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.

They would make the most sense if the parking lot that surrounds them were converted into 4 story residential housing, a commuter rail station, and a bus stop.

One thing that will change is the number of people who enter the mall and only spend money in a single place before leaving. Stores in the mall have traditionally benefited greatly from people drawn in by other stores. A customer might enter the mall to buy an article of clothing at one shop, but then also decide to grab a coffee and later also spend money at the bookstore. Very few people are going to spend their money on an hour at the dance studio and then pay for another hour at the climbing gym and then go bowling. When shops were retail it was easy to walk out with bags from several different shops every time you went in, but when shops are experiences they require a lot more time and energy from shoppers.

You're thinking about it backwards, the experiences are what draw them in to then spend money in the other stores after their hour of activity

Once the retail is all gone (and most of it will since it can't compete with online in prices or selection), with the exception of food (which is an experience has it's own limitations) what can the mall offer besides experience/activities? Only a few stores really benefit from hands on, and even the people who do stop into a retail store after an hour at the dance studio, or the gym, or the comedy club will still pull out their phone and check amazon to price check items.

Hands-on also means immediate gratification and no-hassle returns.

Online can't quite match on the immediate gratification factor. If you hit the magic sweet spot of things in the right warehouses, you can get some things in a few hours, but if I go to a in-person store, there's no guessing.

If it's wrong or faulty, I can get an immediate replacement or refund rather than waiting on a RMA process.

That's true, I'll give amazon some credit for trying their best to make returns easy, but it's still obnoxious when the number of cheap counterfeits and poorly made products is so high. No matter how easy they make it, the time and frustration involved with doing without while you wait for another roll of the dice is high.

I've spent the last 5 years arguing with one of the colleges that I consult with about just that. They are trying to grow their adult education/community education (think GED, ESL, and 'interest classes' like woodworking, cooking, etc).

I have said for at least 5 years they need to rent (cheap) the space in the nearly defunct mall. It's right in the middle of town, with multiple bus routes. It's within walking distance of the community housing where elderly/low income folks live. It's perfect.

But they won't go for it because "the optic of us living in a retail space is not good". That's a quote from one of the administrators.

I don't get it. Community/junior colleges could absolutely saturate that kind of space with community based and educational events.

Community colleges in my area have been taking over and converting old and dying malls slowly.

The real issue is the issue everyone has these days. The rent is too high. What business does enough to justify giving the mall it's cut?

If you attract enough people your rent will be less. Attract people means someone comes to go to you and then visits other stores. If you can get husbands to go shopping with their wives (the sexism implied here is at least part based on reality, though I make no claim this example is the right thing to focus on)

and why is the rent so high? because land costs are too high (this can be addressed, simply open up more land to be developed until the price drops to near zero). as for building costs? these can come down too, with the right regulations/ and lack thereof, we can make it legal for lower cost options to arise.

Just opening up more land for development is not an easy solution.

Environmental problems aside, America's car culture is rather incompatible with this solution. Endless suburban expansion is what lead to the enormous traffic problems currently being faced in Los Angeles and Houston. My home state is well on its way to having this same unsolvable problem by the end of the decade.

If land is too cheap it will be bought and fenced off for speculative purposes. You must force people to actually use the land you have given them. An empty lot barely pays any property tax because there is no property on it.

Austin Community College has done this and it's amazing.

https://www.austincc.edu/campuses/highland-campus

I think there's a big difference between being in the mall, and acquiring a mall and gutting it. I didn't see the shopping center it was before, but the ACC building is really nice and looks like it was completely renovated from what it was previously.

Growing up middle class in the 80s and 90s in a midsized city about an hour north of Austin, Highland Mall was a prime destination for the back to school shopping trip. The presence of Banana Republic made it rather upscale to us hicks from Bell County, though The Gap was the real scene of teen girl vs mom drama.

I was mostly interested in it for the ice rink, though. An indoor ice rink was an exciting novelty in Central Texas at the time, and that was the only public one between San Antonio and Dallas when I was a kid.

That's correct. The space that ACC acquired previously looked exactly like a typical mall, and was probably built in the 60s or 70s.

I went to this mall for a New Year’s party when it was in the process of closing. Didn’t seem any different from any other of its age.

Sounds like they need to see new optics. How about a field trip to malls that have been converted?

Fight the good fight! Other comments are validating you, so keep on wearing 'em down.

They are probably right about the optics. Who would want to take, say, craft classes inside a dying building symbolizing the cons of modern life.

Personally, and for many family friends who live where I grew up, near a smallish mall that has been dead for over a decade: tons of people. We'd all love to see the space being used, rather than rotting slowly. There was a lot of community activity when it temporarily reopened for a few events and as an indoor walking space (in between events) several years ago.

edit: bulldozing it and putting something else in that place would also be fine, but that costs a fair bit. and really, even just having a big indoor walking space was quite popular, there were several meetups using it, lots of elderly walkers and readers, etc. it was nowhere near as popular as a Walmart of course, but it transformed into a pseudo-public space for a while and it made me realize that "indoor parks" are kinda not a thing, but maybe they should be. particularly in places with a lot of rain or cold.

that, and a big rotting building in the middle of town is rather unambiguously worse optics for the area than even small use. it inevitably gets covered in graffiti and damage, and even minor use prevents that a lot.

> it made me realize that "indoor parks" are kinda not a thing, but maybe they should be. particularly in places with a lot of rain or cold

Or heat.

A colocation space took over one of ours for a data center. It's nice inside, but the outside is still a dump, probably worse then before. It's an eyesore and there is no investment in the community or the area around the data center.

That's interesting. It makes sense of course -- the data center isn't selling to customers who come in via foot traffic, so why beautify the outside? A data center seems a bit interesting from a zoning point of view for that reason -- not incentivized to beautify; but not as bad as industrial, not a ton of possibly dangerous waste products...

I guess a not-actively-damaging source of tax revenue is always welcome in a town.

> so why beautify the outside?

Private investors could certainly choose to take a small hit to their return and take pride in how their investment looks from the outside. There's value in that.

Sure! It just isn't a core business need, unlike in the case of a mall.

The building isn't dying. The businesses that once occupied it are.

If you move into it, and have an active student body there every day, then it's not dead anymore, right? It's thriving with activity.

The people wanting to take craft classes are probably not going to ruminate over whether the classroom they're in was once a Foot Locker. I mean, as long as you aren't lazy about converting the space (i.e. take down the old signage and ditch the black and white stripes).

Look at the sibling comment to yours. There's a short video about Austin's CC. The place looks great!

Someone who is on a bus route that goes to the mall (typically, lots of routes will go to the mall, there may be a transit center there as well), or wants to take a class but not deal with the expense and congestion of college parking lots. Mall parking lots can be congested too, but when the mall is struggling to get tenants, their parking lots are mostly empty and easy to use.

Presumably, they'd fix it up so it's not a dying building -- and it wouldn't symbolize the cons of modern life anymore. It would symbolize building a future in more ways than one.

Buying clothing on Amazon is a crap shoot. You don’t know what the fit is like and, while returns are allowed, it is not a simple process. You also don’t know much about the quality of the item or if it even resembles the item advertised. Things are quite as dire as buying clothing from a Facebook advertiser but there is still a risk.

Buying from a brick and mortar store will usually let you try on the item and you can see and feel if it is what you want. Returns are relatively simple, too.

All of what you said is true, but are American Eagle, Gap, Abercrombie, H&M, Uniqlo, and Old Navy sufficiently unique from each other as to justify all of them having floor space in the same mall? Not really. Two or three of them makes more sense.

Your point holds up well for stores with higher-quality offerings (e.g. Nordstrom, J.Crew, or Express), where it's always worth your time to shop around, see things in-person, and try them on.

Of course, some clothing stores have a more narrowly-defined target demographic, and thus they are immune from fast-fashion redundancy (e.g. Torrid, Hot Topic).

Few things sound as out of touch and patronizing as pseudo-elites telling common folk that the brands and the stuff they like are all the same and therefore redundant.

I'm curious about what you find not simple about the Amazon return process. My experience is that it is extremely simple. I request a return in the Amazon app and then drop the item off at the UPS store next to my grocery store next time I need to go grocery shopping.

> it's impossible to compete with Amazon on general retail

Uh, I don’t know about that. Just not being a weird bazaar filled with garbage differentiates a store from Amazon.

My family used to buy everything from Amazon, but after an accretion of negative experiences, it’s almost nothing. Anything that goes on or in the body is out — can’t be trusted! I’ve even stopped buying computer peripherals after receiving a spate of counterfeit devices “shipped and sold by Amazon”. I still use them for things like basic office supplies, but that’s about it.

They already have. Most new malls (at least in my area) are a sort of fake downtown with retail on the first level and apartments above. They are more restaurant heavy and have lawns and such for events.

Is it really a fake downtown? I mean, if people are living there and retail is there, it is a real I guess... just, intentionally/artificially constructed (we can pick a adjective to fit whatever spin we want to put on it).

'Fake' in the sense of having been designed to be a sort of downtown-ish space, as compared to real downtown areas that evolved more organically. I've seen what your parent commenter is referring to; it looks a lot like like living at a mall.

Yeah, I get what you mean, I just think artificial is a better word.

Lots of "real" downtowns are also intentional -- they are just the product of zoning and lobbying by local businesses. That something has been designed doesn't make it fake. Places with dense population are attractive for shops, places with good shop access are attractive to live in, and there's a feedback loop there. The degree to which that feedback loop has been spurred on intentionally sits on a spectrum.

For example if the apartment were entirely for show (not actually lived in) I would call that fake.

Downtowns are usually central and towns organically formed around them. These are usually in random places and tend to be islands isolated from the rest of the city.

One thing that needs to be considered is these "fake downtowns" (or "lifestyle centers" as they like to call themselves) are generally owned by a corporation. So things that people might expect to be possible in a public neighborhood (hold a protest, hold a block party, etc.) may not be allowed because it's private property.

The malls out by me which are dying are slowly moving to this model.

I think it's a great idea. There are plenty of working examples of housing/retail where people never have to leave indoors to get all their basic needs taken care of.

There's of course megamalls out by me as well, which are doing just fine and don't need to evolve. One is in a wealthy suburb, and has a shopping tourism industry which props up the local hotels on the weekends when business travel is low.

I grew up going to this mall during it's peak in the 70's and early 80's, and I think it's done a fascinating job of adapting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BegXB3d6cqk

The indoor swap meet is what used to be a JC Penny's. The dead Sears is now a trade school - the mix of stores in there is fascinating and I think the key - focus on unique and local stores. Leave the chains to the strip malls.

That is exactly the solution. I remember when I used to live in a country outside of the US, the first time a mall came to my city. It was built around a community experience. It was a place where people used to go, just like the park, to hang out. There was no obligation to spend any money. We’d hang out after school every day for a few years. Sometimes we spent money, sometimes we didn’t. The time we stopped going, which kind of aligned with overall decline of the space, was when they tried to turn every square inch of the mall into a revenue generating piece of real estate.

The most popular malls had community spaces. There were events for kids, there were spaces to hang out, there were sports being broadcast on the wall for free, the mall itself was an indoor + outdoor experience with plenty of green space, there were gyms, an entire lobby of pool tables and other games (you had to surrender an id to play, but otherwise it was free). So many attractions that would bring people over again and again while driving up business naturally.

You nailed it. Whenever I do visit a Mall especially with my younger kids, the attraction is more about the Fun and Social stuff than those boring stores. Yes, unless you are big into buying things in person or luxury stuff, Amazon has pretty much replaced most mundane stuff. Food, there are restaurants and Mall is not the right attraction for food.

Mall is more of a social place where we need to bring back the "it's cool and fun to hang at the mall" vibe. Whichever mall can do that successfully, it is a win.

Absolutely. something that's missing, is opportunities for enrichment. why is there no woodworking classes? or just general purpose learning classes for building stuff like houses or roofs. i'd love to learn how to set up a well, or build my own hand operated water heating tank, etc. Or at least offer a downtown vibe with live music, farmers market, and interesting cafes and museums. I don't want to see a huge parking area filled to brim with cars and heat stroke enducing pavement as far as the eye can see.

most malls, all i see is a sea of materialistic nonsense big box stores. i'll never visit those: and all conglomerates can wonder why no one goes there until the end of time.

I too believe this is the answer.

In San Bruno, CA a portion of the mall there is dedicated to small experiences for children (a miniature play town, a bounce room, etc). I've taken my toddler there and it was pretty fun.

Pure commoditized retail isn't going to cut it anymore. I think another component is that the rent is going to have to be very cheap in order to lower the bar to entry and encourage rapid innovations in this space. If I were Simon (or a similar property group), I might dedicate a certain percentage of my mall spaces to "incubate" these new ideas by offer cheap or nearly free rent.

There was a place in North Texas (Frisco or Plano) that had a miniature indoor town, where kids could play as various professions, from hair stylist to firefighter to banker and other things. It struck me as a pretty neat use of what used to be a multi-story department store space, though there wasn't much geared toward my daughter who was two at the time. Still, making use of the fairly-recently built space instead of just abandoning it seemed like a decent ethical choice, and they seemed to be doing OK, despite the ongoing pandemic.

Sounds like KidZania:

https://dallas.kidzaniausa.com/

https://g.page/KidZaniaUSA

KidZania is next level tho. Absolutely insane

Tanforan failed so hard it’s getting torn down to become office space. Not exactly a great example.

I think the owners might want to rethink that. Malls aren't a great business to be in right now, but I'm not too sure office space is that hot either given the work-from-home transition. Condos and other housing seem to still be a good business to be in though.

Yeah, it's not super well executed by any means and its relegated to a very small section of the mall, but I still believe the idea is good and could be successful if nurtured correctly.

I think you really underestimate the value of physical stores. For example, browsing for books on Amazon is much more inefficient in my experience than just going to a physical bookstore. Sure, you can preview the text for books on Amazon, but I doubt it's ever going to be as seamless as picking up a physical book and reading the first few paragraphs.

Clothes and food are things I cannot buy from amazon (food, because i like to choose, and usually plan "today for todays dinner", and clothes, because I'm tall and not fat, so getting a right size is hard)... and those stores represent 80% of the malls contents here. Then there's an odd electronics store and restaurants.

One of the malls where I live is making exactly this transition. Half the retail stores are already gone, replaced with various entertainment venues. A huge swath of the mall is now dedicated to restaurants. I don't mean a typical food court, but actual table service, bars, and fast-casual places with their own dedicated seating. Most of them aren't even national chains. The closest thing they do have to a food court is a "food hall" with an unusual layout and not a single Orange Julius or Panda Express in sight.

The retail stores they seem to be keeping are less conventional too. One I spent some money at yesterday as a book and gift shop. They have a ton of vintage books and collectibles, and art from local artists. This is stuff that is a lot harder to buy online, and there is a persistent novelty factor that makes walking in the store a unique experience every time.

The idea it’s impossible to compete with Amazon is a fallacy.

Can you share a counterexample?

Walmart? Target? Both generally going strong (Target stumbled lately) for decades, I think.

During the pandemic I wished Amazon/Amazon Fresh had been a better replacement for grocery stores and pharmacies, but it wasn't.

Brand stores also seem very popular, just look at Apple. Maybe you will buy your $1K phone on-line but you may want to take a look at it somewhere.

Many people goes to a shop to look at products and then buy them on-line. That is not sustainable as the shop has the high-cost of physical presence but it is losing business to on-line.

Alibaba is not going to open big stores for people to peruse around nor is Amazon. So, the only ones interested in showing product for free to users are the makers of that products.

Even with very generous return policies is a pain in the ass to buy things and return them back again and again because they are not exactly what you wanted. To go to the store and browse all products in one sit is not only more efficient but many people enjoys the experience.

You already see this a lot with the upscale outdoor malls. e.g. the Domain in Austin. These places are always crowded and popular... and tend to have more up and coming brands/niche stores rather than copy/paste main brands.

Fundamentally, people like to go outside and hang out, even if there's not a compelling economic reason for doing so (online is cheaper/more practical).

So I don't think the "mall type" experience will ever die, just needs to be a higher quality experience, as you said.

Also the rents in these older malls will drop dramatically which either leads to repurposing the space (apartment conversion) or previously uneconomical business models starting to work (big box retail again)

I think the biggest thing killing malls is parking requirements. When there's a quarter mile of parking lots in all directions from the main building, it makes it impossible to connect to the rest of the city without a bus system.

God I hope this is the way. I think this is happening to some degree, but malls also seem to have grown into the niche of selling veblen goods. I swear half of the floorspace seems to be jewelry stores.

Our local mall had a Tesla storefront. It moved out into an abandoned Toys R Us on the other side of the freeway. Bad for the mall, but good that an abandoned building got a new lease on life.