There are 3 large indoor malls in Northern Virginia. Tyson’s Corner Center, Fair Oaks, and Springfield.
There used to be another sizeable one, Landmark Mall - which apparently became an indoor mall shortly before we moved here, and is now GONE (as in, demolished; in the past year or so). It was hell to get to by road, even though on paper it was well-located.
Tysons and Fair Oaks are crowded and the vast majority of the spots are filled. Springfield was on the decline for many years - and part of that was deliberate as the management / owners wanted to shut it down and redo the whole property. They eventually did so (including a strategic bankruptcy), but many of the plans for the property simply evaporated (housing etc.). Most of the spots are filled, but nothing upscale, and there are still a fair number of empty spots.
We mostly go there for movies or a meal; heavy-duty shopping trips involve Fair Oaks, for the most part.
Interestingly, the trend nowadays is for outdoor shopping centers - like the one near my house growing up (that later became enclosed). I’m not sure why that is; I guess they’ve gotten away from the concept that “we need to find ways to encourage people to hang out here, up to and including making it HARD TO FIND AN EXIT”. The few times I visit such a place in wintertime, I just run in, get what I need, then leave quickly - no impulse purchases!
No need for climate control, cheaper to build and easier to sell off a portion of you need to. The attempt is to make “lifestyle centers” where people are encouraged to treat it like a park with ample benches, landscaping and sometimes performance areas. That doesn’t really help come winter but then who just hangs around a mall for no reason in the crush of the holidays anyway.
Late in their life the stores had little merchandise. They were effectively catalog showrooms.
Your friend couldn’t have cash-and-carried because they had nothing on their shelves backstage. They did however have lots of long term unbreakable leases on big boxes of useless space.
Although climate control is doubtless much simplified by individual connected stores, it is still very much needed in countries with cold winters and humid summers. Not mentioning any names, [mutter] Canada [/mutter]. (Happy anniversary tomorrow!)
It was very large and surprisingly high end, with many designer stores at the level of Versace, not Tommy Hilfiger. Very few empty storefronts. Also many sit-down restaurants. The food court area seemed to be about 50% vacant, but with fresh-looking banners “coming soon” for most of teh vacant spaces. There is an ice rink, but it was undergoing renovations, so instead of twirling skaters we all got to see the innards of how rinks keep the ice cold.
What was most notable was that it was thronged. Lots and lots of people of the primary buying age. Lots of customers in the stores, not just patrolling the halls. And plenty in teh high end joints, not just filling Abercrombie & Fitch.
AFAIK, Houston’s Galleria was the first upscale mall to sport that name, which led to several malls adopting the moniker as a status symbol. Sometimes the status is deserved, such as with Tysons Galleria mentioned above; sometimes it’s murky at best, such as a Galleria with a Marshalls.
I’ve been in the Galleria while visiting relatives out in Sugar Land. That mall is a bit of a tourist attraction in itself.
FedEx Field, home stadium of the Washington Football Team, sits across the street from the former site of Landover Mall. The mall closed and was demolished in 2006, but Sears owned the land their store sat on so it remained a free-standing store for another 8 years until it too was demolished in 2014.
There used to be another mall nearby, Capital Plaza, that closed in 2005 and was demolished in 2007. A Walmart now resides on part of that site, next to a huge empty field where the rest of the mall stood. A random carnival uses that field for a week or so every year, but otherwise it remains empty.
Although a stand-alone store, not in a mall, I remember the last time I went to the original Fry’s Electronics here in Tempe. Our router had quit and I went to get a replacement. The parking lot was awfully sparse but I thought little of it until I walked into the store and was shocked to find literally no one there and the shelves empty.
Have shopped there many times before I knew where they kept the modems and routers but on arriving in that aisle I found it totally empty – not a single thing to buy. Another shopper with an equally shocked expression came into the aisle from the other direction and together we found one of the floor people pecking at a computer.
“Are you guys closing down?” and he just shrugged with a helpless expression. We both left, passing the bank of 32 cashier stations with only one on duty, doing nothing. I stopped at WalMart on the way home and got a router there. I found out that TPTB had hit upon the ‘brilliant’ idea of a consignment model. The manufacturer would send them the goods, then get their money when it was sold. Naturally, they all balked at this and would send nothing. Nine months later the store closed for good.
Your entire post resonates with me. When I was a little kid in Culver City, the only shopping areas we had were either Culver Center (for everyday) and Crenshaw (for fancy). When they built Century City when I was in high school (junior high?), that became the place to go. I even worked at The Broadway there for about six weeks, but I didn’t see a future for me in retail. I saw Anais Nin when I was shopping one day and always regretted not saying anything. 'Though what could I say with looking like a dork? But I loved eating at Lindberg Nutrition. They had a Lindberg’s at the “Santa Monica Mall,” which was not a mall, but a two block (or more?) stretch of 2nd Street that was closed to traffic.
Del Amo was where I went later, but my sister was there a few weeks ago, and she echoed what you said: the new north end was thriving, the old south end was dying.
I myself have not been to an actual mall in years.
Here’s an article about why they died. https://www.fastcompany.com/90608025/frys-electronics-closing
They got ripped off a massive amount by an exec, and the number of people buying add ons was much reduced. The article also mentioned how their software business vanished with downloads.
Their computer department was never very good and it got worse.
I haven’t been in our big mall in a while, but I hear a lot of stores have closed and it isn’t doing very well. ‘Margaritaville’ Restaurant is still there, I have no idea how it stays in business, unless it’s a money laundering thing. I HOPE it doesn’t fold up before I die, there are some things one simply has to feel, look at, try on before buying. and it was a nice place for seniors to walk, get out of their little apartments, and meet for lunch or coffee. Though ours is averaging a shooting a month now, the riff-raff gangbangers always being a problem but now ramping it up to trying to shoot each other.
Where’s Waldorf? Why, it’s right near a mall. What did you think?
Ultimately, with my traveling around the country and seeing malls wherever, I think they’re simply an echo of the trajectory of various socioeconomic groups.
Used to be the “middle class” had disposable income and malls proliferated to sell aspirational middle-upscale goods to them in their millions.
As prosperity has increasingly attached only to the vastly fewer folks making >$200K, the mainstream malls have died along with the aspirations of the $50K set.
Malls targeting the working class are real scruffy but do move that cheap merchandise. Malls targeting the serious ruling class are thriving. Malls targeting the middle 50% of US society are, like their would be customers, on their ass.
I saw Anais Nin when I was shopping one day and always regretted not saying anything. 'Though what could I say with looking like a dork? But I loved eating at Lindberg Nutrition. They had a Lindberg’s at the “Santa Monica Mall,” which was not a mall, but a two block (or more?) stretch of 2nd Street that was closed to traffic.