The mall I went to is in Charleston, West Virginia. It had a beautiful fountain in the center. Ten years ago I went back to that mall and the place was dead. The fountain was not working and someone said it cost too much to fix. Most of the stores were not rented out. The main stores were gone which were Sears, Macy's, Montgomery Ward, and JC Pennys. Now a big section has been torn down. have no idea what they are going to do with the rest.
Strange as it is the Mall in Barboursville, West Virginia is still doing extremely well and turning a profit.
“Affordable housing”, yea.
The Mall in Dover, DE near me is doing well, too, but it just doesn’t have the same feel.
Soon our cities will mostly consist of DNC campaign offices, government wefare offices and free high-rise housing for illegaals and 5th generation welfare queens.
I wonder if anyone has ever converted an old shopping mall into apartments?
We cannot just deport illegals; we need to deport all the children and grandchildren of every illegal who has been here since 1945, and if Trump does not do it nor Vance then we will have plenty of people stepping up to the plate who will
They built too many of them too close to each other. There were tax incentives offered to build them in the 70’s and 80’s. Once shopping habits changed and online stores became a thing many were doomed.
CC
Wasn't that a Queen song?
Chris Rock: “There are two kinds of malls: malls that white people go to, and malls that white people use to go to.”
So, I’m guessing the “controversy” revolves around the number of “affordable housing” units involved, because — if you’ve been there, you know — when the question is, “Who’s up for 42 ‘affordably housed’ neighbors?” the answer is “Nobody.”
I owned 2 stores in a major and very successful mall for 10 years. When the leases got close to expiring, I said to myself “this place is going down hill”! So, I did not renew. I just moved out. Since the mall was full of stores, it continued to do well for a few years.
Then, The City, dumbest in the land, built a nice public bus facility across the street. At that point, the white trash, the brothers and the sisters and the Tejanos started hanging around. At that point, it didn’t take long. Then, the City, after destroying the property, bought it and made a poor boys college out of part of it.
Every Town’s got two malls they got the white mall and the mall white people used to go to cuz ain’t nothing in the black Mall.
~~~ Chris Rock
I grew up in the 60s near the Cherry Hill Mall. In the 70s, I went to the Springfield Mall in PA. Moved to FL, went to the Palm Beach Mall, then moved to central FL, went to the Winter Haven Mall, then the Lakeland Mall, then the Eagle Ridge Mall. Now I’m in Denton TX and have no idea if there’s a mall. All of the above except Eagle Ridge are either gone or soon will be. It was another time.
Now it’s time for a tie clasp story.
Maybe 10 years ago I had to go to a business meeting, and needed to tie clasp. I like to buy local, so I went to a local strip mall. I checked a couple of department stores there. No tie clasps. A jewelry store did have one, solid silver at $75. No thanks.
Then I went to Amazon. Many, many tie clasps to choose from, all $10 and under. I kinda felt stupid for wasting my time and gas driving out to that mall.
Which malls aren’t being bulldozed to be developed into multi-family housing? That is the fate of pretty much every mall in the country other than the very top malls. Online shopping killed the shopping mall. As a child of the late 70s / early 80s who grew up around mall culture, I feel sad at the loss. But time marches on.
Even there I see many empty storefronts...so many that I wonder how it remains in operation. The only times I go there are in bad weather because it's a great place for 'mall walkers".
A big reason this mall is near empty is that some years ago or so it flooded up 4 feet in all the stores. And as development keeps encroaching on the river downstream, the risk of further flooding keeps increasing. It is not a smart place to put much beyond tennis courts.
As a kid in the 80’s, I used to like to go the the Phillipsburg Mall and always left with Cindy’s Cinnamon Rolls.
I have a feeling Bezos employs a certain teen demographic to frequent malls. There were no malls where I grew up but when we would visit family it was always fun to go to the mall. The parents would drop us off and we could stay all day, catch a movie, play video games, waste some time at the record store. One even had a bowling ally. Now, you take your life in your hands going to a modern mall. The only one I can think of that was enjoyable the last 15 years was Ala Muana mall in Honolulu where they had security on every corner and most of them were just to stop people from throwing things at the koi in the ponds.
Amazon killed the mall.