Malls

[VandVsmama]

It's a mixed bag in my neck of the woods. 1 fairly large indoor shopping mall is still going strong and doing fine. Another one about 20-30 min drive away closed its doors 3-4 yr ago and there are no plans to reopen it. Pretty sure it's going to be torn down. About a 20 min drive in a different direction, there's a newer (i.e., built in the last 5-6 yr) outdoor mall, set up to sort of look like a downtown small town area, is thriving and people are there all of the time.

There's also 2 pretty large outlet malls about 30-40 min away from where we live. One is fairly close to a lower socioeconomic area...that outlet mall regularly has crime problems, with cars getting broken into, shootings, people getting mugged or car jacked in the parking lot. The other outlet mall has NONE of those problems, is on Native American tribal land (so the tribe gets the tax revenue from the sales there)...so that's where I do outlet shopping instead!

 

[Southernmiss]

I don't know.

The closest traditional mall is about 25 minutes away and not on a route I take often.

I think I went around Christmas to it and it was doing ok then.

There's an outlet mall and a strip mall with a Belk and TJ Maxx about 15 minutes from me. We also have a shopping center with a Target, Marshalls and Kohls about 20 minutes in another direction. These are the ones I go to.

 

[starvenger]

Wonder if it’s a Canadian/ American thing?
All of our suburban malls are busy and safe.

Rest of Canada?

There is an interesting case where I live (Markham, ON). Pacific Mall can get pretty busy, and it does get a lot of traffic. But just across the street, there's Splendid China Tower, which is a pretty dead mall, and I don't think it's ever gotten to 25% capacity.

Other than that, the life of a mall probably depends on the success of it's anchors and their ability to draw people in. If the anchors go away, you have to navigate around that.

Example, Fairview Mall in North York lost their Sears store a while back, and they're transforming that area to have a T&T and a Chinese-focused food court on one floor, and a Marshalls on the other floor.

---
On a completely different note, there seems to be some sentiment that the Puente Hills Mall may get demolished or at least get a drastic facelift.

Why is this noteworthy? Because Puente Hills Mall stood in for Twin Pines Mall/Lone Pine Mall in the Back to the Future movies.

 

[DisneyHardin]

We have 3 malls in my city - one is somewhat dying. The other 2 are doing pretty well. One of the doing well malls recently had a TopGolf open and that has helped bring more restaurants to that mall.

 

[KayMichigan]

Some years ago I came across this interesting mall blog with lots of vintage images from malls around the country:

http://mallsofamerica.blogspot.com/2005/06/

It hasn't been updated since 2007 but it's still pretty cool!

As for malls, the one I grew up with isn't dying but it's very different than it used to be. They closed and tore down part of one end, cutting off an old vacant anchor store from the rest of the mall. The vacant building became a standalone Hobby Lobby. Of the four original anchors only Penney's is left. Otherwise it's the usual mix of discount stores, a few name stores, some no name stores, and empty spaces.

 

[Moliphino]

The closest mall to me is being torn down shortly. We went there all the time when I was a kid. I worked at the Macy's there for a year and a half when I graduated into the recession.

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I used to love malls, but now I just don’t go. I cannot even remember the last time I went to any local mall. It would be good to see them revived, it’s kind of sad what they have become. Seems like better deals are to be found online.

 

[Disneylover99]

Wonder if it’s a Canadian/ American thing?
All of our suburban malls are busy and safe.

Rest of Canada?

I go to 3 malls regularly in Markham, Scarborough and Pickering Ont.

The Markham and Scarborough malls are busy all the time. Pickering is less busy. All the malls are clean and have nice stores, and I always feel safe.

 

[maxaroni]

I'm in New Jersey, and the malls I go to sometimes are the Deptford Mall and the Cherry Hill Mall. Deptford seems to be doing better than Cherry Hill with customers. Cherry Hill had a remodel years back and now is more high end, which seems to have slowed its sales. It's only crowded around the holidays.

Honestly, I don't enjoy any kind of mall anymore. If my sister and I feel like going shopping, we go to the Gloucester Outlets.

The Moorestown Mall is a shell of what it once was. With Cooper going in and housing going in, will that totally shut down what is left in the mall?

 

[HopperFan]

Sounds like you're describing North Point Mall. Which is my local also. Agree that Avalon killed it. But Avalon is doing just fine, although I'm not sure how much longer. A lot of the stores are going to make it the sky high rent. I will say Mall of Georgia is doing just fine though.

Yup.

Mall of Georgia draws from a massive amount of households, the closest mall for many. It also put Gwinnett Place Mall out of business.

North Point not only is now competing with the village style of Avalon, Collection and Halcyon. I agree Avalon is doing fine if the high end stores is where one shops. If the new Forsyth village style is built that will also hurt. I know several that live up past end of 400 and NP was their mall. Now that the Outlet Mall area is fully built out they never go to NP. Sadly there really is no need for NP anymore. If you want mall go to Perimeter.

Crazy folks are back to shopping at outdoor malls, something that was killed off in the 70's.

 

[Aimeedyan]

There are 4 traditional malls (they are not outdoor, outlet, or strip malls) within 20 minutes of me.

One is struggling, partially because of safety concerns in that area I think (it's why I skip it), but the other 3 are thriving. One of the three is more higher end, with anchors like Neiman's and Nordstrom, and it's always slammed. I like to pop into Nordstrom and it's sometimes hard to find a parking spot! At Christmas, valet is your only guarantee of getting a spot easily and walkways are difficult to navigate. The other 2 that are doing well are more middle-class traditional by way of stores: JCPenney, Macy's, Dillards, etc.

 

[mommasita]

Wonder if it’s a Canadian/ American thing?
All of our suburban malls are busy and safe.

Rest of Canada?

Funny you ask this, we were out doing our errands as usual this past weekend, and I said to my husband that the mall parking lot looked like Xmas! He thought it was due to rain and not much else to do. My son just came home from seeing Flash, I asked were there a lot of people, he said 10 at the movie, but the mall was packed. On a Wednesday, weird, but

 

[Minnesota!]

Was at Mall of America on Father's Day and it was slaaaaaamed. It's always busy, but it was beyond that on a Sunday afternoon

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Most of the malls here that died out died out a few years past (long before pandemic).

We have a few outdoor malls (one considered an outlet) and one main mall then a few shopping districts. Nordstrom was going to move from that main mall (considered an anchor store) to another shopping district but that actually recently fell through (it had been set in stone for several years but probably the pandemic changed things).

The main mall has over the years (especially recent years) adjusted to attract more higher end stores. I go there frequently enough these days but primarily am shopping at JCP and Macys with a side in Dillards but don't tend to walk the whole mall like I used to in years past.

There is an ongoing issue with one of the outdoor shopping districts (the one Nordstrom was going to move to). It struggles to maintain places in a combination a multi-ownership of the shopping district, shopping trends and issues with youths creating an unsafe area which lowers the interest in patronizing stores there.

 

[Babs Johnson]

“Mall” seems to be a word with a negative connotation these days. Some local malls have renamed themselves as “Town Centre.” I rarely go into a mall, just the anchor department stores. Nothing inside is of any interest to me.

At least two malls in my extended area have closed in the past 10 years, and I hear that a few others are struggling.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

I avoid malls these days. A couple in our area seem to be doing okay from what I hear, and another few are struggling or have closed already. When I really need to go, maybe once a year or so, I stick to weekday mornings hoping to avoid any shootings.

 

[BelleIRL]

I'm not too far from a huge mall in my state. It stays packed there, but I don't know how my local mall is still in business.

 

[disykat]

Our mall is pretty dead. There are still some restaurants that open into the mall and to the parking lot, but the food court is closed. Several of those restaurants haven't made it. The mall closes at 7 pm. We have a new strip mall with outlets and their parking lot is always packed so people are still shopping here, just not at the mall.

Our library needed a new location and wanted to go into an empty mall spot and they turned them down! Stupid move, IMO. They also took away the county bus hub in the parking lot. They did let a grocery store in to one of the big department store spots. Everyone seems to enter from the parking lot, so I doubt it brings much traffic to the inside of the mall. I think our management has just made really bad decisions. We recently visited some malls in another area and they were doing great. (And yes, they had library branches AND bus hubs!)

I have to admit though that, like many people, I do a lot of shopping on line now. The most time I've spent at the mall in years was walking around the empty parking lot during the height of the pandemic. (We tried to vary our walking places for variety and the empty parking lot was great.)

 

[SteveH]

Our mall is still doing pretty well. Sears closed up, JoAnns moved in. Theater closed up, torn down for a new Dicks. Macy's occupies two large sections and a third down the street for furniture. They've added new businesses on the outside (parking lot) as well as adding new exterior business that don't open up inside the mall and all spaces are leased.

I know our mall manager through Rotary and she says they've been pretty recession proof over the years (due to large Government clean up contracts and other reasons). But our area is one of the largest growth areas of our State too, so all that means more customers... but those people are moving from more depressed areas.

 

[DodgerGirl]

In my city our mall is still surviving and still made lots of money through the pandemic but the mall lost a Sears Disney Store Toys "R" Us Rite Aid and Michael's and now when Toys "R" Us closed Big Lots moved into that building and Michael's moved into the shopping center across the street from the mall. And I find it weird that there is another shopping center right across the street from the mall and when that shopping center opened in the 90's it had Target Montgomery Ward Marshalls The Home Depot which is now a Walmart Walgreens Ross and a supermarket which originally was in the mall in the 80's but moved when the shopping center opened along with Service Merchandise and at first the mall lost money because everyone started heading to the new shopping center but it still is surviving. But when my mom and I went to an outdoor mall that we used to frequently shop at they attracted the rich crowd because it had Macy's and the only store that closed was Mervyn's and for a short time Forever 21 which also closed and they even have a giant movie theater that is so amazing that was built when the mall's original theater closed. But my city builds new shopping centers like crazy and one shopping center has Walmart a Costco and restaurants like Wendy's and JoAnn Fabrics and another Ross and down is another shopping center with Kohl's and Home Depot and a gas station and a Burger King and Chili's. But I don't how three shopping centers can do business in my city when the mall is a short drive away. I think that outdoor malls and outlet centers are slowly replacing malls because you can find items for real cheap but placing two malls directly across from each other is a wrong thing for cities to do