

The Economics and Nostalgia of Dead Malls - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/business/the-economics-and-nostalgia-of-dead-malls.html

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frankydp
The simplified reason old malls are dying is the same reason fast food
restaurants remodel, and the ones that don't die.

The experience that the mall provides is the core feature. If that experience
is not attractive it has no features.

New malls beat the old mall trends, and the outlet mall format adds a second
feature to the mix which extends their viability time before a remodel is
required.

The catch 22 is that remodeling something the size of a mall is rarely
feasible.

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danjayh
FYI, One of the malls in the linked article was extensively remodeled in 1998.
Personally, I dislike the trend toward open-air, outlet style shopping since I
live in an area that regularly gets below 15f in the winter.

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frankydp
Thats a good point, and I think the really difficult thing for the current C
mall owners is that a remodel will probably only get you from a C to a B where
the experience gain is still pretty low. Other smaller foot print B&Ms usually
scrape and rebuild when they hit some age, which seems nearly impossible for
something the size of a mall.

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kanamekun
Sobering that income inequality is a driving force behind the death of a lot
of the malls aimed at the middle class:

<< With income inequality continuing to widen, high-end malls are thriving,
even as stolid retail chains like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney falter, taking
the middle- and working-class malls they anchored with them.

“It is very much a haves and have-nots situation,” said D. J. Busch, a senior
analyst at Green Street. Affluent Americans “will keep going to Short Hills
Mall in New Jersey or other properties aimed at the top 5 or 10 percent of
consumers. But there’s been very little income growth in the belly of the
economy.” >>

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mc32
I won't miss (suburban) malls (shopping centers). I was never a mall rat, so
maybe my perspective is skewed. That said, why not repurpose dying malls as
living space for: homeless, hackerspaces, and those in more prime locations,
raze and use the land to make into condominiums --malls typically have good
transport connections. Make use of the land and buildings. That said some
malls are built with expiration dates of 30 years or so, it would seem.

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greenjellybean
This is happening in some areas and it's a trend I hope will continue. For
example, my hometown mall was dead (~3-4 open shops out of ~50 available) for
the better part of the last decade but management has recently started renting
out most of space to local colleges and other non-commercial entities.

