Denver appears to have several successful malls.
I think this is a big part of it. Ignoring the 1%, a lot of the wealth seems to be concentrating in the older demographic. Being one of those, I realize I haven’t been to a mall in two years. I don’t like the neighborhood, I don’t like the hucksters in kiosks hassling me, I don’t want to get dressed up and drive in from the 'burbs, and above all, there is no place to sit down (save restaurants and a few hard benches).
This thread is interesting, in that Macy’s announced their departure from our local mall last week. I think Sears is long gone too. I’ve barely darkened their doors since they made “Craftsman” a meaningless word, so I can’t be sure.
Hard to believe that as late as 2005 they still opened a new mall.
Outside heat can be dampened by shade and misting systems. Much cheaper than air conditioning.
At the outdoor malls around me I see just as many people walking down sidewalks door to door and checking out stores as they do in the indoor malls. More actually since in indoor malls you have tons of people who are not actually shopping but just either walking for exercise or teenagers hanging out.
It could. But at least at the ones we have here it isn’t. I forgot to mention that Orlando is a bit of a special case; being so touristy, we have endless numbers of outlet malls on the other side of town that do just fine.
Similar knowledge of Macy’s growing up. Then I went into a Macy’s in Augusta, Georgia, ca. 1989. WTF? This is like a really shitty version of Hudson’s, a Hudson’s wannabe.
Who the fuck is Marshall Field, and why is he buying all my Hudson’s? And changing the name? And making them worse? 
It’s a psychological thing. You can drive through a strip mall that’s half empty and ignore the empty storefronts. But with an indoor mall that’s half empty, you have to walk through it all and you feel the presence of the empty stores.
The Columbus, OH area is getting a brand new outlet mall, opening this summer. We’ve got two other malls that opened in the early 2000’s, Polaris and Easton. Around here, the malls just moved from the city to the suburbs.
That’s an excellent point.
It’s been several years since I have been in a mall.
Interesting. The more open-air shopping plazas/complexes such as the WaterFront and WaterWorks seem to be doing good but the enclosed spaces are going the wayside even faster around here.
Yes. They just opened a new outdoor mall last year in Lynnfield MA (a pretty rich suburb), with lots of food and clothing stores. There were no bookstores until Amazon opened one of its first bricks-and-mortar shops.
The local indoor malls still seem to be going strong. Northshore Mall is always packed, and has been since they rebuilt it some twenty years ago. Liberty Tree and Square One in Danvers and Saugus don’t look quite as good, but they’re not at al in trouble, with strong anchor stores.
Downtown enclosed malls around the country seem to be failing – Rochester NY tore down its Midtown Plaza and Salt Lake City got rid of its two downtown indoor malls, but it replaced them with a “Lifestyle Center” outdoor mall that is, I gather, doing well. But here in Boston, the downtown mall surrounding the Prudential Building still seems healthy. It has the only bookstore I know of that’s still inside an indoor mall.
I was just reading about the American Dream Meadowlands mall.
Supposedly the only enclosed mall “under construction” in the US. And “under construction” is being generous.
Even a mall being built is dying.
Here in Roswell/Alpharetta they just opened a huge outdoor mall called Avalon. They have catchy name for the mixed use property. Something like Work-Eat-Live-Play space? You can live on the property and would never have to leave the area. Movie theater, restaurants, apartments, town houses, condos, green space, regularly schedule public events (i.e. Yoga in the morning on the green space, and League Corn Hole tournaments in the evenings). The recently had a gigantic broadcast of the Kentucky Derby. I love going there as it’s always vibrant. Way more than the mall ever was. I haven’t been inside neighboring North Point Mall in a few years; but I would definitely say the parking lot doesn’t look as full as it used to.
The rules of thumb are that any mall in a community less well off than about 50% of all American communities is in danger of closing (and hence upscale malls with upscale stores aren’t generally closing) and that enclosed malls rather than open malls are closing. Note that these are rules of thumb. They are statistically true, but there are exceptions.
Yeah, I drive past that monstrosity every time I go out to New Jersey. It’s been an ugly eyesore as long as I can remember.
Occasionally they do build new malls, so long as there is a train station attached to it.