Agreed. Too many malls assume that teenagers with disposable cash are their salvation.
And packs of wandering teens lead to crime and uncivilized behavior, driving out families and older women with spending money.
Food courts hastened the decline by encouraging and enabling loitering, littering, general noise and filth.
I remember when sit-down eating was limited to a cafe at the anchor store, or buying the ocassional snack or Icee at the drug store and then sitting down somewhere on a bench. I think the problem got going with the weird K-Mart quasi-cafes in the middle of their stores. I forget what they were called but you’d have to be kind of desperate considering some of their offerings, lol.