Posted on 07/10/2014 12:44:05 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
Hundreds of shopping malls across the U.S. have been forced to shut down following years of debilitating declines in consumer traffic.
In many cases, the shuttered malls are left to decay for years before developers or local governments raise the funds to bulldoze or renovate the space.
Pseudonymous photographer Seph Lawless traveled the country for years to find these forgotten malls and document their decay from the inside.
The photos he captured are haunting and apocalyptic, featuring dead trees and abandoned shopping carts against landscapes of broken glass and crumbling walls.
He compiled the photographs in a new book, "Black Friday: The Collapse of the American Shopping Mall," and shared some of them with Business Insider.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
I don’t like malls, parking was always a problem, too many kids as well.
I shop on the internet and I suspect that has more to do with these malls shut down.
They resemble old train stations, they were replaced with cars.
You nailed it. I use to shop at Raleigh Springs Mall in Raleigh (burb of Memphis) crime is so high, there is nothing left but nitch stores. It is not even safe to go to the fabric store down the street, they are robbed all the time. Most of the mall is empty. Arabs own what there is of it. Every where Memphis annexed went to pot in a matter of a year.
Among the many ghost towns I have personally visited, two were western American cities that once had populations in the tens of thousands. One had been about 50,000 when it was a county seat; the other had once been around 25-30,000.
Even as America thrived, they died because their reason for existence disappeared. Wish I could be optimistic that it's the same with these malls, as well as so many closed small town businesses.
Randall Mall became the place to go to get mugged or have your car stolen. The demographics of Randall changed, and not for the better. I shop at Cam’s Asian Market, which is in part of the dead Toys R Us store across from the Mall. The whole area is dead. Vacant buildings line all the streets!
Never a fan of any type of shopping mall... I prefer an actual store, in a small town.
I don’t really get how that is hauntingly beautiful. Fairly depressing, unless one subscribes to the mindset that Malls are evil, but even then...
Very strange.
Was a thread here several moths ago where that very subject came up. Most of us agreed that the area doesn’t have to go to pot, just adding a city bus stop can help kill a mall.
I also noticed that almost all of the new franchise and national chains I see opening seem to prefer stand alone locations with 1-4 businesses in each, avoiding the malls and strip malls. Most of them I see are square buildings.
That's hilarious!
if anyone cares to look...
abandoned Army and Navy bases:
https://www.flickr.com/gp/basegrinder/4pK9pX/
https://www.flickr.com/gp/basegrinder/j8Wn41/
https://www.flickr.com/gp/basegrinder/oB5BWX/
https://www.flickr.com/gp/basegrinder/71x5e5/
I believe Malls usually are what the owners want them to be. If the owners want a tax write off they become such showing loss and get minimal upkeep or promotion. Little is done to promote occupancy of retailers. If an owner wants them to succeed they make some necessary adjustments and promote having certain main attraction stores on site. When you see a mall start leasing out it’s retail space to the local or state government offices it’s demise is close.
“As bad as the economy is, the demise of large shopping malls is actually the result of the changing nature of retail.”
I agree, but would like to know why they built a mall here in northern NJ that never even opened. The Xanadu Mall was built a few years ago (by Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands), complete with an indoor ski slope, and never opened. In the meantime, in the adjacent parking lots every Saturday, Americans and illegals are literally buying groceries in the Meadowlands Flea Market. Cereal, soap, toothpaste, whatever - in the shadow of this monstrosity of a “dead mall” that never opened its doors...
“Well, the Philippines is considered 3rd world, but has some of the largest malls in the world, and they are all thriving. A new one is going up near Cebu city. It is rumored to be the largest in the country, which also has the 3rd largest in the world. The two largest in Cebu are too big for me to negotiate.”
They are getting the malls we used to have, because they have the discretionary dollars we used to have (from the jobs we used to have).they are a few decades behind us in economic development; they are experiencing our “80s”.
“I agree and add to it malls were doomed to fail when all allowed city bus routes along their paths. Many refuse to frequent them due to this one issue.”
I think this was more related to their low-wage workforce than shoppers; how much mall bling can you bring onto a bus?
Our local mall food court is great if you want to watch backwards Yankee ball caps on gold chained ILLEGALS at 10:30 in the morning on a week day!
As Americans are reduced to bare sustenance, food is actually the one thing I see selling well in malls. The food court is the only thing I would go to a mall for today; ours has Arthur Treachers!
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