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Ive seen quite a few articles claim that this mall or that one was closed due to internet/Amazon but that isnt true and they accidentally touch on it in this article.

I remember discussing this problem and the likelihood of the spread to other areas in one of my earliest posts around here(’98) because our oldest and biggest mall was already having problems before any of those things really existed.

By around 92-94ish the mall in question had lost nearly all its traffic. I think this situation may have started in a somewhat unique place but it hurried along what became the inevitable across the country.

The mall was relatively close to the largest mental health hospital in the northern half of the state which quickly became one of the only ones as most counties began shutting theirs down. The patients were bussed in from counties all over but obviously all these people couldnt have an appointment at the same time so the busses stopped at the mall and dumped them all off.

They all started hanging out by the...lets call it a food court, and begging, sometimes rather aggressively. There was still some traffic to the mall but no paying customer bothered to go down to that end of the mall. Somewhere along the line the local kid gangs realized that some of these semi-abandoned people were easy to con and many of those that werent easy were interested in the purchase of various things they couldnt find in their more controlled environments back home.

This mall didnt have any parking lots. Since it was downtown all the parking was in attached ramps. The ramps turned into hangouts for all the little gangsters. Vehicles were being robbed and visitors harassed. That was the end of any visits by older women or younger women with children. Stores that catered to them pulled out and stood empty. Soon neither older guys nor younger women wanted to deal with it either and the stores that still had something for them pulled out too. A few young office working males going in to buy a burger at lunch just isnt what it takes to keep a mall afloat.

Its the crime. Its the ne’er-do-wells. Those things are encouraged by liberals. You cant crack down on crime because then youre a racist or targeting the disabled. This is what started the collapse of the American mall long before any real money was being made online.