is worst in Hong Kong where MTR Corporation, which owns the underground network, also owns the land that its stations sit underneath. It makes more money from the malls it builds on top of them than from running public transit. The luxury part is a problem too in that Chanel, Gucci etc are given free/low-cost storefronts to up the image of the mall which not only raises prices for normal tenants but means they put their goods prices up too so they look like a serious alternative to the luxury brands. Chinese malls in particular have a lot of made-up Chinese-owned store brands with foreign sounding names, selling utter rubbish at wildly inflated prices. I wish the 'high end' here was JC Penney or Sears. And forget a reasonably priced Kung Pao chicken; I hope you enjoy chicken feet and birds nest.
  • acchow 13y ago
    > Chinese malls in particular have a lot of made-up Chinese-owned store brands with foreign sounding names, selling utter rubbish at wildly inflated prices. I find this comical whenever I see it in China - especially brand names with western geographies on their merchandise. "California 1973", "Cambridge".
• mwfunk 13y ago
  I have fond memories of hanging out in malls when I was a kid, but my fondest memories are about things that I don't find in malls anymore. Arcades, toy stores, book stores, hobby shops, electronics, music shops, etc. Those things still exist but it seems like there's a lot less of them now. When I go to malls now it seems like nothing but designer clothing stores. I swear there used to be a lot more diversity in the the types of stores you'd find. I'm not sure if this is a real trend or just the haze of childhood memories.
• kimonos 13y ago
  Can't imagine my life without malls. Haha!
• tbirdz 13y ago
  I only went to the local mall to go to the movie theater, which was located inside the mall. Then the movie theater shut down, so now I never go to the mall.
• jusben1369 13y ago
  I feel like the article was trying to make the point "traditional malls from the 80's are dying" but didn't do a good job at that (the title for example). So that's leading to a lot of comments saying "Well some malls are flourishing and some are dying" I suspect the flourishing ones are the newer malls that have a lot of unique features you can't get online (food/cinema/furniture)
• pjbrunet 13y ago
  I find "indoor" malls are great for working on code. Even in bad weather you can take a break and stretch your legs, do some window shopping and then get back down to work. It's nice to have a predictable environment like that. Also malls tend to have high, airy ceilings. I'm no architect but I find large open spaces to be pleasant, for lack of a better word, especially for cerebral work. IKEA is a great place to work on code too. Free coffee.
• singingfish 13y ago
  Hopefully, they're toxic environments that showcase the worst aspects of the industrial revolution.