We managed to save our local mall before it completely died, and now it thrives. They turned it mostly inside out, there's still halls inside but all of the popular stores now face outward so you can park right in front of them.
I think you hit the nail on the head and this is really region specific.
There was a mall next to me when I was growing up and it was dingy, just poorly maintained. Then the area became hot, Whole Foods moved in. Then Target. Then a bevy of smaller upscale retailers. Now that dingy mall is unrecognizable and filled to the brim. Not a single vacancy. Not a single open parking spot either.
Malls aren't dying. Some malls are, but that has nothing to do with the mall paradigm and has more to do with the local population. A mall can't get up and move. It's like a tree. It is where it is and it either thrives or dies.
Some malls are dying, some are thriving. Antidote is not data. There is one mall I've gone to the theater in a few times in recent memory, and it is swamped, I've almost get run down by shoppers at all times of the day, weekdays and weekends. Parking takes a long time to find. That's the only time I would go to that mall. I'd never shop there. Way too many people, only the theater for me. I've also been to dying malls. I've seen a few of them die over the years and are now dead.
There are so many places where malls are thriving. A few years ago, I used to live in a different city, and at Christmas time I'd have to take a different road to work, because just driving by the mall made my commute twice as long, if not more because of the traffic. On a weekday. Taking the long way was much quicker.
Some malls are thriving, but many are dead. In the city I grew up in I can name at least two that are dead or close to dead. On the other hand if you go just outside the city then there are two that are still going strong.
I was back in my hometown recently for the first time in years, and I was shocked to see that my childhood mall was busier than I had ever seen it.
The end-cap Sears carcass has been demolished. Apartments are being built in its place, with a private breezeway connecting them to the mall.
Two adjacent large stalls are now an enormous arcade and bowling alley. A stand-up comedy venue has replaced Ruby Tuesday. There's an escape room now, indoor bunjee jumping, and a dance studio too. A deaf people's advocacy group has a neat little cultural center.
There's a bunch of new, huge sculptures in the large center area. Someone finally had the presence of mind to install some seating. The big sculptures deaden some of the noise. It's a genuinely pleasant place to just sit, socialize, and people watch.
The big multi-level carousel is still there. Sadly, they took down the huge steel-cable jungle gym, but the one they replaced it with looks a lot friendlier to toddlers.
For my entire childhood, half the food court stalls were empty. The other half were bland fast food. Today, all the stalls are filled, and the available options span many cultures.
Despite all this, a lot of things are pretty much the same. The retail is still there, there's just fewer redundant stores. Almost every store that remains has an obvious reason for its physical existence.
Conceptually, malls still make sense. They will always make sense, as long as buildings that share walls with each other are cheaper and more energy-efficient. In order to survive, a mall must find ways to make people want to visit the mall.
One of the local "dead malls" is thriving as a collection of about 3 strip malls surrounding the common parking lot. Each "strip mall" has one or two big box stores and a couple have a line of smaller stores.
Of course, the two story mall itself, with its internal hallways and rows of boutique stores, is gone.
The big expensive malls are doing fine. I would never buy anything from half the stores because it's too expensive, but I guess somebody is buying.
I go there for the Lego and Apple Stores, and restaurants (Cheesecake factory isn't treeeible)
It's the smaller, lower end malls that are dead. Their anchor stores are either long gone (Sears) or on deaths door (Macy's, JC Penny), food courts are empty.
They look like flea markets inside. Random junk stores, kiosks...
The buildings are usually often old and cheaply constructed and would probably largely need to be gutted which is probably not worth it.
But even if you contemplate just building from scratch, if a mall is dead it's probably because it's located somewhere there isn't a ton of demand. That's certainly the case with the one near me.
yup here they keep building more malls and all i hear is malls are dying... they build a mall almost in the middle of no where and yet its still busy. Just recently they built a mall next to a busy mall...
The demographics have changed around the first- and second-generation malls enough that many of them are no longer viable. Since they're huge properties, they tend to rot slowly. They're finally dying. There's probably some fundamental challenges wrt online shopping, and preference for more "natural" environments, but there are plenty of malls that are doing very well, especially the more upscale ones.
Just because not every mall is succeeding, it doesn't mean the whole category is doomed. (Not that I actually like them, but enough people certainly do.)
Our local mall went through a period of decline, as old stalwarts like Sears, Montgomery Ward, and JC Penny went out of business or left. But then it got renovated, new stores moved in, and it's as busy as ever. I think it just took a different selection of stores to attract customers back. And the redesign made space for a number of medium-size anchor stores like REI who have doors facing out rather than into the mall itself.
I grew up going to this mall. I think the premise of this article is a bit misleading.
Sure, some malls are not doing well, some will go out of business, and some will evolve. For example, the nearby Bedford mall lost tenants, turned into a ghost mall, and was demolished a few years ago. But in its place, they built a Whole Foods. And right down the road, a large outdoor mall with outlet stores opened and is thriving with over 100 stores filled with upscale national retailers.
Lots of large chains and even anchors have died. Circuit City, CompUSA, Filene's, KB Toys, Ames, and so on. Amazon didn't kill these companies. These stores were killed by poor management (For example Best Buy is thriving in the age of Amazon). Tech giants would do well to learn from big box retail failures because having a website does not make one immune to poor management or a failure to innovate.
Go to a mall on the weekend and tell me. Maybe the malls are dying in dead cities, but they're booming in LA who already has plenty of mom and pop shops too. Both are thriving.
Unfortunately, locally its a stereotype that they turn every dead mall's anchor store into a movie theater.
Also, locally, most dead malls die when they can no longer afford to maintain the roof, and water is pouring out of the ceiling everywhere until the occupancy permit gets yanked and leases are broken, and flooding is exactly what you don't want for books.
Shopping malls are interesting because their entire appeal is predicated on a network effect. So when something reverses that effect, whether it's demographic shifts to the area, a large tenant going out of business, or a competing mall, the results can be devastating and you get a vicious circle death spiral.
As others have noted, malls in general aren't doing too poorly, but for the ones that are they're awfully conspicuous and downright depressing, so I think those tend to stick out in peoples' minds.
We managed to save our local mall before it completely died, and now it thrives. They turned it mostly inside out, there's still halls inside but all of the popular stores now face outward so you can park right in front of them.
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