It's much more like a conventional mall than a downtown: It's effectively walled off from the rest of the neighbordood. You're expected to go there by driving your car, and it's isolated by its massive parking lots so nobody would consider walking in or out a pleasant experience.
What I would really like is for a few blocks of University to become pedestrian-only with lots of outdoor seating for its cafes and restaurants. (The same goes for other downtown areas in the South Bay, like Santa Cruz in Menlo Park.) It's amazing how little outdoor seating we have in the Bay Area despite the amazing weather.
That being said, University Ave becoming increasingly "corporate blasé" in its selection of restaurants (basically great for a business meeting and little else) is sad to see.
The personal vehicle oriented commutes exacerbate this.
There's a difference between needing parking, and surrounding an area with a moat of parked cars.
I think one big problem retail is facing is that, for a long time, efficiency won the day. The chains and their supply chains and economies of scale drove more and more mom and pops out of business, and then only the really efficient chains could survive, and then they had to refinance and take on all this debt that the article mentions, and pretty soon there's absolutely nothing to mourn, and no reason not to buy from Amazon rather than drive to a Best Buy. Some truly unique independent mom and pop or local shops could be worth spending a few bucks more than Amazon to patronize. GenericMall stores give me 0 reason to patronize them over Amazon.
What malls do have is space, and that kind of large space owned by a single entity is rare these days within a reasonable travel time away. Redevelopment potential is definitely there.
Also, a professor of mine once wondered why we don't have great public spaces like they do in Europe. Then he realized that we do -- in the form of college campuses.