The Decline of Shopping Malls

[GCrites]

Outdoor malls are out when it's hot or cold. They're in when it's nice. One advantage indoor malls have is the lack of doors on the stores. Even if the door is open, people are still more likely to randomly stroll into a store with no doors.

Its funny you mention doors as the producers of Married With Children put a door on Al Bundy's Shoe Store which is inside an indoor mall.

I have no choice but to think about this kind of stuff. I own a store in a mall for a living.

[DeaconG]

In Orlando the former Beltz factory Outlet Mall was two indoor malls along with a third strip mall.  Now its the Prime Factory Outlets, and the original 3 buildings torn down replaced now with one large outdoor mall. 

I do not know if that was the change in ownership that caused that or a change in culture as people in my neighborhood used to say that outdoor malls are in and indoor malls are out now. 

One thing about outlet malls they do not need anchors to hold them in place as everything is just small store name brand outlets unlike the big malls that need a Sears and JC Penney to hold it down.

BTW, what is going to become of Miracle City Mall in Titusville, Florida?  I see it being razed now.

It's going to be an outdoor "lifestyle center" with several parts being used by Parrish Hospital. The final green light came when Titusville decided to pay for the new water system late last year.

And here it was when I first moved here that I (and a lot of other folks) thought Searstown Mall was going to be the one that was going to die, now it's the one mostly occupied (a recent renovation helps, but if Sears goes tango uniform in the next few years it won't help).

[lepidopteran]

The saddest are the inner-city dead malls. The perfect encapsulation of that phenomenon is Peabody Place in Memphis, for which several square blocks of Downtown street grid were destroyed.

Is it just me, or does Ohio have more than its share of these?

In 1989, downtown Columbus opened the grandiose, 3-level City Center Mall a block south of the State Capitol.  It was anchored by the city's debuts of Jacobson's from Michigan and Kaufmann's from Pittsburgh, plus it had an overhead crosswalk (complete with inline stores!) to connect over High St. to the flagship Lazarus dept. store.
But it was all demolished 20 years later (I think one of the parking garages built for the mall still stands).  It didn't help that Jacobson's closed and no store replaced it, nor did the closure of the flagship Lazarus in '04.  What may have really hurt was the opening of 3 upscale malls near Interstates north of town: lifestyle center Easton Town Center (I-270 just south of Morse Rd.), The Mall at Tuttle Crossing (I-270 south of the US-33/OH-161 exit), and the huge Polaris Fashion Place (I-71, about 2 miles north of I-270).  Talk about it helping malls being near the freeway?  I think each of these interchanges were privately funded by the mall developers, except Tuttle Crossing, which IIRC was financed by a software company with adjacent offices!

In the early 1980s, downtown Toledo opened Portside, a "festival marketplace" that was wildly popular in its first several years.  I'd heard of people coming from as far as Detroit to visit.  But by the '90s, it all closed.  Not sure why, maybe the novelty wore off (Rouse opened several malls with the festival marketplace model around this time).  The Portside structure was used as a science museum for a time afterwards.

In 1980, downtown Dayton opened Arcade Square, a mall-ification of a turn-of-the-century indoor farmers' market.  Its only anchor was McCrory, though they had a huge food court.  It closed in the early '90s; one reason may have been that its best customers, downtown office workers, were vacating the city for office parks along the Interstate corridors.

Even Middletown had an early attempt at a downtown mall,  City Centre Mart, in large part because of another mall that is (surprise!) near the Interstate.  CCM was demolished in 2001.

Anyone know how the downtown malls in Cincinnati and Cleveland are doing?

[bandit957]

Anyone know how the downtown malls in Cincinnati and Cleveland are doing?

Cincinnati has a downtown mall???

[busman_49]

Anyone know how the downtown malls in Cincinnati and Cleveland are doing?

Cincinnati has a downtown mall???

HAD...

now in transition to a parking garage
http://archive.cincinnati.com/article/20140108/NEWS010801/301070158/Tower-Place-mall-gets-new-name-purpose

[bandit957]

Anyone know how the downtown malls in Cincinnati and Cleveland are doing?

Cincinnati has a downtown mall???

HAD...

now in transition to a parking garage
http://archive.cincinnati.com/article/20140108/NEWS010801/301070158/Tower-Place-mall-gets-new-name-purpose

I don't think I ever heard of this place. Except once it was mentioned on the police scanner, and I thought it was some out-of-the-way suburban shopping center.

[bandit957]

Newport (KY) has a downtown mall, called Newport on the Levee, which opened around 2001. I don't think they call it a mall, but it really is a mall. I hardly ever go there, since it's mostly upscale specialty stores. They don't sell many things that people might actually buy, like groceries and toilets.

There used to be something in downtown Newport called the Newport Mini Mall, but I barely remember it. Apparently, it was a very, very small mall that fit within a city block. This was maybe in the '70s, and it didn't last long.

[tdindy88]

Meanwhile, in the surrounding states Indianapolis still has a decent downtown mall with Circle Centre. It opened in 1996 and is still alive and kicking today. While it isn't the most successful of malls there's still around 100 shops and one major anchor, originally there were two anchors with that one closing (a Nordstorm) and later on becoming the new headquarters of the Indianapolis Star. I have heard that compared to its twin in Columbus, Circle Centre was better connected to the hotels and Convention Center and football stadium which is one of the main reasons it has survived, more convention traffic. As opposed to the Columbus mall which was south of the statehouse (I've seen the new park built there) while all the convention stuff was to the north in the Arena District. There may come a time when Circle Centre falls off but it's not this day. In Indy, Eastgate is the dead, dead mall and Lafayette Square is the close-to-dead mall with Washington Square a little ways off, but downtown, that's still doing well.

[PHLBOS]

They don't sell many things that people might actually buy, like groceries and toilets.

Oh yes, every few days I have to go shopping for toilets. 

I believe you meant toiletries.

Funniest typo for 2015... thus far.

[TheStranger]

The malls actually in San Francisco (the larger San Francisco Centre/Westfield complex, the venerable Stonestown Galleria, and smaller specialty zones like the Japantown mall and Crocker Galleria) have been doing well for years.  In the suburbs, Tanforan in San Bruno near SFO and Daly City's Serramonte have also operated for decades successfully, as has the more upscale Hillsdale in San Mateo.

The one dead mall in San Mateo County I can think of would be Fashion Island (home of the ice rink where Kristi Yamaguchi learned to skate) which I saw decline year after year in the early 90s before basically being the ice rink and not much else; it was replaced with the Bridgepointe open-air power center some time ago.

[lepidopteran]

Meanwhile, in the surrounding states Indianapolis still has a decent downtown mall with Circle Centre.

Ironically, downtown Indy had its day in the sun with a "festival marketplace" beforehand.  Remember the old Indianapolis Union Station?  That place was huge.  I particularly liked the upstairs food court where the floor tiles were laid out in (presumably) the locations of where the station tracks used to be.  I guess the novelty wore off there like at many of the other festival marketplaces, since it now appears to be a hotel and private conference center of some sort.

In Columbus, at least a decade before the City Center Mall opened, the old Union Station there was all but demolished , and replaced with the "Ohio Center" -- a Hyatt hotel atop a gridwork of conference rooms and ballrooms, along with some mall-like retail.  Eventually the stores gave way to more conference facilities as the convention center finally appeared to the north, across the (now-freight-only) tracks.  (I think the food court is still in place.)  But now, conventioneers have all the shopping they want along High St. in the "Short North" district, including on that "cap" they built across I-670.  There's also the not-exactly-a-mall North Market nearby.

[thenetwork]

The saddest are the inner-city dead malls. The perfect encapsulation of that phenomenon is Peabody Place in Memphis, for which several square blocks of Downtown street grid were destroyed.

Is it just me, or does Ohio have more than its share of these?

In the early 1980s, downtown Toledo opened Portside, a "festival marketplace" that was wildly popular in its first several years.  I'd heard of people coming from as far as Detroit to visit.  But by the '90s, it all closed.  Not sure why, maybe the novelty wore off (Rouse opened several malls with the festival marketplace model around this time).  The Portside structure was used as a science museum for a time afterwards.

Anyone know how the downtown malls in Cincinnati and Cleveland are doing?

^^ Portside in was installed as Toledo was seeing a revitalization of the Downtown area.  With the Owens-Corning building being built, the convention center and 2 new downtown hotels in the 80s, there was hope that downtown was going to make a comeback.  The problem with Portside was that all the non-food stores that were there were independent, non-chain stores that were glorified specialty mall-kiosk stores and that there was no convenient parking -- most parking required using pedestrian tunnels and/or skywalks for at least a couple of blocks -- and parking rates were not too inviting.

The downtown renaissance was over by 1990 when Portside closed down and any new building in downtown Toledo had ceased, except for a new indoor arena and new home for the Toledo Mudhens baseball farm team.  Currently, there are several large buildings of note in downtown Toledo that have closed up completely, are nearly empty, or have been foreclosed on and are going into rapid disrepair.

Last I heard in Cleveland, The Galleria was still pretty much dead and Tower City was still hanging on, thanks to the Horseshoe Casino setting up shop in the former Higbee's Department Store.  But Tower City is still a far cry from it's heyday when they had such trendy national chain stores as Barneys, Disney Store & the Warner Brothers Store.

[lepidopteran]

They don't sell many things that people might actually buy, like groceries and toilets.

Unless you did mean to say "toiletries", I take that you were referring to the idea that the mall doesn't sell practical merchandise, but mostly frivolous items.  A Ninja-Turtle-themed Koosh ball might be something someone wants, but not an item really needed.  This may have been the undoing of many of the "touristy" malls.  As for buying toilets, remember that Family Circus comic in which they're shopping in the, ahem, interior plumbing department of some unnamed store, and a look of sheer horror on Thel's face as she runs and yells:

"P.J.!  NO!  IT'S NOT CONNECTED!!!"

[cpzilliacus]

e) A perceived increase in the mall's crime rate, whether justified or not (news reports sometimes blow an otherwise isolated incident out of proportion)

This absolutely led to the demise of Landover Mall, located in the northwest quadrant of the interchange of I-95 (Capital Beltway) and Md. 202 (Landover Road) in Prince George's County.

Now the garden apartments that were the source of much of the criminal activity (real and perceived) across Brightseat Road from the site of the mall are being torn down. Several of the garden apartment units were burned by the local fire companies as part of training activities.

[cpzilliacus]

Then there's the case of Georgetown Park mall in the District of Columbia in the middle of Georgetown on the southwest corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street, N.W., since "repurposed" as more of a "discount" mall.

This was a decidedly upscale mall, located in the midst of the upscale Georgetown area of D.C.  I think its demise (including foreclosure) was due to several things:

(1) No easy access to the Metrorail system (that matters in a downtown area like Georgetown);
(2) Difficult to get to by private automobile (and all parking was pay parking);
(3) A considerable walking distance from the campuses of Georgetown University and George Washington University, sources of customers and part-time employees; and
(4) Unable to compete with malls like Pentagon City and Clarendon across the Potomac River in Arlington County, Va, both with reasonably easy Metro access and much better access for private automobiles.

[cpzilliacus]

Anyone heard a track by Steely Dan entitled "The Last Mall," on the 2003 Everything Must Go disc?

Very relevant to this thread.

[Scott5114]

Last I heard in Cleveland, The Galleria was still pretty much dead and Tower City was still hanging on, thanks to the Horseshoe Casino setting up shop in the former Higbee's Department Store.  But Tower City is still a far cry from it's heyday when they had such trendy national chain stores as Barneys, Disney Store & the Warner Brothers Store.

I'm kind of surprised more casinos haven't set up shop in dead malls. It seems like the large, vacant building would make for an excellent match, especially since you can reuse the existing food court and parking facilities. Turn an anchor into a poker room, use a few storefronts for offices/cash cage/vault, and cover the rest with slot machines.

[Scott5114]

They don't sell many things that people might actually buy, like groceries and toilets.

Unless you did mean to say "toiletries", I take that you were referring to the idea that the mall doesn't sell practical merchandise, but mostly frivolous items.  A Ninja-Turtle-themed Koosh ball might be something someone wants, but not an item really needed.  This may have been the undoing of many of the "touristy" malls.  As for buying toilets, remember that Family Circus comic in which they're shopping in the, ahem, interior plumbing department of some unnamed store, and a look of sheer horror on Thel's face as she runs and yells:

"P.J.!  NO!  IT'S NOT CONNECTED!!!"

The Family Circus gets a bit weird when you realize Jeffy grew up and is the one writing the strip now...

[1995hoo]

Today's Washington Post has a story about malls and how some will always continue to thrive while others have to evolve. (I occasionally go to Landmark Mall, mentioned in the story, but only to go to Sears or the Sears Auto Center.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/the-fall--and-overhaul--of-the-american-mall/2015/01/30/cf9f05f4-a650-11e4-a7c2-03d37af98440_story.html?hpid=z4

[Pete from Boston]

Last I heard in Cleveland, The Galleria was still pretty much dead and Tower City was still hanging on, thanks to the Horseshoe Casino setting up shop in the former Higbee's Department Store.  But Tower City is still a far cry from it's heyday when they had such trendy national chain stores as Barneys, Disney Store & the Warner Brothers Store.

I'm kind of surprised more casinos haven't set up shop in dead malls. It seems like the large, vacant building would make for an excellent match, especially since you can reuse the existing food court and parking facilities. Turn an anchor into a poker room, use a few storefronts for offices/cash cage/vault, and cover the rest with slot machines.

In New Jersey, they're turning a casino into a college, so why not?

When the Nanuet (N.Y.) Mall went into a steep spiral following the opening of the immense Palisades Center nearby, I was amazed at the way new kinds of businesses colonized the space.  There was a local photographer's portrait studio, a miniature golf course, a computer repair place, and even a radio station.  Still, this only filled about 25% of the mall, which existed in this moribund state only long enough for the plans to be approved to tear it down.

Nanuet's story surprised me a little.  The Palisades Center is big, to be sure–one side features a Target on top of a Best Buy on top of a Home Depot–but it's too big to get in and out quickly.  Nanuet was a manageable size.  I guess convenience is measured more in term of one-stop shopping than efficiency.  Of course, lower-tax New Jersey (which unlike New York doesn't tax clothes) is two miles away, and Paramus a few miles further in, so the market's tolerance is low.

[roadman65]

What happened to the Landover Mall in Landover, MD?  I read that it got leveled completely including Sears, who was not razed due to the fact they owned the land that their store stood on.

That used to be a booming mall and a place to stop at traveling I-95 through that area is now gone totally.

[1995hoo]

What happened to the Landover Mall in Landover, MD?  I read that it got leveled completely including Sears, who was not razed due to the fact they owned the land that their store stood on.

That used to be a booming mall and a place to stop at traveling I-95 through that area is now gone totally.

cpzilliacus mentioned it a few posts up this thread. Crime, plus the anchors went out of business except for Sears. Hecht's, Garfinckel's, and Woodies were the other three anchors. Garfinckel's went under and wasn't replaced. Woodies went under and was replaced by JC Penney but it flopped (as did the Penney's in the old Woodies space at Tysons.....Penney's is just a far lower-class store than Woodies was). Hecht's closed because they opened a new store at a different location nearby.

With three anchors gone, the mall closed. Sears owned their building (this is pretty common) and stayed on but eventually closed last year. There's been some discussion of putting the new FBI headquarters there, though it seems less likely than the Greenbelt site not too far away.

[GCrites]

I actually did walk to Landmark Mall on a regular basis when I lived in an adjacent apartment complex. It was kind of unsafe to walk there across Duke St. but hell I was 25. 

[bing101]

The Downtown Mall in Sacramento is now being converted into New Kings stadium and its only a few blocks from the state capitol on L Street.

Now in some places such as San Francisco the Downtown areas Such as SOMA, Financial District, At&t park are doing ok and their shopping areas are ok. But the income politics are crazy out there.

[bing101]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinsons_Malls

I noticed that there is a group of malls in the Philippines named Robinsons but the problem here is that its not related to the Los Angeles stores that used to exist in Southland malls with the same name.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinsons_May

Here is the Los Angeles version.