
The dying mall’s new lease on life: apartments - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-30/a-case-for-turning-empty-malls-into-housing
======
rdiddly
_" Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable
developments rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to
these needs."_

Kind of interesting to watch the mall trend fold in on itself. They were
trying to recreate "towns" all along. I mean that's what a walkable
"development" with mixed residential & commercial activity is.

~~~
Covzire
I've thought for awhile that Walmart/Target could build apartment complexes
above their stores. Not sure who would want to live there, but I bet some
people would.

~~~
perl4ever
Especially decades ago, how many people lived in an apartment over a grocery
store or something in a small town?

------
staycoolboy
This is such a great idea. In Vietnam I stayed in a few AirBNB's that were 20
floor buildings: the bottom floor was grocery, gym, bank, restaurants, and the
top floors were all residential, with pools on the very top floor of one
swanky place. I'm seeing this in Seattle and Portland, too. Converting malls
to residential has huge potential for all-in-one living.

~~~
ghaff
The malls that are going bankrupt in the US tend to be those in at least
somewhat downscale suburbs/exurbs. The mall that's relatively close to me had
a Sears, Macy's, and JC Penney as anchor tenants. All are now closed. There is
a close by busy grocery store and Home Depot.

But upscale shopping malls in elite cities were actually doing pretty well
prior to the current situation.

~~~
staycoolboy
> But upscale shopping malls in elte cities were actually doing pretty well
> prior to the current situation.

I believe that is called "Retail Therapy" but it only works if you have money
to burn.

[https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind-
the-b...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-why-behind-the-
buy/201305/why-retail-therapy-works)

As we've seen, most people don't have money to burn, as "most american's have
no savings":

[https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings-
coronaviru...](https://www.axios.com/americans-emergency-savings-
coronavirus-f11deffc-b8c1-48e0-a3db-0aeb3ce74fb9.html)

or...

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-
woul...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/21/41-percent-of-americans-would-be-
able-to-cover-1000-dollar-emergency-with-savings.html)

[https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of-
amer...](https://www.fool.com/retirement/2020/03/27/nearly-50-of-americans-
dont-have-enough-emergency.aspx)

~~~
blacksmith_tb
True, though many Americans have access to credit. Though that can't be
sustained, it can work for a while.

------
smt88
This is not going to be common. I have a lot of large commercial real estate
clients, and they all see malls becoming distribution centers.

In the US, most malls are not in high-density, expensive areas. It's much more
expensive to build 100 condos out of a mall than to just build condos. Where
do you even get windows for most of the stores? A lot of space in a mall is
away from anywhere that natural light can enter.

As distribution centers though, you have giant spaces, large bays for trucks
to enter, and last-mile access to suburban customers.

Retailers expect to want the space, they just expect they'll want it for
distribution of online sales instead of in-person sales.

------
newsbinator
Reminds me of a Canadian movie:

> The world of interconnected office buildings, apartment complexes and food
> courts (shot in all its fluorescent glory on digital video) is the backdrop
> for "Waydowntown," where young office workers Tom, Sandra, Randy and Curt,
> have all staked a month's salary on a bet to see who can stay indoors the
> longest. It's lunch hour on day 24 of the wager and everyone's pretty much
> reached their breaking point.

[https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/](https://imdb.com/title/tt0219405/)

~~~
sradman
Toronto's 30km PATH system [1] makes staying "indoors" less of a challenge if
you can afford to live in one of the connected buildings. According to IMDB
the movie takes place in Calgary.

The abandoned mall conversions feels more like the trend of converting old
inner city factory buildings into lofts, except applied to suburbia.

[1] [https://www.torontopath.com/](https://www.torontopath.com/)

~~~
jhbadger
Also, Montreal has its "Underground City" (La Ville Souterraine) which is
claimed to be the largest such network in the world.

------
dylan604
"Today, people prefer to live in smaller spaces and want walkable developments
rather than relying on vehicular transit. This project caters to these needs."

This is a broad statement, that clearly isn't true. If it was true, then the
suburbs would not exist. Housing prices show that there is clearly a desire by
people to not living in smaller spaces. After the pandemic, I tend to think a
lot of people will be re-thinking their dense living conditions. This really
smells like a put up job by a hopeful developer

------
ixtli
I find this sort of funny in an “everything old is new again” sort of way.
There are some up—and-coming areas around downton LA that we’re partially
covered high streets (somewhat mall-like) that are having their second and
third floors turned into apartments the thing is, that’s what they used to be.

It strikes me that we should consider the mall as more of an aberration which
is finally fading away.

~~~
inamberclad
The mall always struck me as a horrible place because unlike a town square,
it's only a public space to those who are there to spend money.

~~~
alexbanks
Not really. I spent countless hours at a mall as a kid - it was just where my
parents would drop us off to waste some time while they had to go run errands.

~~~
smelendez
Yeah, I think a critical part of their success was that they were fun.

Look at photos of malls from the 80s and 90s. People were there to hang out,
even to see and be seen, and of course they shopped while they were there.

~~~
DangitBobby
Malls were definitely only for peddling Shit You Don't Need by the time I was
old enough to frequent them. Nothing interesting, just overpriced stores and
people yelling at you from kiosks trying to get you to buy a watch.

------
benatkin
I was thinking about these being good for freelancers and startups, then I
realized they'll be expensive. There was a recent thread about housing for
startup employees:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23655398)

Liability kind of ruins any opportunity of making cheap living spaces.

Edit: did some more browsing, found this update on Zeus, a co-living startup
[https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus-
living...](https://therealdeal.com/2020/05/11/airbnb-backed-zeus-living-sees-
valuation-halved/)

~~~
Keverw
Maybe buy an old cruise ship and put it in international waters lol. That'd
probably help get rid of some of the liability and zoning issues.

~~~
bryanlarsen
If you have no liability / jurisdiction then contracts with you are
unenforceable. And if a customer can't get a valid contract with you, that
means no customers.

~~~
Keverw
Yeah, not sure how the cruise lines deal with this... I know some of them have
offices in the US, some major ones pick Miami but the ships are owned and
registered to off-shore nations. One of the reasons they didn't get a bailout
due to COVID, they pay little taxes and then also can avoid more stricter US
labor laws.

~~~
bryanlarsen
As you said, they're registered to off-shore nations, so that gives them a
jurisdiction.

------
BurningFrog
Always wanted to live in a Cinnabon!

~~~
klyrs
My middle school was adjacent to a donut factory. Can confirm, it never gets
old.

(whereby "never" I mean "over the span of 3 years as a voracious teenager"
ymmv)

~~~
throw03172019
It’s all fun until the metabolism slows down :)

------
dathinab
In Germany we have a _slow_ dying of mall and similar, now accelerated because
of corona.

I have considered this before when seeing some empty buildings (turned out
they just moved...).

One thing I see as a problem is sunlight. Any apartment must have reasonable
sources of natural sun light and many mall's are build in ways which have much
less entries for sunlight. Outer walls can be changed but the "inner space"
which has no contact to an outer wall is stuck.

~~~
LyndsySimon
I’d think large skylights in the public spaces could help a great deal with
that issue.

------
msla
In my ideal world, the mall housing would be aimed at old people and anyone
with handicaps such that they're taking a greater-than-normal risk navigating
icy sidewalks or bad weather in general. Imagine being able to walk to and
from shopping, gyms, and third spaces without worrying about falling and
breaking a hip. _That_ is the idea which ought to sell this.

~~~
kiba
"OK, on your form you said you're sixty, but you're forty".

Seriously, I hate unnecessary bureaucracy. Ideally, we'll build enough housing
for _everyone_ , regardless if they have a handicap or not, or old for that
matter.

Our society is very wealthy, we can do this. Done right, it won't be a burden
for everyone, because we'll get lower cost of living and as a side effect,
healthier humans.

~~~
bryanlarsen
That's quite a jump. The OP said "aimed at" which in my mind just means the
picture on the front cover of the brochure has a pair of smiling seniors.

------
Keverw
Haha one of my uncles said cruise ships are like sleeping in the mall... but I
like this idea... Have shops, restaurants, entertainment/activities office
buildings and residential. I think I'd love to live somewhere where I could
walk to grab a bite of eat, to the gym or some office space... A pool too. Co-
working spaces be nice too if you work from home and want a separate spot to
work. I kinda been interested in moving to downtown Austin since the most
walkable city in Texas, but still not prefect from what I've read.

As someone who's always been in the suburbs, always kinda been jealous that
most apartments seem to have pools haha. but idk if i'd like apartment life,
I'd be worried about hearing other people or being too loud if I wanted to
listen to music or watch tv... I guess depends on if the walls are paper thin.

------
bob1029
Considering the footprint+location of your typical American shopping mall,
office space is a really good 2nd life for this type of facility. One other
possibility could be to retrofit the structures to serve as data centers.
Every small town in America could have a JCPenny's worth of servers racked up
for ultra-low-latency application & content delivery to the local residents.

I think every American in the lower 48 is within 5 milliseconds of a Walmart
at this point. I am surprised they (and other retailers) haven't attempted to
leverage this geographic capability. 5ms is certainly fast enough to fool me
into thinking that a remote workstation is sitting under my desk.

~~~
mikepurvis
There aren't a ton of good pictures that I can find, but Rackspace famously
moved their headquarters into a derelict San Antonio mall in 2012:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace-
revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html)

------
microtherion
Obviously, conversion can be somewhat tricky, but purpose built mixed use has
sometimes proven quite popular, e.g. at Santana Row.

My experience of living there was limited to a few weeks in a hotel, but it
certainly had its advantages.

~~~
ghaff
I'd observe that living in any small area whether it's a "fake town" like
Santana Row or a real town like gentrified areas of many old small New England
cities can get old. I worked in downtown Nashua NH--not the strip mall, the
old downtown--for quite a few years. It was nice. But you maybe had a dozen
square blocks of nice restaurants and interesting shops and that was it. Fine
to commute to a few days a week. Less interesting IMO to live in.

------
siculars
Oh, so you mean like most of Europe and NYC? Ya, I guess that's a thing people
are into.

(Disclaimer: I'm from NYC where this is just so bloody obvious.)

------
michaelbuckbee
Here's a detailed examination of one mall that converted to apartments -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmL2l-bcuUQ)

Interesting mostly for how they weighed the marketing and economic aspects of
it: "commercial renters think in terms of $/sq foot and individuals think of
monthly costs"

~~~
btmorex
So, instead of ugly commercial monstrosities we're going to get rows of tiny,
dark apartments in a weird building that doesn't really use space efficiently.
And this is a best case conversion: historic building in an urban area.
Imagine how awful a suburban mall would be.

------
biztos
In Bangkok, a city pretty serious about its malls, some of them have apartment
complexes attached. Here's one I happened to notice that seems to have pretty
normal prices:

[https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion-
mall](https://www.hotels.com/go/thailand/platinum-fashion-mall)

[https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the-
platinum-...](https://www.ddproperty.com/en/property/ขายด่วน-the-platinum-
fashion-mall-1-ห้องนอน-45-ตร-ม-ชั้นสูง-วิว-central-world-แต่งครบ-rw272-for-
sale-7745355)

There are complexes attached to some of the high-end malls too like IconSiam,
if you happen to be really rich and like malls:

[https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences](https://www.iconsiam.com/en/residences)

So, maybe the death of malls is not a requirement for living in malls?

------
softfalcon
Seems like a solid plan if they focus on opening restaurants, pharmacies,
grocery stores, banks, registries, etc in the commercial lots.

Every neighborhood strip mall seems to succeed by proximity to the people.

If you put a good restaurant near a neighborhood with a school, it gets a
steady traffic of regulars. Same goes for a little bank, pharmacy, gas
station, etc.

~~~
BoorishBears
In New Haven CT there's a downtown mall that was converted to an apartment
building, but none of the commercial space was left unconverted

It felt like the most oddly gloomy place I've ever seen apartments:
[https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp-
content/...](https://i2.wp.com/box5497.temp.domains/~betwefc1/wp-
content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_20170405_130955.jpg)

~~~
tartoran
Yes, very gloomy indeed. I wonder who’ll want to live there

------
morninglight
Sunshine City in Tokyo, Ikebukuro started out like this around 1978.

[https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/](https://sunshinecity.jp/en/information/about/)

The Sunshine City building is about 60 stories. The lower floors are mall. I
considered renting there around 1988, but the apartments in my price range
were shabby. Nearby conventional apartments were much less expensive. It
appears to be very successful, but I haven't been there for 18 years. Has
anyone else seen it recently?

------
nordsieck
I've seen news that some big companies have bought/leased up malls and
converted them into office space.

Probably doesn't do much for suburban culture (although it's arguably better
than having a failing mall in the neighborhood), but it's super good for
employees since malls tend to be located very near to housing.

[https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-
go...](https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/8/18173979/westside-pavilion-google-
office-space)

~~~
bluedino
Works great if there’s a pressing need for office space. Many places with
dying malls have plenty of abandoned retail real estate and not much in the
way of new or growing office real estate needs.

------
pkaye
I noticed the type of mall which is not enclosed is getting more popular in
California. Basically a collect of stores with a shared parking lot so you can
park right next to the store of interest. I think nobody wants to park and
walk by dozens of stores nobody cares about.

------
pragmatic
I was kicking around the idea of trying to turn empty retail spots into co-
working locations.

This work be a good halfway spot between the burbs and the congested downtowns
where co-working spots typically exist. Plus you have access to amenities and
you can take a walk, hangout in the main area in winter.

Thoughts?

~~~
nwienert
Check Bespoke in SF. Problem: no natural light, and depression sinks in after
some time due to being forced through the zoo that is a busy mall every day
(also somewhat of a food desert in that area). Not a bad idea though overall.

------
twblalock
Malls are generally just one or two stories tall and therefore a massive waste
of space compared to other possible uses of the same land. Building them
higher and putting housing on top is a great way to add more housing without
using more land.

~~~
throwlogon
Most empty malls are in places where economic demand, including demand for
land, is very low. Investing money to make efficient use of something that
cheap is unlikely to be a profitable move.

------
pontifier
Separation of land usage through zoning is a huge problem in my opinion. We'd
all be better off if they just let people do whatever they wanted on their own
land.

~~~
tartoran
How about an outdoor 24/7 disco in your quiet neighborhood?

~~~
pontifier
That's always the go-to argument (I literally had someone say "rock crushing
business" when talking about this issue). The standard should be are they
disturbing your quiet enjoyment of your property?

If not then mind your own damn business.

~~~
tartoran
Im not for zoning laws, just gave an example of mixing zones. It’s probably
better for the business as well to be in commercial zone. But if the impact
was zero i wouldnt mind a business operating in my residential neighborhood:
quiet, no extra trafic, etc

------
non-entity
In the city I used to live, the state government bought up many such dead
malls and turned them into office space for various agencies.

------
neonate
[https://archive.is/jIk9w](https://archive.is/jIk9w)

------
voisin
In most municipalities, zoning will restrict the ability of developers to make
changes of use like this.

------
x87678r
Bulldoze and subdivide would be more sensible I'd think.

------
seemslegit
Lack of sunlight might be a problem

------
TheRealSteel
I know I'm commenting on the site and not the story -- maybe this is against
the spirit of HN -- but hasn't Bloomberg lost credibility here ever since "The
Big Hack"?

Are we still okay with them? Are we just okay with them as long as it's not a
tech story? If so, is this an example of Gell-Mann Amnesia? [1]

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect)

~~~
perl4ever
Option 1 is people forgot, option 2 is they reserved judgment, finding it
inconclusive, and option 3 is they don't regard Bloomberg as a monolith.

At least, those are the possibilities that I can think of, and I think they
could plausibly cover most people.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
> _some developers are betting that empty malls can mix housing with stores
> and community space._

it was developers and city councils who _caused this mess in the first place_.

no one wanted to separate home and work / business / industry.

no one except developers and auto manufacturers.

~~~
dathinab
> > some developers are betting that empty malls can mix housing with stores
> and community space.

> it was developers and city councils who caused this mess in the first place.

I never understood why the US and some other countries have such a strict
separation between normal business/work areas and many EU cities do not have
such a strict separation and it just works very well.

Sure some industry which causes a lot of noise or other pollution is not
allowed interleaved with housing and industries which need a lot of space tend
to be outside of the city because of land cost.

But everything else can nicely interleave.

For example Berlin it's not uncommon to have small shops on the ground floor,
some offices or doctors on the first floor and apartments above that. While
many new buildings sadly don't have this anymore they still interleave
shopping males, doctor houses and offices with apartment blocks.

~~~
maxlybbert
Americans learned that they can use zoning laws to put restrictions on their
neighbors’ properties, mainly to keep their own property values high.

Unfortunately, American city planners have a lot of bad ideas of what a city
should look like. For some reason, stadiums are unreasonably popular (
[http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-
bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/...](http://www.hatrack.com/cgi-
bin/print_friendly.cgi?page=/osc/reviews/everything/2002-09-09.shtml) ).

~~~
maxlybbert
Oops: wrong link. It should have been [http://www.ornery.org/cgi-
bin/printer_friendly.cgi?page=/ess...](http://www.ornery.org/cgi-
bin/printer_friendly.cgi?page=/essays/warwatch/2003-09-28-1.html) .

