It's really a fantastic space, and it was basically empty just a few short years ago.
That said, its model is not necessarily a solution to suburban mall decay, as it was already part of a dense downtown with a growing residential population and a captive workday population that often uses the arcades as a walkway between Euclid and Prospect.
Many malls will never recover as the US simply has too much retail square footage. Along with that, they're not so great with property tax efficiency, where historic main street districts easily outperform them. There's a Strong Towns article out there somewhere about the subject (probably this one: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/23/bon-ton-gone)
[0] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/10/30/lifel...
https://blog.rackspace.com/get-an-inside-look-at-the-rackspa...
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rac...
crazy guys video, it still mostly looks like this: https://youtu.be/xkHcWDNn_4Q
I'm so glad we opted for the William Gibson distopian future. A Mad Max apolocalyptic hellscape would have been terrible for my skin.
If they can't attract traditional retail tenants, some dead-mall owners have resorted to transforming them into community event centers, offices, or even apartments.[1] I don't know about the profitability of apartments but the community centers do not make enough money relative to the expenses of property taxes and upkeep. The mall is still dying.
The other option is for a new buyer to purchase the mall solely for the land value and demolish the buildings. Two malls in my area were demolished. One was replaced by a Wal-Mart supercenter with some adjacent strip malls sharing the same large parking lot. Another mall was razed and replaced by a Target store. The Wal-Mart and Target have drawn more shoppers than the dead malls they replaced. This is the free market telling us that the locations were commercially viable but the retail configuration (the indoor mall) was worthless.
[1] https://gizmodo.com/7-dead-shopping-malls-that-found-surpris...
But previous zoning proposal that were ballot initiatives got defeated (hurray democracy) and it's required a state bill to force the city's hand for zoning. (https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/04/02/community-reacts-to-d...) But still no agreement between the city and the developers.
I'm sure most malls will be trivial to rezone as cities would rather have something paying taxes rather than nothing but that's not the case everywhere.
Building density housing is cheap compared to building the schools, parks, fire, police stations, and transportation to support the new density housing.
And to close the circle, Prop 13 makes it impossible for towns in California to tax residents enough to pay for the required parks, schools etc. There is an obvious solution (repeal Prop 13, and bump local property taxes enough to cover the infrastructure the new residents will need) but it's politically infeasible.
Are developers expected to build those? Don't cities build roads, schools, parks, and police stations with the tax income from the people who live in the houses?
We've had this problem with developers as well - they want to build mega high-rise apartments with no parking whatsoever and force the city to deal with it, despite the city struggling to fill current transportation demand.
Sure, maybe. Offering to build them for the city is a great way to build goodwill for your project.
If you want to see the ridiculousness of building in the Bay Area, however, you only need to compare this project with another large project proposal somewhere else:
https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/5/11/17340660/the-78-related...
This is nearly the exact same size parcel as the mall in Cupertino. But they are proposing 10,000 housing units and 13 million square feet of development (5x as much). The article calls it "surprisingly low density". But the plans include a new transit station, new roads, many acres of public space, etc. What it will come down to, though, is that the city will say "if you build this, we'll build that". The elementary school that will serve this development is already under construction. So it's likely that the developer will pay for at least half of the train station - it would be significantly more expensive than a school because it is underground at that point.
Btw: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines "affordable" as housing that costs no more than 30 percent of a household's monthly income.
"WTF is this doing here with all this insanely expensive land and such!?!?!"
I would half expect the bulldozers to show up with 10 minutes notice or something. I was driving around all amazed by "OMG I know all these cool companies!" .... "What the hell...."
Although both pay property taxes and both require utility services like water, sewer, and waste collection, non-residential properties attract both in-town residents and outsiders from other jurisdictions, who then typically spend some money in your town. Meanwhile, residential attracts new residents, who may or may not take jobs in your town, could be spending money in other towns, but need high-cost social services like public schools and community programs in your town.
I honestly don't think it can. I've seen them turned into office spaces, but it's really not an efficient use of space and the lack of sunlight/windows just makes it depressing.
As far as demolishing goes, most malls really aren't in areas where the space for parking is needed. If they are, then that land is probably highly valuable anyway.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rac...
That is definitely proof that good space can be built out of it, but are there enough companies who want to build spaces like that compared to the number of dead malls? There are a lot of dead malls. The ones I've seen are much more corporate-like.
That's the tricky bit in physically-routed infrastructure: pipelines, canals, rail, expressways, media (vs. transmission-based) comms links. None of them abide well with airgapping.
The comms-transport link goes back at least to the rail era when telegraph lines sprang up along them. You might have heard of one such venture: the Southern Pacific Railroad Internal Network Telecommunications, better known as SPRINT.
https://www.npr.org/2012/10/15/162963607/sprint-born-from-ra...
A delivery-based fulfillment service, say, Amazon, might have interest in some (though hardly all) of these as local distribution hubs.
Rezone and densify, and build a mixed use walkable community of residential commercial and office.
Now if only there were some way to do that with people, not just with stuff (cough mumble public transit cough).
I always thought a good repurposing of these buildings would've been:
-Skate parks or other athletic venue (maybe a gym if the building was the right size?)
-Clubs/Dancehalls
-Concert Venues
-Intermittent Rental for Parties/Weddings things of that nature (you setup you break down, just an empty building to host a party)
I guess the rental idea could be used for a number of practical purposes if one had an idea that they thought it would be good for.
edit: this is a moot point now, but back in the late 90's and early 00's Houston had a serious lack of skateparks which is no longer an issue. Luckily im now an adult and dont really have the time to make use of them like i would've as a kid
a.) San Antonio/El Camino outdoor mall rebuilt as mixed used retail/residential
b.) Sunnyvale Town Center mall - mixed use retail/residential?
c.) Cupertino Vallco Mall - in litigation/negotiation for mixed use retail/residential
d.) some 50 year old movie theaters with huge parking lots on the edge of existing Santana Row mixed use development were torn down recently to make room for more mixed use development
Probably, but it's fun to think about.
> In the real world it's going to be sleazy and run down in a few short years.
Sleazy is desirable to a point, but it's easy to go too far in that direction. And getting run down is a definite concern. It's entirely possible that the economics required to keep the place safe and hygienic would price out a lot of customers, and it would struggle to do enough business to stay afloat. Which is actually not so different from the current situation, but at least it's interesting.
> I'd also like to be at the city council meeting where you propose adding hooker hotel rooms in the original plans.
We're gonna have to do it in a very progressively liberal area, or get Kevin Bacon to do it.
In my experience, liberal areas are only permissive when it comes to national policy. When it comes to changing anything significant about their "historic" neighborhoods, you're going to fight tooth and nail with everyone. They'll find an endangered bird species that nests near your old mall to slow down development.
So, basically, "don't bother coming here because you can't leave"?
You'd need to make sure it was either accessible by public transit, or that there's cheap and effective semi-public transit like Lyft or taxi cabs - and it has to be cheap and effective for two trips, since you'll have to come back to pick up your car in the morning.
Then they should offer up sleeping accommodations, too.
While I know that in most places, you legally can't serve someone who's already intoxicated, in practice few people go to a bar to get slightly tipsy. If I'm going for a night out, I'm not going to be ready to drive again until morning.
In contrast, the failed Borders across from AT&T Park became a bowling space.
[1] https://youtu.be/HmL2l-bcuUQ
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mall-of-the-future-will-hav...
On the malls note, the Chapel Square Mall in downtown New Haven got turned into apartments before I moved here. It's weird and seriously depressing looking, though I haven't seen the interior courtyard area myself. There has to be a better way to do it than this:
https://betweentworocks.com/welcome-new-havens-strangest-apa...
If anyone's curious to see the location on google maps/satellite, this is just behind the Omni New Haven hotel, the row of skylights is easy to pick out.
I think my closest one is >2 hours away in Woodbridge, NJ. Used to live in PA and had a Wegmans, so it bums me out. Stop 'n Shop isn't the same.
The Taunton mall is actually kind of fun. The run-down nature means that there are funky little stores you wouldn't see in a more upscale mall. But on the other hand it's also half-shuttered.
concentration camps for children
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/senator-jeff-merkley-barred-bro...
Other companies had a problem: how to acquire the rights to lay fiber from one end of the country to the other.
Some very smart person realized you could lay the fiber in the old pipes.
Question: what can be done with all that retail space? Is there a new use of space that will come up?
Related question: what are the properties of malls that we might use? (parking, close to residences, easy to walk through)