Personally, there are very few things that I endure the “mall experience” in order to purchase.
I may visit a retail store, but it matters not to me if the actual store is in a mall or self contained.
But one pays a premium to purchase from a brick-and-mortar store, not to mention the cost in gasoline to get there and the time spent. Malls seem to be designed to prevent you from parking, getting in, making a purchase, and getting out. When possible, buying online is cheaper and more time-efficient.
Always thought the whole mall retail business to be on unstable ground. Making all your money in 2 months of the year, while paying staff to mill around for the rest of the year doesn’t appear to be good business to me.
Malls...hyper-controlled, anti-democratic, socialist hell holes of the suburban workers’ paradise.
Good riddance!
Their empty parking lots make great places to teach your teenagers to drive and park though :)
1) demographics and thug kulture
2) internet
Only malls prospering are high end where big spenders want to try on Jimmy Choo or Carven or St Laurent etc first
Or the open air walk around style where youth can't hang out as easy
Some outlets seem to prosper.....Woodbury Commons in Hudson Valley for example
IMO empty malls have become desirable as tax write offs. Plus as an extra added bonus the owners can play around with city planners city councils etc trying to get grants etc for pie in the sky studies, planning, etc that they have no intentions of going through with usually done so city doesn't contest sale to another corp wanting to buy a write off.
Add to this the fact the malls favorite renter seems to be government. Why? Well government will pay top dollar and isn't worried about retail profit.
The city south of me Knoxville has two. One is thriving and the newest one is dieing. The newest one has stores once located inside the mall now located outside and seem to be doing OK.
To the west of me is Oak Ridge. That mall has been dead as such for over a decade. Again most stores except the anchor ones moved out to cheaper locations across the street. This began when government began renting retail space. Several owners since construction with each new one having proposals that go nowhere.
Malls can work but owners have to be realistic. Also many miss opportunity by not having one or two Big Box as an anchor store. You have to have something to get people there first. Mix up the retail from high end to family stores. Have a well trained security force rather than making the mall a satellite precient for city cops.
Offer decent places to eat from fast food to restaurants where persons may go for special occasions. Have such things as a UPS Store and office supply/computer IOW Specialty Stores where people can do one stop shopping. Extend hours past 9:00pm till 11:00PM. Seriously, closing a mall at 9:00pm especially on Friday & Saturday is a looser. Walmart is open all night. While a mall can't support those hours it could support till 11:00pm except Sunday. A big shopper draw would be a grocery store open all night. Shoppers finish shopping inside the mall and do grocery shopping before going home. There's ways to make it work. The first thing should be elimination of all tax breaks/write offs for empty malls for more than a year.
Maybe if we had politicians in congress and in the white house who cared about helping America instead of themselves and they wall street buddies then the malls would be filled with shoppers.
I absolutely HATE going into malls. I got dragged into one during this past Christmas season. I couldn’t help but to wonder why in the HELL anyone would want to physically go there and experience that, when they could shop online.
I went to the Great Plains Mall in Olathe, Ks a few days before Christmas. There were people but it was surprisingly empty for that time of the year. I also noticed that more than half the store spaces had their metal gates closed. Another (what used to be popular) mall called Metcalf South in Overland Park Ks. closed this year. I know a lot of malls bit the dust around Kansas City due to crime and with the lack of shoppers now days I probably wouldn’t visit the remaining ones after dark.
Not me. I don't remember seeing a mall until I was well into my twenties.
Where I live now, there is no mall. There is no mall in the next nearest town either. In fact, there is no mall within 150 miles and, even if there were, I could not drive there because the town where I live is on an island.
d8^)
We’ve had three malls in our metro die, Bannister and Independence in Missouri, and I think Indian Creek in Wyandotte County. Two that are terminal are Mall of the Great Plains in Olathe and Metcalf South Mall just down the street from us. Sickness has set in at Ward Parkway. I know this in spite of the fact that I almost never go to malls. I think that part of the reason that they are dying are the big box stores. Another is that there are people who drop off their kids and the kids trash the place... whatever their ethnicity. The first three I mentioned - their demise was blamed on blacks but it was more than that. Metcalf has been owned by a senile old man and the world is waiting for him to die. I’m pretty sure it will be torn down then. Its almost empty.
