Ehhh... it really depends on where the mall is located. Back home (podunk Rockford IL) malls are indeed dying. They are dilapidated and/or ghost towns. Ten years ago this was not the case.
Where I currently live (La Jolla CA) the opposite is true. Of course, the malls are filled with stores like Saks, Nordstrom, a Tesla show floor, etc. These places are packed. I know I'm not going to buy a $1200+ jacket online any time soon, so I go to the mall for high end stuff.
Dying and prospering malls are just a function of the income/wealth gap increasing. There used to be a much larger population that could afford discretionary spending at malls, or maybe didn’t have anything better to spend their money on like on demand media and video games at home. But now, only the richer areas can afford to pay for very marked up items that can sustain a mall environment.
You can search for an Apple Store or Nordstrom’s and find the wealthy part of town wherever the mall they are in is located. Also works with Whole Foods and a couple other stores.
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.
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.
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.
To me it seems that malls aren't dying, there's just been a major shift in who shops at them. Malls that are in prime real estate that cater to wealthy shoppers are doing quite well. Just go to Tyson's Corner in Virginia, or Somerset Mall outside Detroit on any Saturday and you will see that the reports of brick-and-mortar's death are greatly exaggerated.
But with regard to stores like Sears, JCPenney, and Macy's, the problem is that whereas in the 1980's, just about everyone shopped at them for everything but groceries and would travel from long distances to do so, nowadays it's just people who live nearby and just a subset of them.
I think this notion that it's Amazon that's killing traditional retail has some truth but it's very much oversimplified. While Amazon is no doubt eating into the sales of stores in every industry, I don't think Amazon is killing JCPenney, for example. After all, how many people do you know who buy their jeans on Amazon?
I think what's killing clothing retailers is the prevalence of a large number of smaller, niche manufacturers. People no longer want to buy drab clothing off a rack, they want to buy from a particular brand. People either are price-sensitive shoppers who will go buy off the rack from TJ Maxx or Ross, or are at the other extreme and want expensive name brands and will buy direct from the source or a select set of online retailers that sell them. That leaves retailers like JCPenney and Macy's in kind of a no-man's land.
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.
From what I've seen malls are consolidating. The good ones continue to do well and get even nicer, while all the others slowly die as people make the trek to the good mall. There is no room in the market for average.
It will be interesting to see what happens to them as they die, as they are quite unique pieces of real estate.
Pretty sure that "Malls are dying" is large part negativity bias - cities don't get "too crowded" with malls, so we never experience having "too many" of them, but we DO experience having them close down. A mall closing down will stick out much more to a person than a new one coming up.
It doesn't help that malls are practically designed to get old and decrepit - malls are built to a completed state - once one is built, it will never get "bigger, newer, and better", it will only get more and more older and "outdated". They weren't DESIGNED to be updated and last for decades.
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...
Right, malls are dying in certain areas and flourishing in others. As demographic shifts continue to happen across geographies (and those shifts only seem to be increasing), the very concept of a stationary location of offline commerce ceases to be flexible enough. I don't discount the fact that many or all people would want to try on a $1200 jacket before buying it; simply that the retail model that will thrive in the coming decades involves much greater mobility than a static large shopping center can provide.
I can think of half-a-dozen closed air malls within 30 minutes of each other where I live. Some of them are absolutely thriving, packed full of shoppers pretty much all day and on a race to expand space and amenities with the growing crowds.
Others are near-dead ghost towns with something like 50% occupancy and entire wings blocked off because of a homeless/drug addict/gang problem.
Most of the open-air "town center" style malls around me are also packed to the gills at all times. It's actually unpleasant to shop at them because they're so crowded, but they usually mix in outlet stores with regular stores and draw huge tourist crowds.
I'm not sure what the trend is, not all that long ago I would say they're definitely - most certainly dying. But then one of the near-dead malls near me just changed hands, is undergoing major renovation and the numbers of stores and shoppers is growing.
I think people like the social aspect of shopping, the walking around and browsing, touching things, trying them on. My wife orders lots of clothes on-line, but the smart stores let her return non-fitting clothes in-store, where she'll also check out what they're offering, try some things on and then buy more -- she's not the only one.
Crappy malls are dying. Decent malls in more affluent areas are diversifying their experiences and thriving. In some places, indoor malls make a lot of sense. I live in Minnesota (home of the original indoor mall, Southdale). It's cold here a good chunk of the year, and an indoor mall isn't a half bad idea.
People say this, but both of the malls I've been to in the past few years (one in Bellevue, WA and one in Chandler, AZ) have been completely packed almost every time. Is it really still true that malls are going away?
They haven't perished at all. Some of them had to contract some, after all you don't need 3 department stores and 2 malls in a small urban area in central Ohio in the Internet age. To compare to Berlin, look to NY or San Francisco - Nordstrom's, Saks, Bloomingdales, etc are all test I'll there and still crowded.
Also worth noting the rise of a new category of mall (new since the 80s and growing rapidly in the past decade) - the outlet mall. These are huge, often outdoor malls with many traditional and non-traditional anchors. They draw millions of shoppers from much further away than traditional malls, and offer atomic competition for offline shopping, and a destination for a 'shopping trip as entertainment'.
Where I currently live (La Jolla CA) the opposite is true. Of course, the malls are filled with stores like Saks, Nordstrom, a Tesla show floor, etc. These places are packed. I know I'm not going to buy a $1200+ jacket online any time soon, so I go to the mall for high end stuff.
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