Malls are dying—but a dead mall gives a community the chance to rebuild something that might have been doomed to begin with. For countless Americans—especially those who came of age in the postwar years—malls were the new town square: a place to shop, eat, gather and meander. Envisioned as perfectly pristine, cast against the gritty danger of urban centers, the American mall became the image of suburban consumerism, the "pyramids to the boom years," as Joan Didion once wrote. But like the pyramids, the culture that the malls once honored—and survived off of—is starting to vanish. In 2014, traditional retailers...