So are malls dying or not?

In My Humble Opinion
1

From this May 2015 article:

http://www.citylab.com/design/2015/03/shopping-malls-arent-actually-dying/387925/

**According to a much-cited analysis by the CoStar Group, almost 20 percent of the country’s enclosed shopping malls have vacancies of 10 percent or higher. At 3.4 percent of American malls, vacancy has reached at least 40 percent, putting them in the “dying” category.

The dead or dying mall is a real phenomenon. But all you have to do is invert these figures to get the bigger picture, which looks very different. If 20 percent of malls are in trouble, then 80 percent are still healthy. If 3.4 percent of malls are dying, then 96.6 percent of them aren’t.**

Last year, a couple months after the above article (though I hadn’t read it), I posted this thread:

That dark big box (and other) retail isn’t coming back, is it?

Obviously, this is a topic in which I take interest. I have practiced commercial real estate in the past, and I have a habit of keeping an eye on what’s happening with and to spaces in Indianapolis. Although the CityLab article would seem to contradict the opinion I expressed in my thread from last year (and that of the many posters who more or less agreed with me), I am not sanguine about the future of malls (both indoor and outdoor). Here are my reasons:

• More anchors are going to die. The consensus is that Sears is on deathwatch. Feel free to speculate on others.

• What up-and-coming anchors are there to take the place of the old ones? A city like Indy is already saturated with low- to high-end departments stores. In my lifetime, Nordstrom and Kohl’s appeared, but we’re talking 1990s.

• Even high-end anchors can disappear with nothing to take their place. Nordstrom was first located in the Circle Center Mall Downtown. Once there was a vacancy in the more upscale Fashion Mall on the Northside, it left Circle Center, and that space has been vacant since 2008 or so. I think they are currently working on turning it into offices or something. (And there are many retail locations that look pretty good to my eye in Indy that have been vacant for 6, 7, 8 years, in various high-traffic areas.)

• There is downward pressure on even high-end retail now. Saks and Nordstrom had poor holiday results.

The whole concept of the mall is built around the anchor. If anchors don’t thrive, malls don’t either. I really don’t see big department stores thriving over the next 20 years. To a certain extent, these can be replaced with upscale grocery stores, but I think the trend is not in its favor.

One reason indoor malls are not doing absolutely terrible in Indy is that there aren’t that many. But I would be surprised if, say, Lafayette Square existed in 10-15 years. There are a couple others I’ve never been to that have bad reputations, aren’t in good areas, etc. While there is room to build more mixed-use stuff in growing, popular areas, I’d say that retail in Indy is quite overbuilt.

Thoughts?

2

Of the ones I know or knew, more are dead than alive. And some of the ones left are on their last legs (even with anchor-level stores) or reinventing themselves as a sort of sprawling office complex. I can think of maybe 4-5 around here doing well enough that you could count on them being around 5 or more years from now. Several anchors die and ----- that could change.

3

I hope they all die. I cannot go into a mall without the horrible feeling that I’m not getting out without a lot of blood being spilled.

4

This is ignoring a key statistic: the number of malls which are not merely “in trouble” but have gone past that point and have closed completely.

5

That’s what I thought as well: once a mall is dead, it’s out of the stats.

6

Or it never finishes being built.

Outlet mall may not open until 2017.

7

I live in the DC metro area and the mall closest to me, Tysons Corner, is thriving. The anchors are Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Lord & Taylor, and Nordstrom. That mall is crazy busy all the time. Next door is the “Galleria,” a sister mall of more upscale stores. It’s got another Macy’s plus Nieman Marcus, Sax Fifth Avenue and other uber expensive stores. That mall has been doing very well for decades.
At the same time, nearby Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax is doing ok… It has 2 Macy’s which is weird, and cheaper stores.

Springfield mall in Nothern Virginia was refurbished recently and it still strikes me as a second-class mall.

8

Chris Rock said every city has at least two malls - the one the white people go to and the one the white people used to go to.

Personally, I’m baffled by the trend toward outdoor malls. They might make sense in California and Florida, but they are insane in Illinois.

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I think the internet has taken at least half the customers out of the malls. Rent is expensive, the internet’s a cheaper option for shopping.

10

I was wondering how long it would take for that exercise in Hubris to be cited.

Elk Grove was a section of Sacramento. It became an incorporated city for the sole reason to get zoning rights, to allow this huge monstrosity to be built.
The thinking was that the tax revenue from the mall would more than pay for the costs of being a city (schools, City Hall, police, fire, etc.).

As they found out: Sacramento is over-run with malls. On the I-80 corridor, there is a huge (and growing) open-air mall just over the Yolo county line.

The “Outlet Mall” is a last-grasp attempt to stave off irrelevance - Look! We can offer MUCH lower prices! Turn off your computers!
Stay away from Amazon!

11

this boggles my mind, too. In largish cities like Indianapolis, there are LOTS of outdoor malls springing up in the newer areas.
They have the same stores as the old-fashioned malls, but are built more like a strip-mall, with all the stores along the edges of a big rectangular parking lot. There may not be a typical anchor department store, but there is often a huge big-box store right nearby. The shoe stores, fashion stores, Bed,bath&beyond,OldNavy,etc are all the same companies which 25 years ago would have been built inside a mall.

But now they prefer to build their new stores outdoors, with awkward access during bad weather. It seems like nobody browses or goes-window shopping–people walk directly from their car to the one store they want to shop in, and then leave.

I don’t get it. How much cheaper is it? The stores are paying rent in a new, highly desirable location, although without the maintenance costs of an indoor mall. But also, I think, with zero walk-in customers.

12

There are two big malls in my area. One is thriving; the other isn’t, but I can tell you why the declining one is the way it is. It’s been built onto so many times, you can get lost in it. Really. That can scare people.

I walk at the busy one, which is closer to my house, a few times a week and in fact was there earlier today.

13

You want confused?

Try the Stonestown Galleria
In SF - built as an open-air “Mall”*, in 1987 it was re-built as an enclosed space.

In 2004, it was bought by General Growth Properties - the folks who almost developed the Elk Grove fiasco.

It had 3 major stores: Macy’s, Nordstrom, and Tower Records.
Haven’t seen it in ~10 years, so don’t know how it’s doing.

    • this really was a mall in the conventional use of the word - a wide pedestrian walkway with (more or less) symmetrical buildings alongside.
14

When I was a kid, Macy’s was a store I associated vaguely with New York City. Maybe from Miracle on 34th Street? Not sure. It didn’t have bad associations. Then, eventually, it swallowed up a lot of department stores around the country, one of them being classic Indy retailer L.S. Ayres. Maybe it was Ayres’ time to go, but Macy’s was no improvement.

Oh, and they took over Marshall Field’s in Chicago, for fuck’s sake! Talk about something losing all it’s meaning in one fell plunge into toiletdom. Back in the 80s, when we lived near Chicago, my parents used to talk about M-F in reverent tones: it was expensive, but it was worth it! Macy’s?! Not expensive, not worth–narm narm narm narm…

Article about Macy’s from last year (sales are down because the middle class it taking it up the ass–who knew?):

Cutting 4,000 jobs after shitty Christmas 2015:

The poor performance is likely to add to the heat CEO Terry Lundgren is feeling from activist investors eager to see Macy’s shares rise again after falling by nearly half in 2015.

Whoops! Might I give the CEO a bit of further advice as to why things might not be so great right now? I think this is something just about anyone could perceive, but here goes:

Macy’s doesn’t stand for anything. It’s the most boring, generic, MOR shopping experience imaginable. It’s just sad. It’s Sears-level sad. It’s not upscale. It’s not discount. It’s nothing at all.

And why is that? I really have no clue. There are some stores like Old Navy that I think are pretty stupid, but I get that they are at least cheap. Macy’s is just worthless.

And it’s not irrelevant to the OP, since sad Macy’s anchors a lot of sad sad malls. Do you think Macy’s is going to have some internal revolution over the next 5-10 years and come up with something amazing? Mind-blowing? Something new? Something meaningful?

Fuck no it won’t. It’s a business that’s slowly but surely going to be ground away by market forces until it doesn’t exist any more.

15

Quityerbitchin’!

I remember L.S. Ayer’s
I even remember the Rike’s store in Dayton.

Both became Macy’s, when Macy’s was still up-scale enough that they would not take Visa or M/C - only AmEx and their own card.

Macy’s ran up against Nordstrom when Nordies invaded Macy’s turf.

They both went after the same market: the upper end of Middle Class and the lower end of Upper Class.

One of the Macy’s to be shuttered is about 1.5 miles from me, in a first-gen enclosed mall - it was a major anchor.
I have never seen its parking lot even half as full as the one across the street - home to a Wal-Mart Superstore (in a strip mall).

For “list of malls dying”, you can add this one - it already lost the JC Penny and several small footprint stores.
The cinema is not even competitive with the modern megaplex format (hint: the projectionist is the only skilled worker in a theater), and it is the liveliest tenant the mall has left.

If something with the resources of Macy’s can’t make a go of the current market, neither Ayers nor Rikes would have had a chance.

As I see it, both stores got an additional 20-40 years by being absorbed.

16

Just had a thought:
Remember when the home solar market got all the tax and regulatory breaks?

The old electric companies had to pay top dollar for the trickles coming from residences, and the home owner got free use of the grid?

Now the homeowners are getting dinged for ‘delivery’ charges - to reimburse the utilities for the (not insignificant) costs of running the grid.

Maybe the retailers can get relief by regulation to level the actual costs of doing business.
Yeah, it wouldn’t be “fair” to assess e-commerce to subsidize brick and mortar.

But it may become a matter of public policy to do what is required to support a viable b&m retail business market - somebody needs to supply jobs, and it doesn’t take nearly as many people to build robots as it takes to staff stores.
Yes, a computerized, automated warehouse can pick an order much faster, more reliably, and at much lower cost compared to paying someone to place stuff on a shelf and then pay to heat/cool, light and ventilate a store. Then add cost of retail space vs a warehouse in the middle of nowhere.

Banks went down this road decades ago.

Payment centers could be placed anywhere electricity could be found. Tellers could be replace with terminals, and one back office can do the same function as 20 - they all take in the same stuff, produce the same stuff, and do everything else - all that is required is one office - it’s just that the numbers on the reports are bigger.
Insurance is the same thing. That silly gecko made Geico enough money that they bought up several old-line insurance companies.
We need to either produce jobs or find another way to distribute wealth.

The current trend of Massive Wealth in the 1/10 of one percent of the population may not work out long-term.

17

We discussed this extensively last year:

Here’s a website someone created about this:

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Around here they are being replaced with what I call “Lifestyle Centers” for lack of a better term. They combine retail, restaurants, office space, and residential (apartments) all in one complex. Some call this “new urbanism” or something. It does sort of feel like city streets and all but the big difference is the large parking garages.

Here is a link to Prairiefire that also includes a museum and a bowling alley/entertainment complex.

Here is another, Park Place, that even has outdoor skating.

But they are not and will not be anything like the old malls. No enclosed areas. No video arcades. No record stores. And no, they do NOT want teenagers.

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I go there every weekend. Well, I go to the Trader Joe’s and the farmer’s market there, anyway. I haven’t been inside in years.

20

My local mall is becoming strangely kids-oriented. They have a “store” which is actually five large bouncy castles that you can get an all day come-and-go pass for $8. And a kiosk where you rent these little ATV things that are dressed up like furry lions, tigers, elephants, pandas, etc. So you have kids cruising by you at 5mph on a panda as you’re walking down the main drag. The bouncy place offers birthday parties and the two times I’ve been in there, there’s been at least one party going on. Then you have the usual playground area plus another seating area or two with an astroturf climbing rock to give the kids something to scamper on while you take a breather.

I’ve no idea if this is translating to more sales but it definitely seems to be getting people in at least during the winter months when kids are all cabin feverish.