Most of Lafayette place had walls painted white, and the corridors were wide enough,. Where the heck were they grey? But I agree about the weird layout and the curving corridors. It was also ac weird mix of shops, with a leather store, Encyclopedia Britannica store, WaldenBooks, and other eclectic. It also had an enormous Food Court that I think was a large part of the mall’s raison d’etre – but all the stands were restricted to a tint shop of the same size.
And what was with the classical Greek statues with neon tubes on them?
Nordstrom is closing down their big outlet at the Lloyd Center Mall in Portland. It’s been posited that the increasing income gap in America is to blame. The middle class is shrinking as more and more people either become well off or head the other way into low income status. Neither of those groups is going to shop at stores geared to middle class incomes, which is what most malls shoot for. Malls now seem to be little more than a series of discount shoe stores, cell phone kiosks, fast food courts and knickknack vendors. I haven’t been in one in a long time, partly because those aren’t things I’m interested in, and partly because I don’t like having to elbow my way through hordes of teens.
Here is NE Indiana will both our malls are “sick men” they are assisted by the fact that our city is the economic hub for a 75 mile radius. Only Toledo and Indianapolis have shopping options which meet or exceed this area’s.
Both malls are relatively small and the larger enclosed mall has a had several fires and a sewage line break in the past few years that have kept it closed for extended periods. The smaller, open air mall has really been hurt by this year’s brutal winter. But it has added a few new businesses and it may yet limp ahead into the next decade.
Here in Indiana, malls don’t seem to do the business that shopping centers do. Down in Indianapolis, there are four major malls , but the shopping centers in the NE section of he city do far more business than any of them. Over in NW and Northern Indiana, the same seems to be true as despite the large populations, there are relatively few traditional shopping malls.
Southern and Central Indiana are both lightly populated as compared with the rest of the state so their limited number of malls and their limited business simply reflect that fact.
Mall of America is expanding, and a huge outlet mall is being built 5 miles south. Paragon Outlet Partners has commitments from retailers for 90 percent of the space at the 409,000-square-foot Eagan outlet mall, opening August of this year.
The malls in my town are doing just fine, which isn’t any surprise since the San Fernando Valley is Shopping Mall Heaven. Some of the larger malls are actually expanding. There was a bump in the road during the 2007-2010 economic apocalypse, especially one corner mall which used to feature a Borders, Circuit City & Comp USA – that place was rather depressing for awhile. But it’s coming back.
I live in Decatur, AL which is highly industrialized mostly with chemical companies (BP Chemical, 3M, etc.) and very near the Huntville Metro Area (home of Marshall Space Flight Center and countless military and aerospace contractors). The Decatur Mall has changed hands multiple times in the past 10 years. Three years ago or so Dillard’s closed after having threatened to do so for several years if the mall didn’t build a bigger space for them (it was split into two different storefronts in the mall for a number of years). About a year ago a new state of the art movie theater was added into the mall, but hasn’t seemed to increase traffic to the retailers. Back in November the JC Penny outlet closed, and Sears is scheduled to close in April. This will leave Belk as the only anchor store left along with a new sub-anchor called Electronics Express.
From what I hear the malls in Huntville aren’t doing very well either, as both stores and shoppers seem to be moving to the rather new Bridge Street Center (basically an open air upscale mall).
Meyerland is kind of an interesting case I think- it was high-end in the late 1950s, really awful by the late 80s, and they’ve rebuilt it and it’s going strong again. Not sure why it never fell apart myself; we used to go there sometimes as a kid (we lived in Alief), and stopped in about 1984 or so.
They’re tearing down malls in Northeast Ohio left and right.
Randall Park Mall, in the south eastern Cleveland suburbs, was the first to go. I don’t think it got demolished but it was done being a viable mall by the 2000s. Rolling Acres in Akron was shut down in 2008. Everyone is freaking out because Parmatown mall in the western Cleveland suburbs just got shut down last week.
There’s still Great Northern Mall in the north east suburbs, which I thought I’d heard was in trouble of being shut down but I can’t find info so I guess not. There’s Chapel Hill Mall in an Akron suburb which doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Beachwood Place in the near east suburbs which has a Nordstrom so it can’t possibly go anywhere - it’s pretty chi-chi and not called “mall” but “place” so maybe people don’t notice it’s a mall. The newest mall from the late 90s/early 2000s out in the far western suburbs, South Park Mall, is doing well I believe.
Seems like the most suburban malls are doing ok but the ones on urban bus lines, not so much.
We do have a few new very fancy uhm…outdoor shopping centers? Where all the stores have outward-facing doors and there’s a little patch of grass and a fountain in the middle and very expensive stores. Legacy Village (oddly enough a stone’s throw from Beachwood Place, the thriving chi-chi mall) in the east, Crocker Park in the west and First & Main in the south.
Our local megamall is barely staying alive. Anchors are either pulling out or barely functioning. One of the old anchor spaces is now a cheapo Asian “market”.
Why go there? Rarely have anything we want if they do it’s overpriced.
It’s not just the mall, the whole area around it is dying. There used to be 4 first run multiplexes near it. Now there’s just a dollar theater in the “dirt mall” down the road. Strangely, the restaurants in the area are still doing well. And of course not a single bookstore anywhere around.
How bad is it? The local news no longer does the traditional “look how bad traffic and parking is at the mall” stories on Black Friday.
The Albany, NY area has a number of surprising retail options and quite frankly too much retail capacity overall in the Capital District. I’m surprised that most of it is still open and some is even being re-developed. What surprises me most is the presence of a lot of stores that you might not expect, including some absolutely huge flagship-type stores. I’ve heard that the area is somehow good for market research, but I can’t find anything useful to back that up.
Where was Lafayette Place? I moved to the area in '98, must have been gone by then.
Also around Boston…
Natick Mall added a whole new wing a few years ago (with apartments, WTF?). The place seems to have pretty good traffic when I go.
The Chestnut Hill area has a few malls of different sorts. The Atrium closed up a while ago (Borders was probably their biggest tenant) and I read that they’re turning it into doctors offices. The Chestnut Hill Mall seems pretty stable. The Street seems to have gussied itself up in the last few years. And there’s a new development called the Square that’s nearly finished, and will have the area’s first Wegmans.
Yes, Albany is a good market for research because it’s relatively compact and you can easily cover the area with your ads. But I doubt there’s any connection between that and Malls.
In the area, both Colonie Center and Crossgates are thriving; both are upscale. Latham Circle has been moribund for years. Rotterdam Square is struggling a bit, but has three anchor stores that have survived the closings. Several other malls – 20 Mall, Northway Mall, and Mohawk Mall – have changed from an enclosed mall to a big box model.
Missoula, Montana is apparently a bit behind the curve in this regard. Southgate Mall, which is every inch the classic 1980s-1990s era mall, is still doing well to all outwards appearances, with Dillard’s, Sears, and JCPenney as anchors and two separate Herberger’s locations. It had a Radio Shack until someone realized what year it was and replaced it with a Simply Mac, which is simply overpriced. (This happened last year.) It has multiple restaurants, if not the classic food court scene, and two casinos, because that’s legal everywhere in Montana.
It’s probably important to realize at this juncture that Missoula is one of the largest cities in the state and is the largest city in reasonable driving distance if you live in the same valleys, which becomes important when the passes either are or should be closed. In all candor, this place becomes a city in a bottle sometimes, which allows archaic forms to flourish without being out-competed.
We don’t have large regional Malls here. We’ve got a lot of large neighborhood Malls. The lower and mid level Malls are struggling. But the high end Malls seen to be going strong.
Lafayette place was right at Downtown Crossing. The back of then-Jordan Marsh (now Macy’s) opened into it – the side away from Filene’s.
Natick Mall did add a new wing, and is definitely an upper-crusty place, but it used to call itself “The Natick Collection”. That it’s now calling itself the “Natick Mall” tells me that the economy has taken out some of the pretension. It always is packed, with parking difficult. The Atrium is still empty. While you’re on the topic, Shopper’s World, down the road from the Natick Mall, is still going strong, although it’s not the same as the center of the same name from the 60s. It’s also outdoor.
Elsewhere in the Boston area, you’ve got North Shore Mall, which also added a new wing a couple of years ago, and has been going strong since it reconfigured itself about 20 years ago. Also South Shore Plaza. Burlington is still humming. I’m surprised that Meadow Glen Mall in Medford continues chugging along, despite the loss of several of its stores and the appearance of very local outlets – that usually signals that The End is Nigh. But it still has Marshall’s and Kohl’s as anchors, a Party City, and a viable food court.
And there’s Square One in Saugus, with Sears, Macy’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, T.J. Maxx and Best Buy. It’s certainly got a lot more than the New England Shopping Mall it used to be. Despite losing a lot of stores (Waldenbooks, Suncoast Video, Filene’s and Filene’s Basement), it still keeps going.
This is true in more than just one horse towns. The big boxes never want to go into a mall.
There is one mall near me that they’ve done a lot to bring mid/upscale chain restaurants into new, stand-alone buildings in the parking lot. As for the base mall, you could shoot a cannon down the interior & quite possibly not hit anyone.
I don’t think the outlet thing there is all that recent, is it? I don’t think I’ve been to SuperMall since the early 2000s, and I swear it was an outlet mall back then.