What killed the malls?

Great Debates
101

There are two “open air” malls near me. One used to be an enclosed mall, but it was recently converted. It doesn’t have housing associated with it, but it has the other features. The other one was is a newish thing that always seems to be under construction, and it does have apartments and townhomes associated with it. Some of the parking is how you describe, Just Asking Questions. And then there are traditional parking lots.

I’m not a mall person, but I like both of them. I like that I can park somewhat close to the store where I intend to go, without having to first cut through the giant anchor store or wading through the crowded food court. I can just pop in and out. Also the open lay-out allows you to know exactly what offerings there are. You have to visit an enclosed mall a few times before you can keep straight what kinds of stores it has. But for an open air mall, you don’t even have to get out of the car.

Both of them also have grocery stores. This is convenient for someone such as myself, who doesn’t like driving all over town for shopping forays. I can go to the art store and buy supplies, go to Ross and pick out a nice dress, and then do my weekly grocery shopping. A traditional mall doesn’t offer this convenience.

102

What, they cut the roof off with a chainsaw?

103

I don’t know how to describe it properly, and I can’t find good pictures. But essentially before it was an enclosed mall in the midst of a strip mall. A mall within a mall, if you will. They demolished the enclosed mall and added the stores (like Old Navy) that were “inside” to the strip part, along with new stores that you normally don’t see outside of enclosed malls. Like stores like Bed, Bath, and Beyond and Hallmark. There are also nicer casual dining restaurants in the complex. Before it was just Diary Queen and Chick Filet. Now there’s a Noodles and Company and a couple of other chain establishments of that calibre.

104

It seems to depend largely on management. Malls owned by the Westfield Group seem to be doing very well.

105

Sites like Think I Have That and tons more similar sites have delivered the final blow.

Business must adapt and evolve to keep up with competition. The mall industry must have seen the internet revolution coming and either they A: couldn’t think of a way to evolve and stay on top or B: didn’t think they could do anything about it and keeled over and died.

Actually some malls have evolved. The malls in Miami have incorporated bowling alleys, night clubs, real restaurants, and other attractions to keep people coming. It worked too, they’re always a madhouse.

106

That’s kinda what I meant. Some mall management companies have figured out the magic mix of stores, restaurants, and attractions that keeps their malls full. One seems to be the Westfield Group. The malls of theirs that I’ve seen (San Francisco Centre, Santa Anita Fashion Park, Sherman Oaks Fashion Square, Fox Valley Center) seem to be very busy.

107

I haven’t read all three pages of comments, but I’d like to point out two malls near Seattle that have had quite a resurgence. In Lake Forest Park, a virtually abandoned mall has become a center of community activity. Third Place Books moved in with a huge independent bookstore. They also erected a stage, and offered small low rent spaces to food vendors. Moms bring groups of kids for lunch and let them run wild. People play chess and listen to live music.
A second mall, near downtown Bellevue is also thriving in much the same way.

108

I also grew up in the '80s, and the malls were full of teenagers. Sure, we didn’t spend hundreds of dollars, but lots of us spent tens of dollars. So my personal list of suspects?

Internet shopping - Malls used to be about window shopping. See all the clothes offered, look at all the jewelry stores. Find the perfect pair of sandals. Now we do that all online.
XBox/Wii - why hang at the mall when you can shoot stuff at home?
Cellphones - why hang out at the mall when you can talk/text from anywhere.

Coming from the north, I disagree that the outdoor malls replace the indoor ones. It’s no fun hanging out outside in February, and I personally hate having to wear my coat from store to store. There are a couple of outdoor malls here, but they are really closer to a series of strip malls located next to each other.

109

Tastes of Chocolate, you may personally prefer enclosed malls, but that’s not what the statistics say. What’s dying off are basically enclosed malls whose customers were mostly the middle 50% of the American population in income. Malls that were aimed at the top 25% (or even the top 10%) of the population in income are still doing O.K. The people in the bottom 25% never did have money to spare to shop in the malls. What’s happening (among other things) is that the middle 50% are slipping in income. They no longer have spare money for the sort of impulse purchases that they formerly did. All of the other things mentioned in this thread that have decreased mall shopping (the Internet, movement back to city centers, etc.) also have had an effect. Look at the link that I gave. The closures are happening all over the U.S.:

110

Thanks.

111

The DeadMalls site hasn’t been updated since 2006 or so, making it as dead as the malls.

It doesn’t note, for instance, how MidTown Plaza in Rochester NY was closed and torn down a couple of years ago, nor that Assembly Square in Medford MA has been completely revitalized – but not as an indoor mall. It’s now a collection of large stores each opening to the outside. Boston is building a new Subway stop nearby on the Orange line to service the new shopping center being built nearby.

112

I have a suspicion that the decline of the classic department store, and their replacement by the Targets, Wal-Marts and big-box specialty store has an awful lot to do with the subsequent decline of malls.

As a kid, you might go to Sears, Montgomery Wards or Penneys and get anything- I remember getting major appliances, clothing, electronics, sporting goods, toys and kitchen stuff at the same few department stores. Now, a lot of what department stores sold has been taken over by the big discount stores and specialty big-box stores, leaving the department stores with not much else besides higher-end clothes, makeup and cologne.

With that change in sales patterns, people quit coming to the malls as much (because they were at Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, etc…) , and that killed the smaller stores, and started a vicious cycle, which eventually ended up wrecking a lot of malls that were not particularly robust to begin with, or where demographic changes in the surrounding areas made them less likely to sell high-end clothing. The presence of thuggy youths in malls is more a symptom than a cause, I think.

I also think the decline of movie theaters has a lot to do with it as well- it wasn’t uncommon for people to show up early or stay after their movie and do some shopping. Without movie theaters, malls don’t’ get that incidental shopping population, which was probably a fairly significant number. Anecdotally, the past half-dozen times I’ve been to a mall, it’s been before or after seeing a movie at the theater in the mall.

Some malls are still going strong- Northpark in Dallas, for example. It’s kind of a destination for higher-end clothing, and as a result, the other stores in the mall do very well because of the cross-pollination. Plus, they have a good movie theater, which brings in a fair number of people, I suspect.

113

“The decline of the movie theater” is one of those myths that just will not go away. Movie ticket sales have been steadily rising for the last 20 years.

114

I thought people were referring to how theaters are now usually in their own complex, instead of being appended to malls. With IMAX screens and stadium seating, most newer theaters need more space than a mall anchor spot can provide. I still see some theaters attached to malls, but not as many as there used to be.

115

Maybe, but of the five big malls in my vicinity, only one has a movie theater attached to it (and that was built in the last 10 years even though the mall has been standing since the 70s). It’s a phenomenon I’ve never experienced.

116

The Westfield in San Francisco is right at the BART, and so has a great location. The Westfield in San Jose is also always busy, and I don’t think you can accuse the people shopping there of not knowing how to use the Internet.
I think it addresses their demographic quite well - lots of upscale stores. Even the Macy’s is nicer than the one in the lower class mall near me. It is so busy that traffic going to it often backs up onto the freeway near it.
Perhaps the secret is to have a store mix that is not identical to every other mall in the area.

117

CalMeacham, that’s not true. I looked at a few entries and I found several from 2009 and one from 2013. The site updates section of it says that there have been updates as recently as May of this year. It may be inconsistently updated, but it has been updated.

118

That’s at least part of the story. You can go to Target now and find the sorts of things you used to find by going to three or four different stores in the mall.

Speaking of indoor malls being converted to more open facilities, I noticed there’s a plan in the works to do that to North DeKalb Mall here in Atlanta. That would be kind of funny, since North DeKalb started out with an open-air design way back when, got converted to an enclosed mall, and is now looking to return to its roots.

Funny enough, a successful movie theater is pretty much the only thing that has kept North DeKalb Mall limping along the past few years. Were it not for the theater, I think the stores there wouldn’t get enough foot traffic to stay open.

119

Even 30 years ago you could go to a department store and find things you’d find in a lot of stores in the mall. Lots of department stores had book departments, toy departments, food, kitchen wares like Macys still has, appliances, and often a good restaurant. Department stores in Europe still use this model, and I think are a lot more fun than department stores here.

120

But Target is much less likely to be in a mall, drawing traffic to other stores, than Macy’s . And really, even when the Target is in a enclosed mall it doesn’t help the the other stores in quite the way that Macy’s does. I suspect that’s at least partially due to the items you can buy at Target but not at Macy’s. Nobody even left Macy’s with a shopping cart full of paper towels,laundry detergent and potting soil.