Mall Closings

[Red Badger]

Good riddance.
I despise malls.

Some malls have een saved by conversion to living units.
Most will be nuked.
The USA has 10x the retail space per capita of Germany. https://www.statista.com/chart/9454/retail-space-per-1000-people/

+1. Also, fewer places for mall rats to swarm. I haven't bee in a a mall for 15+ years... And that was too recent.

Otherwise, not much opinion on the subject.

 

[Lukeee]

When I was in Alaska last month, I spoke with the owner of one of the lodges we were staying at. He was from Texas and bought the lodge back in early 2017. He is in the retail jewelry business back in Texas and owns several stores. He says business is brutal. He as been downsizing for the past 6 years. The problem he told me is that millennial's are not buying jewelry like previous generations. Many don't even marry.

We see this in the Jewelry District in Los Angeles one of the largest in the country.

Jewelry district struggles to maintain glitter in changing downtown

As the article states:

"Baby boomers are now inching up toward their 60s," said Pam Danziger, a researcher and author who studies affluent consumers. "The older you get … the less purchasing of luxury goods is something you feel you want or need to do."

"In addition to changes in the overall economy, "The patterns of buying are changing, and the demographics are changing," said Singer of the American Society of Jewelry Historians. Younger people prefer to buy antique or recycled jewelry and often shop online, she said."

The millennials at work seem less materialistic vs. the previous generations. They seem to value life experiences... travel, good food vs. cars and jewelry. I guess it’s more acceptable to instagram a trip and food vs. a new car or new jewelers.

I personally moved 80% of my non produce shopping online. That said, I still go to my favorite brick and mortar to get my clothes. I like to touch and feel before I commit.

 

[rdy2go]

A mall in a so-so neighborhood in Austin, TX is now a community college campus and a mall in San Antonio, TX is now the home of Rackspace. The San Antonio mall is in an area that was once very desirable but over that past firty years has declined somewhat.


I see malls Oakbrook in the Chicago suburbs and La Cantera in San Antonio that seem to be doing very well, but both are in good areas and don't need Sears stores to keep them going. The Prime and Tanger outlet malls in Central Texas seem to be doing very well as a destination for shoppers from Mexico but would die if they relied on US shoppers to keep them going.

 

[rodi]

The company that ran most of the malls in San Diego County, Westfield, was recently bought by Unibail-Rodamco. I live about 1.5 miles from a mall that Westfield recently renovated (right before the corporate acquisition). It was redone as a shop/eat/work/live space. Still has anchors like Macys and Nordstrom... and quite a few nice restaurants, an upscale movie theater, but also has a 2 story commercial real estate company office, and some smaller business office spaces. The overall site had a sears (which recently closed) - but that land/building was not owned by Westfield... Seritage is the sears subsidiary that manages the land of that former sears site... they are also revamping their part of the mall.

The project was super expensive and really negatively impacted the neighborhood during construction. Additionally, Westfield/Unibail are now building a 23 story residential tower that is adding a lot more cars to an already crowded area.

While I like the idea of revamping the mall to a live/work/shop/dine area.... I'm a self admitted NIMBY with this project.

Horton Plaza - in downtown San Diego was a really unique mall... they are shutting down the stores as their leases expire. They are rumored to be looking at turning it into office space.

 

[brett]

No surprise. They were overbuilt and many had a dependence on large department store anchors.

I avoid them. The only time I go to a mall is to visit the currency exchange office. Even then I go early in the week, well before noon. In and out in a flash.

I only shop if I know exactly what I want. Usually I can order it on line faster, better, cheaper. DW likes to browse so she goes alone.

 

[Koolau]

I'm currently spending time in my midwestern home town. The mall here is dying though it had a major rehab and expansion about 10 years ago. I'm guessing it will have to close within a few years unless something happens.

In my adopted home of Oahu (Honolulu) the malls seem to be thriving, though I don't have any year-over-year data to confirm this. One mall (the big one) Ala Moana went through a MAJOR upgrade within the past 5 years. Parking was expanded and the stores have become much higher end (Sears and Pennys are gone but Sax 5th Ave and Nordstrums have taken their place(s).) This mall (as much of our shopping - including Waikiki) is targeted at tourists - especially from Japan and now China. I guess I'm suggesting we have a different paradigm than many of the mainland malls.

I rarely ever go to ANY mall as I just don't buy 'stuff' anymore. Oh, and I don't do Amazon either. YMMV

 

[Scrapr]

Parking was expanded and the stores have become much higher end (Sears and Pennys are gone but Sax 5th Ave and Nordstrums have taken their place(s).)

a shoe salesman from Seattle just cried a little

 

[Scuba]

I almost never go to a mall, and when I do it is normally to go to one specific store, get what I need and leave ASAP. I have noticed that the malls that seem to be doing well in So CA are more experience-oriented ... lots of cool restaurants, bars, stuff to do other than shop.

Back in 2005, DH and I made the mistake of investing in a REIT that owned shopping malls. Lost quite a bit on that before we sold. We held on through the recession, value crashed and then came up somewhat but not to its original price. We decided to sell as it was obvious with big chains like Linens & Things and Circuit City going out of business that malls had a tough road ahead. I haven’t tracked the valuation since we sold, but I don’t imagine it’s done well.

 

[gcgang]

I think many malls should turn into homeless shelters for all the displaced retail workers.

 

[HadEnuff]

When I was in junior high school in the late '60s, in a suburb of Cincinnati, our first "closed air" mall was built, and it devastated a couple of what had been called "shopping centers", that were in the vicinity.
I left the area in the early '70s, and by the late '80s, that mall was a ghost land. The two open air centers had redefined themselves, as the suburb I had grown up in had become a magnet for the more affluent. The stores in the updated malls were high end stores. (Many of the houses my friends grew up in have been torn down and replaced with "McMansions").

Where I lived until a few months ago, in Upstate NY (think "rust belt"), "The Mall" was built just before I arrived in 1977, just out of town, where the new "four lane" bypassed downtown. It thrived for a while, while downtown nosedived. Downtown lost a Sears, and several generational department stores, as everyone shopped at The Mall.

Now, however, the mall looks just as Imoldernu described in his OP. Sears is barely breathing, as is JC Penney. Macey's, Bon-Ton, Hess', and too many more for me to remember have all given up the ghost. I personally haven't set foot in it for a couple of years.
I recently had some time to kill with my son, near the Rochester Airport, and we stopped at a mall near where he lived 20 years ago, when he was in college there, and it was so depressing, it looked just like our mall.

One other note: before the e-commerce boom hit, all around our mall, there was, in the early to mid '90s, a proliferation of various sized strip malls, with evidently cheaper rents, and the smaller stores from the mall moved to those. Now those strip malls are drying up.

The result is, what 25 years ago was fields, and wet-lands, is now acres and acres of asphalt, with weeds sprouting up, and ugly, unmaintained strip malls. Talk about depressing...

 

[JoeWras]

When I was in junior high school in the late '60s, in a suburb of Cincinnati, our first "closed air" mall was built, and it devastated a couple of what had been called "shopping centers", that were in the vicinity.
I left the area in the early '70s, and by the late '80s, that mall was a ghost land. The two open air centers had redefined themselves, as the suburb I had grown up in had become a magnet for the more affluent. The stores in the updated malls were high end stores. (Many of the houses my friends grew up in have been torn down and replaced with "McMansions").

Where I lived until a few months ago, in Upstate NY (think "rust belt"), "The Mall" was built just before I arrived in 1977, just out of town, where the new "four lane" bypassed downtown. It thrived for a while, while downtown nosedived. Downtown lost a Sears, and several generational department stores, as everyone shopped at The Mall.

Now, however, the mall looks just as Imoldernu described in his OP. Sears is barely breathing, as is JC Penney. Macey's, Bon-Ton, Hess', and too many more for me to remember have all given up the ghost. I personally haven't set foot in it for a couple of years.
I recently had some time to kill with my son, near the Rochester Airport, and we stopped at a mall near where he lived 20 years ago, when he was in college there, and it was so depressing, it looked just like our mall.

One other note: before the e-commerce boom hit, all around our mall, there was, in the early to mid '90s, a proliferation of various sized strip malls, with evidently cheaper rents, and the smaller stores from the mall moved to those. Now those strip malls are drying up.

The result is, what 25 years ago was fields, and wet-lands, is now acres and acres of asphalt, with weeds sprouting up, and ugly, unmaintained strip malls. Talk about depressing...

Chrissie Hynde poetically wrote and sung about this exact situation in the song "My City Was Gone".

The farms of Ohio
Had been replaced by shopping malls
And Muzak filled the air
From Seneca to Cuyahoga falls

I have a love/hate relationship with her and her music, but I have to admit this lyric always stabbed me in the heart. As time has moved on, the poetic meaning is just shifting shades of meaning.