What is happening to our malls?

I have noticed a decrease in our malls. Back east it seems very common for them to not be as popular so they shut own and shutter and get torn down or left to decay. But back where I live, malls seem to be more common and it's less common when one goes dead. We have had a few here and we have one now which is Mall 205 (it's been dead in the past too) but the major anchors like Target and Home Depot and Fitness center and Bed Bath and Beyond are still in business but inside the mall there is hardly anything and it's mostly business stuff than stores like the DMV and I notice vacant places are appearing at Lloyd center and Nordstrom just closed this past January and the mall in currently under being renovated (updated again) and the movie theater also closed on the third floor and will be turned into something else. Lot of people still go to that mall and my husband heard a rumor from a store employee that major businesses there will be shutting down.


Why is it that malls are less popular now and now people seem to be more into boxed development stores or strip malls or outdoor malls. I have noticed outdoor malls are coming popular again because I am seeing them built again but indoor malls seem to be popular here still. My guess is because of the rain and the weather and people would rather be inside and shop than be outdoors but then again this isn't logical because it's cold back east too and i the midwest and more malls have shut down out there than they have on the west coast. If you look on deadmalls.com website, you will notice the states from the east and midwest have long lists of dead malls while the states back west do not.

I wonder what's changed to make malls less popular? I read just recently that more more malls with shutter. (Google: "why are indoors malls getting less common" for source)

I have guess the economy may have done it. With people losing their jobs, people will go out less and buy less stuff so that hurts businesses, then when tenants more out of the mall, less shoppers will come because of less stores so that hurts the mall even more. Then major chain businesses have to downsize so they shut down some of their stores and that hurts the malls even more. With all the online shopping now, why even go out and buy stuff when you can do it online? if I want a book, I just have to get on my Nook and look in the store on there and buy one. But I still go to Barnes and Noble just to read books there on my Nook because they don't always have a book there I want to read.

I have seen video stores going extinct and now they are rare and it's pretty obvious why they have declined. But wait, if malls have been dying due to online shopping, then wouldn't that mean department stores would be closing and becoming rare and other stores too? I still love to go out and look around than using the computer for it because I like to get out of the house and I need to feel the item and see it. I need to try on clothes before buying them first (if I had to buy new ones).

AEsahaettr said:

I don't think that department stores are as vulnerable to online competition as video stores. I don't need to see a video game in a store to buy it. I don't need to see a pair of hiking boots to buy them. I do need to wear a suit to buy it.

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This.

I probably end up in a mall once or twice a year, and that's it. And those are situations where I've procrastinated and need to buy something last-minute.

Our one and only mall in Lynchburg has a lot of closed stores, but just down the road is a large strip of individual stores, and they are doing well. The mall was a wonderful concept for a while, but like all things, shopping habits have changed. When my wife started having diabetic foot problems, we did all of our Christmas shopping on line. She couldn't get through the happy Christmas shoppers while riding her electric cart. So now we do most all of our shopping on line. Thank you Amazon.

Internet killed the Shopping Mall Industry. Also Economic conditions and over saturation of stores with a short distance For instance in Metroplex of Boston, Mass for that matter with in 50 miles of Boston you have Braintree Mall, Cambridgeside Galleria, Watertown/Arsenal Malls, Natick Mall, Square One Mall, Burlington, Mall, Woburn Mall, Manchester New Hampshire Malls, Worcester Fashion Square Mall, Emerald Square Mall in Attelboro Ma and Providence Place Mall in Providence, RI and Warwick and Rhode Island Malls in Warwick, RI in each of those malls were duplications of each stores. That is what is going to take down the rest of retail if they stop building 4 Wal Marts with in 5 miles of each other and building 4 Home Depots in one large city one to two larger stores would suffice .

Calico said:

Lloyd center and Nordstrom just closed this past January and the mall in currently under being renovated (updated again) and the movie theater also closed on the third floor and will be turned into something else. Lot of people still go to that mall and my husband heard a rumor from a store employee that major businesses there will be shutting down.
.

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I don't think there's a ton of people going there in first place, it's not in a very convenient place and it's a little outdated anyway. The other mall however is extremely nice and always seems to be full of people, it's also really easy to get to. Also, as everyone else has said, the internet killed shopping

Internet shopping has clearly played a major part, but I think there's also a growing dissatisfaction with the corporate monoculture malls produce. Along with online shopping, the internet has opened up new possibilities for promotion of small and niche businesses on a scale said businesses never previously had. I think that's driving a growth in localism and a desire for identity over homogeneity. In short, people are moving from product identity towards local identity and a sense of independence.

Also fair to say there are economic reasons. In the wake of the financial crisis, banks are faced with higher capital adequacy requirements, which has manifested as a reluctance to lend to businesses. That and low (even negative) interest rates has driven investor demand for returns, so business comes under greater pressure to cut costs and weed out marginal stores so as to maintain the dividend and protect the share price. I also think people are slowly getting fed up with someone else packaging up a lifestyle choice for them, which is what so many malls seem to be - buy this, wear this, look like this! I've long since tired of going to large malls and being bombarded by some marketing executive's idea of what my ambitions are.

Edited to add - I think transport also plays a major part, especially for out of town locations. Again, thanks in part to the internet, smartphones and the like, fewer young people are driving (certainly here in the UK), so many don't have the means to get to these places, even if they want to go. Life is becoming increasingly urban and networked, whereas many malls are suburban, which is not where the younger generation wants to be.

The mall that I used to go to a lot back in the day was: Chapel Hill Mall in Ohio. Back then it was soo lively and friendly people everywhere. Stores were thriving and the food court had awesome selections. Than recently I went to the mall and holy hayseeds has it gone downhill. There are a lot of closed and "soon to be open" stores. The food court has only like two or three places left to choose from and the people that you see there seem "shady", like this is a place you do not wanna be at around night time. I think the only redeeming factor for me to go there is for Hot Topic. But I agree with other posters on here by saying that the malls are slowly declining because of the internet "killing" it. Why go out to a store and buy the shirt when all you have to do is click a button to get the same thing, now granted you have to do internet shopping because there are some items that are not sold in-stores and only online.

*urban planner hat on*

Malls are a product of the era from whence they came, and the times are changing.

Malls are a product of the suburbanization of the 1950s. Traditionally, commerce and the hustle-and-bustle all happened at the city core. Of course, land at the city core was expensive, so buildings were built taller. The department store of the pre-World-War-II era exemplifies this. The economics were such that as more goods became available because of industrialization, and space was at a premium, the department store grew to prominence. Rapid adoption of the automobile created all sorts of congestion and parking nightmares in the city.

The Great Depression and World War II effectively stopped new construction of all kinds. By the end of the war, there were housing shortages in many cities because of the lack of construction combined with people migrating to cities to fill wartime production jobs. U.S. companies had a dramatic excess of production capacity thanks to the massive war efforts and the efficiencies gained from expansive adoption of assembly lines and mass production. And, there was plenty of pent-up demand for housing and consumer goods because of wartime rationing and the aforementioned lack of housing development.

When the war ended, the government, via the GI Bill, offered low interest loans to returning veterans. During the Depression, the government created what eventually became Fannie Mae and the 30-year fully-amortizing mortgage (before that, mortgages were typically five-year notes with a balloon at the end), making home purchases affordable for a much larger segment of society. But, because of federal housing policies like redlining and the like, it was very hard to buy an existing house on GI Bill benefits after WWII. At the same time, William Levitt applied the principles of mass production to housing, creating the first Levittown and effectively a dramatic expansion of suburbia (of course noting that before WWII, congestion, crowding, and crime were all concerns of cities and suburban living was an ideal generally only attainable by the professional, upper, and wealthy classes). A returning veteran could by a brand-new house in the suburbs with his GI Bill benefits for less than $100 per month.

When the money (i.e. the Middle, Professional, and Upper classes) moved to the suburbs, the commerce followed. Land on the fringe was super cheap. Parking was plentiful. New shining freeways made it super easy to get to the fringe (stupid urban mayors supported the freeways under the idea that they'd allow residents at the fringe to easily reach the city core, apparently not realizing that they would also make it easy to leave the city). Thus, the mall was born.

For fans of the mall, watch "In the Suburbs" from 1957. It was made by Redbook as an explanatory piece, and it lays out a lot of cool background. [video]https://archive.org/details/IntheSub1957#[/video]


So, the mall was born in an era when the suburbs were on the rise, an era that reached its zenith in the 1980s.

Now, young people are rapidly moving back into urban cores and are interested in small-scale local commerce, the sort that would be more familiar to denizens of 1900-1940 than to those from 1950-2000. Consider the rise of old-fashioned barber shops, artisan bakeries and coffee shops, and the like-things that would have never had a chance 20 years ago. Plenty of small shops still get on just fine in the internet age. Young people and modern shoppers want a more intimate and personal shopping experience if they're buying something in person, something malls don't really provide. The housing crisis of 2008 convinced a lot of young people that real estate isn't necessarily the sure-fire bet it was made out to be, and economic conditions for younger people are such that buying a house is still probably a long way off, driving them toward city cores where the physical mall model just doesn't work.

So, the conditions are no longer ripe for malls. As a shining example of this, look at Metro Detroit's Northland Center. At the time of its completion in 1954, it was the largest shopping center in the world. It was built by Hudson's, which was the second largest department store chain and was convinced the suburbs were the place to be. It was ultimately nearly 1.5 Million square feet of retail space.

Now? Dead. It's pretty much completely done and closed. For years before that, it had been losing stores. It was so bad by the end that they'd literally built walls to look like part of the architecture to hide empty storefronts. It was bleeding $250,000 per month and the building required millions in restorative maintenance because so much had been deferred. And the story's the same across Southfield (where Northland was). Office space that was prime luxury space in the 1980s and 1990s is sitting vacant and rates are now lower in Southfield than they are in Downtown Detroit, where most of the city's historic skyscrapers sat vacant just 10 years ago because there was no interest.


So the answer? Changing demographics, plain and simple.

xpluswearer said:

Internet killed the Shopping Mall Industry. Also Economic conditions and over saturation of stores with a short distance For instance in Metroplex of Boston, Mass for that matter with in 50 miles of Boston you have Braintree Mall, Cambridgeside Galleria, Watertown/Arsenal Malls, Natick Mall, Square One Mall, Burlington, Mall, Woburn Mall, Manchester New Hampshire Malls, Worcester Fashion Square Mall, Emerald Square Mall in Attelboro Ma and Providence Place Mall in Providence, RI and Warwick and Rhode Island Malls in Warwick, RI in each of those malls were duplications of each stores. That is what is going to take down the rest of retail if they stop building 4 Wal Marts with in 5 miles of each other and building 4 Home Depots in one large city one to two larger stores would suffice .

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Plus the Mall at Rockingham Park in my town of Salem, New Hampshire just across the MA/NH State Line.