
The Twilight of the Indoor Mall - benbreen
http://www.theawl.com/2014/11/the-twilight-of-the-indoor-mall
======
joezydeco
Two fun links:

[http://deadmalls.com/](http://deadmalls.com/)

Dead Malls has been cataloging dead malls for a long time now. Lots of great
descriptions and pictures.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba1s3VG8yFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba1s3VG8yFU)

Howard Davidowitz is a retail consultant and analyst who was quoted above (
_“What’s going on is the customers don’t have the fucking money.”_ ). He's
awesome at breaking down what's wrong with retail and telling it honestly and
efficiently. Listen to his stuff sometime (link above is a recent interview
about Amazon). When he's on fire...watch out. Jump to 15:00 for an example.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Heh, I was arrested for going into an abandoned* mall and walking around and
taking pictures with my friends.

*Turns out it wasn't as abandoned as we thought. Someone was doing something there, and someone or something called the police in.

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VLM
Its a standard trope to never discuss security theater and teens as a threat
at the mall, but anyone here between the ages of maybe 30 and 50 has surely
been harassed by security as a teen and made to feel VERY unwelcome at their
local mall.

Oddly enough 20/30 years later I have fat stacks of cash and when I spend them
I remember how I was treated at the mall, and never, ever return. And I was a
relatively conformist non-minority appearing kid well spoken perfect English
(edited: better than I write when I'm tired, LOL) and well groomed, god only
knows what the minorities and punks had to go thru at malls in the 80s.

The hilariously blunt yet accurate quote in the article about not having money
is also accurate. A good computer analogy is DEC digital equipment corporation
was in a perfect position to own the microcomputer market in the 70s/80s but
they couldn't understand the market price collapse. The same thing happening
in retail with the demise of the middle class. You can sell plenty of $200
sweaters to $75K/yr machinists in 1984 at the mall, but you can't sell $200
sweaters to $8.25/hr temp workers in 2014.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
In the 80s? Its gotten MUCH worse since. All the malls i went to growing up
now have mall cops standing at the door IDing people who look younger than 50
and won't let people under 18 in without a parent or guardian. Kid you not!
This all started about ten years ago. I just... its absurd.

------
peckrob
Meh. Around here, at least, (Huntsville, Alabama) they're just making newer
and different malls. They're still malls though.

When I first moved here in 2005, the bigger of the two malls in town (Madison
Square Mall) had just received a major renovation and was bustling. A few
years later (I think this was about 2007) they announced this new major
construction project called Bridge Street[0]. It was just about two miles away
from Madison Square.

It was essentially an outdoor mall, with all the same stores you would expect
to find in any mall. Just outside. Within the last six years, pretty much all
the stores that were at Madison Square Mall have relocated to Bridge Street.
In fact, Bridge Street just underwent a big expansion so that one of the
department stores at Madison Square could move in.

These days, everyone goes to Bridge Street, and Madison Square Mall is mostly
empty except for check cashing places, blacklight golf places, and, strangely,
a Sears that just hasn't moved yet - which is pretty much the only reason I
even go to Madison Square any more at all. There may be one other department
store there hanging on too. But other than that it's mostly empty. The
escalators were even turned off when I went in there a few weeks ago.

Madison Square Mall was built in the mid 80s, and started going down hill
after about 20 years. The other mall in town was built in the late 90s and is
still doing "mostly okay" but you can tell Bridge Street hurt them some too.
So I figure it's only a matter of time before Bridge Street starts to go down
hill and all those same stores move on to whatever the next trend in shopping
is.

And, just like Madison Square, leaving a blighted landscape of mostly or
completely abandoned buildings in their wake.

They're still building malls. Just calling them different things - "lifestyle
centers," "outdoor entertainment complexes," etc. But they're still malls.

[0]
[http://www.bridgestreethuntsville.com/](http://www.bridgestreethuntsville.com/)

~~~
seanalltogether
So what I can't figure out is if the new outdoor malls are just a fad, or if
they represent a different shift in retail planning that will stick around for
a long time. I will admit that I like the outdoor ones that have multiple
avenues built in for wandering around, and it feels like the shops are more
substantial then mall stores.

The article mentions that when an anchor leaves a raditional mall, the disease
spreads, are outdoor malls immune to this effect?

~~~
frankydp
The industry will be moving from the lifestyle format to the outlet format
almost exclusively over the next 20 years.

The C malls referred to in the article are just that, C malls. Malls that may
have been B malls in the past but have depreciated to a point where scrape and
rebuild or relo are the only options.

There are currently about 50 new malls/outlets on the books for this year and
next with another 50 on the following 2 years nation wide.

------
chipotle_coyote
The trend has certainly been toward more "outdoor" style malls, like Santana
Row here in the SF Bay Area or the Shops at Wiregrass in my former home of
Tampa. But I suspect there are a couple major factors in the Dead Mall
phenomenon that this article doesn't really touch on.

First, whenever a region is seriously overbuilding residential space they're
usually also seriously overbuilding retail space. In Florida, the overbuilding
of retail seemed to come _first_ in some instances. When the retail spaces are
big shopping centers, there's an awfully good chance they're going to start
cannibalizing one another. The worst case scenario -- which I saw happen in
Florida more than once -- isn't that all the customers leave Mall A for Mall
B, but that the customers are _split_ between Mall A and Mall B and _neither_
mall ends up successful.

Second, it doesn't seem to me that "anchor tenants" are as important now as
they once were, and the malls that are most in trouble are the ones that were
organized with the assumption you were _really_ there to go Macy's or
Nordstrom's and the other stores would survive on your impulse buys as you
walked between the department stores and the parking lot. Santana Row here --
and to some degree Tampa's International Plaza, which is a mix of indoor and
outdoor -- have fashioned themselves less as shopping destinations than
entertainment destinations. The best way to avoid having a dead zone around a
closed department store is to not have -- or need -- a department store.

------
sboak
Urban planners have been predicting the demise of malls for years. 10 years
ago James Kunstler gave a hilarious, biting talk on "the ghastly tragedy of
the suburbs" in which he suggests some great ways of repurposing them for
urbanization. It's a fantastic video:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_subu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia)

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at-fates-hands
Its interesting to see this cycle in the Mall of America. The upper fourth
floor was non-stop through the late 90's and into 2001 or so. Then the whole
floor died, suddenly.

Of the seven or so bars, they all went under within a few years of 2000 and
the whole floor has been more or less completely dead for almost a decade now.
Planet Hollywood pulling out in 2003 was the last death knell for the floor.
Only Hooters survived the mass extinction.

These days, more bars are opening, but its not the same. There's a Corona
Catina which took over the vacated Fat Tuesday's (which was shut down after
repeated warnings from the city went unheeded) and Knuckleheads Comedy club.
There's a smaller comedy club which took over the Gator's nightclub spot, but
it's half the size of the original club. There's some new restaurant where
Planet Hollywood used to be. Hooters is still kickin, but the rest of the bars
(still 3-4 spots) are completely vacant.

It's an interesting dichotomy since the majority of the rest of the mall is
still doing very well. Camp Snoopy has been renamed twice now, but is still
super busy on the weekends. The rest of the floors during the holidays are
flooded with eager shoppers. And yet, the fourth floor is like an attic nobody
wants to go to anymore. I think its partly due to the newer, hipster bars
opening in other parts of town which have drawn a lot of the suburbanites
away. Also, a lot of the college kids who used to live in the area, are now
moving to second and third ring suburbs now.

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sremani
Ah the Collin Creek Mall, in which City of Plano was planning to sink a ton of
money for renewing or rehabbing it. I live few miles away from Collin Creek,
and the author is giving the most accurate picture possible. It is a dead
mall, and there are many reasons for it including accessibility from the
highway (US-75), shift of the center of wealth to mostly West and North of
Plano, away from Collin Creek area. All in all DFW is over-saturated with
malls but they are still building malls because of the North-ward expansion
near Plano area. Trust me a movie theater is not going to save this mall.

For now the Mall is collecting some checks from the City and Management which
claim to protect jobs and sales tax base. When they run out of that trick, it
may very well close. At one point they were talking about sinking $75 million
into some project around collin creek.

[http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/collin-
county/...](http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/collin-
county/headlines/20121002-plano-works-with-developer-to-revitalize-collin-
creek-mall.ece)

~~~
revscat
The only problem is that there are two other malls for residents of Plano to
go to, Stonebriar and Willow Bend, and they are both doing just fine. The
"outdoor malls" of Firecreek and the Shops at Legacy are also doing well.
Insofar as Plano is concerned, it is only Collin Creek that is suffering.

So TFA is being slightly hyperbolic. There are many malls who have done
poorly, and the mall at the heart of the article is one of them. But there are
also many malls who have done quite well. It doesn't speak about those.

------
larrydag
This mall is right by my house. It is on life support and it's been known
about for years. The article is right that Dallas suburbs have a lot of
options for shoppers with new multi-use development sites popping up on every
major intersection. Curious the article writer made no mention of online sales
and their effect of department stores.

------
drawkbox
They just let many of these malls die, mainly because it wasn't a destination
anymore.

They could have made them into co-working spaces, training centers, anchor
stores that close into mini convention halls, arcades, learning centers,
places to meet clients, part of it into a skate park, pools, community sports,
basketball courts, awesome indoor gardens, concert areas, bar row, just
something. They did not try to change enough.

It seems like they tried to get people out of the malls when that was their
magic, they were yes pre-internet but you could still bring the business side
in. That alone would have kept food courts alive longer, maybe changed the
game in part or half of a mall. But it is a depressing thing to go into a mall
with even one anchor store gone because it is just a matter of time. Part of
the problem is they were a unit, when there was only a few closed stores the
mall felt depressing. They rode that dead model to the end.

~~~
malyk
This is happening to the mall near where I grew up.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Town_Center](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Town_Center)

------
iterationx
I'm happy to see the death of fake public space. Would be nice to see a plaza*
built but I know that's asking too much of the USA.

*A pedestrian only square with surrounded by shops, restaurants, etc

~~~
mturmon
It has happened already:

[http://www.thegrovela.com/directory.php](http://www.thegrovela.com/directory.php)

[http://www.americanaatbrand.com/directory.php](http://www.americanaatbrand.com/directory.php)

[http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/articl...](http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/article_large/hash/56/0e/1373584886_1107_statue.jpg?itok=PybzFaLe)

The security at the latter has hats and green uniforms like park rangers. You
can almost forget that it's all private land.

~~~
iterationx
If it has goofy security and its on private land, its still fake public space.

~~~
mturmon
Yes, precisely. But this is what we're building these days. It's not gated,
it's open to the street, but it's not a public plaza either. There is even
something in their agreement with the city that they can't filter people out.

------
declan
Compare to the Stanford Shopping Center, an outdoor mall on the SF peninsula.
Parking is difficult when the weather is nice, and sometimes even when it's
not.

It's a nice place to walk around outdoors and designed to be pedestrian-
friendly (once you park, of course).

By comparison, I went to the Hillsdale Shopping Center a few months ago on a
weekday around noon, and the Sears lot was near-deserted: I saw about six cars
in it. The food court was also empty and depressing. I don't think the
difference is primarily the neighborhoods: both are on El Camino and in
upscale areas (Palo Alto is expensive, sure, but Hillsdale serves San Mateo,
San Carlos, Burlingame, and Hillsborough, which aren't cheap).

I think the difference is the mall itself: Hillsdale is a traditional massive
indoor mall of the sort that this article describes, and Stanford is a better-
designed outdoor mall, with segments split up, that's just nicer to walk
around.

------
ConfuciusSay
The twilight of poorly located and planned suburban indoor malls.

------
R_Edward
My town just built a "Premium Outlet Mall." I was dubious of the wisdom of
that plan, but I just visited it last weekend, and it seems to be pretty
popular, even with the Mall of America just minutes away, and with Internet
shopping available at the swipe of a smartphone or the click of a mouse. It's
not an indoor mall, which I also find curious, here in the Land of 10,000
Snows, but it does have a free indoor parking garage just across the street.
The projections are that the outlet mall is going to siphon off about 4% of
the take this holiday season. (The article I read was pretty vague as to what
size pie that was 4% of, to my chagrin.)

~~~
dusing
Interesting thing about the Eagan outlets is that there are non-outlet stores
mixed in. I also found the outlet prices to be above that of other outlets
(north of the cities). With that location I guess they don't need to be that
cheap.

~~~
R_Edward
I didn't realize there were non-outlets there. The prices are strange--I've
bought a handful of items, and they were all stickered at or below nearby
retail, but when they rang them up, the actual price was even lower. While I
love to get a deal, I prefer to know what the deal is before I hit the
register. Anyway, that _should_ be a good location, easy access from three
interstates and a couple major trunk highways, but then, that's where
Cedarvale was, and that died a slow painful death too.

------
grimlck
This is really the death of the mid-market mall, which are being replaced with
2 extremes - the outlet mall and the high end mall.

In warm climates, malls become outdoor is the trend, but that certainly isn't
the case for cities with harsher winters.

~~~
dded
It certainly is the trend here in New England, where winters are reasonably
harsh. And the new outdoor malls aren't very walkable, either. They're
separate stores, or sometimes chunks of stores, that you almost have to drive
between. With an Olive Garden or an Applebee's in the middle of the parking
lot.

~~~
zem
I see those in California too. I really don't understand the phenomenon; my
best guess is that there is some sort of incentive from the developers or city
zoning for shops to open there, but nothing as cohesive as an actual mall.

------
bdcravens
I've been to the mall in the article. It once was the destination, and short
of specific stores (like Apple), people aren't interested. In Houston, there's
quite a few dying malls, but there's also some that are still thriving. For
instance, The Woodlands Mall, which is in the midst of an area with an outdoor
ampitheatre and upscale outdoors shopping.

------
lettercarrier
They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

With a working hell, a geek And a sweltering com dot

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone
They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

They took all the middle class Put 'em in a middle class museum

And they directed their chauffeur a mile and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone

They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

Late last night I heard my phone alert scream

and a big yellow Uber Took away my all my old dreams

Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got Till it's gone

They emptied the mall and put up an Amazon Slot

------
bkeroack
I suspect that any urban architecture trend has a limited lifespan--maybe 20
years or so.

This isn't so much "death of the mall" per se, as death (and replacement) of
80s-era malls.

------
brownbat
> As these old malls die off, they’re being replaced more and more by upscale,
> outdoor shopping centers...

Well, and the internet.

I wonder if it'd be viable to turn these giant chunks of real estate into some
kind of entertainment venue for a while. I'd play paintball in a dead mall, or
race go karts around in one.

There's got to be something worth doing in that giant space.

------
mathattack
I haven't heard anyone mention that perhaps Malls aren't just being killed by
Amazon, but also by Wal*Mart. Go to smalltown America and see...

------
BallinBige
Sunrise to the Outdoor Mall?

The evolution of the "mall"

------
zacharydanger
I've been to the mall from the article. Every time I go there I just feel bad.

