Retail experts have long sounded the alarm on malls in the US.
But malls are not going extinct, they are merely adapting to a new environment. In fact, many have reported robust occupancy levels and bigger crowds than before the pandemic, according to a recent market analysis from Coresight Research.
Someone once told me that malls are appealing because they match what we want out of a walkable city, and I haven’t been able to get that out of my mind.
A walkable city, but with no housing and surrounded by acres and acres of parking.
Yeah, I understand that it isn’t a walkable city. But the inside shows why we should work towards walkable cities.
I’d also stipulate there is at least one way walkable cities should be more like malls. Everyone wants to get rid of cars , for good reason, but what about everyone else? Good walkable cities still need to provide better ways for someone to drive to the city and leave their car.
We’d all benefit from more park-n-rides surrounding a town center, more long term parking. Let’s welcome people not yet ready to give up their cars, the opportunity to give them up part time
Good walkable cities should have appropriate rural transport so you don’t need to drive into town and can take a five dollar train ride with no traffic instead that includes return fare and takes you right to main destination districts.
Seattles ferry network, for example.
Seattle ferries:
- Not $5
- Still need transit to and from terminals
- Slow as fuck
We almost have that in Boston. You can drive in and park on the edge of the train network, then take a $2.40 ride anywhere in the system, and it gets you almost everywhere.
Well, when the trains aren’t on fire, anyway.
That’s interesting! I hadn’t thought about that, but it’s a good point.
When I lived in L.A., we would drive to the train station all the time if we were doing something like going downtown. It was too far to walk to the station, but there was parking and the train was convenient. So I absolutely agree with you.
The mall closest to me has started to build a TON of apartments around, and attached, to the mall.
Its starting to look appealing, and that mall is always buzzing.
Its like they figured out people don’t want to drive, then walk. They just want to walk.
A lot of malls I can think of (in both my current and previous city) do have tons of housing around them (though admittedly they also tend to waste a ton of space on parking). Some are admittedly a mixed bag. My parents live near a mall that is surrounded by a giant suburb and not that many medium density apartments. Though the biggest mall in that city is downtown and is positively surrounded by high density housing. Another reaaaally big mall is in a street that frankly is terrible for walking despite being full of businesses (it’s a really long, low density street), but the entire back side of the mall is residences and lots of medium density at that.
In my current city, one of the biggest malls is kinda similar to that. It’s got mostly detached housing near it. But it’s directly on our LRT and that makes it super accessible for probably the majority of high density housing residents, which counts as walkable in my book. A significant number of people can get there in 10-20 minutes by convenient and frequent public transit. The other big mall is also on the LRT but the other side of the city. It’s got much more housing near by, including a large amount of high density apartments. There’s also a smaller mall more in the middle that is just surrounded by high density apartments. That mall has been hit really hard by COVID, but at least the street it’s on is full of life. It doesn’t make for traditional mall experiences (e.g., no food court), but it’s still a super walkable area, regularly hosts mini festivals outside, and is also on the LRT route.
As I type this, I think it really drives home that LRTs and subways are utterly critical for walkable cities. Literally all the malls I’ve mentioned are major transit hubs (which makes them great to live near if you want to take transit), but buses relatively suck compared to LRT/subway. The ability to just head to a station without having to know the schedule is extremely convenient and the frequency also just makes it more viable to get to the mall quickly. I’ve used public transit for years in both cities (and to get to all the mentioned malls), but the best experiences are definitely with the LRT. The LRT also makes high density housing a lot more sensical, since being close to the LRT stations is extremely convenient and high density housing is the most scalable way to achieve that.
Indoor malls are gonna have a resurgence as temperatures get higher and higher and it’s no longer feasible to spend time outdoors for prolonged periods.
I’ve been to the middle east (Oman). So many malls there for basically that exact reason. And a friend of mine grew up in Bahrain and said the same.
Same thing in Thailand as well. Malls will never go extinct because they’re air conditioned areas that anyone can enter.
If they can afford the power bill for all of that A/C maybe.
If you cover everything in asphalt, yes, that’s what’s going to happen.
That’s definitely gonna be a locational thing. In my area (near Toronto, Canada), I’d say malls are more popular in the winter because they offer an escape from the cold and there isn’t that much to do in the winter, anyway. Summers in my area aren’t going to get hot enough to change that any time soon.
But for something like Arizona, it’s really easy to picture how that would be the case, cause summers there are murderously hot.
I wonder how such large buildings have such amazing AC, anyway? Most malls and big box stores have god tier AC.
Malls in my area are mostly doing great.
I think there were just a lot of middling malls, and malls in areas without the population to support them. What the article calls “top tier” malls in large cities are doing fine.
And there was several metro areas that have faced economic decline in the last 30 years that have contributed to some malls going out of business as well. This happened because people did not have the money to spend nor an increasing population to cater to a large mall.
The mall here is doing really well because they let a bunch of local businesses in. There’s a local toy store, an antique mall and, best of all, a pinball arcade. And we’re a small city in Indiana.
Nice to get back to the roots. I remember malls with arcades and local businesses, instead of just indistinguishable women’s clothing chains, where every mall had some unique character instead of all being the same
just indistinguishable women’s clothing chains
Ugh, while I do enjoy clothes shopping, I always felt there’s waaaaay too many of these. I can’t tell the difference between most of them. Some selection is great, but the larger malls I’ve been to have so many seemingly identical clothing stores that you can’t possibly even look at them all. I’ve always wondered how it’s feasible to have so many. It feels like having 5 gas stations on the same block. I wonder if the stores closers to entrances or the food court have an advantage over those in the middle?
Yeah, it’s really nice. They even have a couple of local restaurants in the food court and the playground for kids is really cool- it’s done like giant breakfast food you can climb all over. Found a photo:
The traditional mall is dying. Mixed use developments are thriving.
I just went to one of the big nearby malls. It is just off a major highway across the state line, where there is no sales tax. It used to have a guaranteed customer base from my city, just based on tax savings. Admittedly I haven’t been there in 15 years, as driving a pan hour for shopping is something we no longer did with kids. However this weekend I went up there and found boarded up stores and weeds growing in the parking lot.
However the interesting thing was there was tons of surrounding retail built up, so the area is still doing well for shopping, but not the mall. Before anyone asks, no, there were no sidewalks or paths connecting shopping centers.
Anyhow, I think it’s all much simpler than headlines seem to make it: we built out too many malls. Now we have other options from plazas to online, so don’t need so many. I expect the number of malls to stabilize at a point where everyone can still get to one, but that’s not the only place
If there’s retail growth around the mall but not inside it, then it means the mall is overcharging for rent. I’ve seen similar things, and the malls tend to have plenty of empty spaces.
I like going to the mall for pretzels
I live in Utah and all of the malls have a shitty knock-off Auntie Anne’s called Pretzelmaker that never fails to disappoint.
I was going to ask how you feel about Pretzel Ti🥨e, but then I saw that they turned into Pretzelmaker.
That’s not good.
My nearest mall has only survived because it pivoted away from retail and is now almost entirely restaurants.
That sounds kinda cool actually. When you’re hungry and don’t know what you want, just walk around until something sounds good!
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I hadn’t been to a mall in a really long time until a friend of mine dragged me to one to kill some time before a thing we had going on later that night. I was surprised how busy it was, and how much it had expanded in terms of content. There were a couple of art galleries and even a little tabletop gaming store with a few people playing Catan. The only area that was kind of deserted was surprisingly the food court, which only had a bubble tea place and a sandwich place open.
I know the one mall in my hometown isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Sure it’s a far cry from what it probably was a long time ago, but it’s still a great place to go.
I hope it doesn’t close because it’s the most convenient place for me to go to get both bubble tea and copies of older manga.
Shout out to your username! The voice in my head sang it as I read it
Most of my bigger local malls have been pretty great, too. Whenever I go, they’re bustling with activity and I love it. It’s fun to make an outing out of it. Hit up the food court for so many guilty pleasure options, look around some cool stores, and be able to try on clothes before buying them (the lack of being the biggest reason not to buy clothes online – some companies have really inconvenient return policies, too).
But that’s definitely not the case for every mall. There’s a small one near me that is just sad. Despite being in a fairly busy area outside, it contain a bunch of empty storefronts that went out of business during COVID and still haven’t found new tenants. I’m not sure why it’s been that way for so long. Are there that few people looking to start businesses in that area? Or could the landlords just be massively overcharging? It sucks, though, cause I like being able to visit interesting shops in person.
The large ‘malls’ here are all seeing to do very well, and those that were previously struggling have seemed to have seen success pivoting away from being just a place to go and ‘buy’ things and into places to ‘do’ and ‘experience’ things.
We millennials have a fascination with mixing alcohol and activities we did growing up, with bowling, mini-golf and ticket arcades doing well by feeding off our nostalgia.
I watched some American Gladiators today. No alcohol was involved, just pure nostalgia
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The current title is still “The US mall is not dying”
