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Shuttered stores at Schuylkill Mall in Pennsylvania in 2017. By the 1980s, the mall had become the center of American social life and accounted for the bulk of all retail sales. But a shrinking middle class, the rise of online shopping, and the fact that there were simply too many malls contributed to the decline of the American mall.

Jennifer Sepulveda used to drop off her 14-year-old son, Jorden, at the local mall on a Friday or Saturday night, where he would catch a movie with his friends and then hang out afterwards at the food court or elsewhere. Not anymore. Starting April 18, Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey — the second largest mall in the state — is requiring anyone under 18 years old to be accompanied by a chaperone at least 21 or older on Fridays and Saturdays after 5 p.m. The move, according to the mall, follows “an increase in disruptive behavior by a...

As a new year dawns, we can’t help but look back on recent changes, and wonder what changes are in store for us. The first thing that came to my mind, a downright surprising realization for me, as I look back on this Christmas season, is the realization that it was the first Christmas ever in which I did not set foot inside a mall. And I am not alone. The business pages have followed the ebb and flow of retail for decades. The huge department store has suffered; the small boutique chain has felt it too. The big mall...

But local zoning laws often don’t allow housing at these locations. [S]tate lawmakers are moving to pass new laws to get around those barriers. A bill that cleared the state Senate last week would let developers build houses on most commercial sites without changing the zoning. Another proposal would pay local governments to change the zoning to let developers build affordable housing. Last year, a bill that would have overridden local zoning laws to let developers build small apartment buildings in neighborhoods reserved for single-family homes died in the state Senate. Local governments and developers in California are already trying...

For at least two hundred years, one of the goals of the retail industry has been to make shopping fun – to make a trip to the general store, or the downtown retail district, or the indoor mall an enjoyable, even entertaining experience. Stores are designed with an eye to bright colors and comfortable surroundings. Malls have been built with stages in the wings, so they could bring in high school choirs for Christmas caroling, or personal appearances by pop stars or children’s TV performers. Department stores like Nordstrom’s, and grocery stores like Mariano’s spend the money for both a...

Dead malls are popping up all over the states, particularly in the Midwest, where economic decline has sped up the "going out of business" process. This map, put together by a Dead Malls Enthusiasts Facebook group, shows that well. As Americans are faced with multiple shopping options and more stores are leaving malls, it should be interesting to see if malls and mall culture will survive. What you are about to see is what happens when malls are abandoned. It's apocalyptic and really, really creepy....

WASHINGTON -- The drumbeat of threatening reports over the last week--terrorists planning to detonate radioactive "dirty bombs" or attack the U.S. financial system--has been all the more alarming because of their source: the captured operational commander of the Al Qaeda network, who is now being interrogated by U.S. authorities. On Wednesday, the FBI announced yet another warning, that terrorists affiliated with Osama bin Laden may try to attack American shopping centers and malls. Like the other alerts, authorities say, the information was provided by Abu Zubeida, the nom de guerre of Bin Laden's top aide, who was taken into custody...

Reflections on the future of retail… As the new year began, right in the midst of outgoing Resident Barack Obama’s ever-more-urgent pleas for a “legacy,” two announcements hit the news: the family of Sears and K-Mart will close yet another 109 K-Marts and another 41 Sears’ stores in 2017, and Macy’s will close another 68 of theirs. It was to be expected, of course. The analysts say that these stores are of an old breed that hasn’t kept up; they still use brick and mortar, unlike the darlings of the new age of retail, Amazon and Etsy et al, which...

The Obama administration gave Somali Muslims behind-the-scenes tours at a major U.S. airport after the group complained to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson about feeling harassed and profiled, government records obtained by Judicial Watch reveal. The special security tours not offered to any other group occurred at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) roundtable meetings with local Somali leaders to obtain feedback for “modifications to practices that would allow for operations to be more culturally sensitive.” On at least two occasions—December 18, 2014 and February 18, 2015—federal authorities granted the unprecedented excursions of the facility’s...

If you regularly drive north from Chicago to Milwaukee on I-94, as I do, you have watched Amazon’s Kenosha distribution center grow by leaps and bounds. The parking lot is full, day and night, as it is in online retailers’ similar facilities all over the country nowadays. They may be on the outskirts of a metro like the Kenosha one, or in the heart of town, like Amazon’s 26 urban fulfillment centers in Houston, New York, San Francisco, Miami and Atlanta, often saving a blighted neighborhood by new construction and new jobs that no other business could justify bringing there....

SouthPark mall made a mistake when it chose to replace its traditional Christmas tree with a faux glacier, the company’s president said Sunday, and the controversial display will be removed sometime Monday. “It was a mistake, and we had to correct,” Simon Mall President David Contis said Sunday. “If we lose money, so be it.” Indianapolis-based Simon Malls owns SouthPark as well as Charlotte Premium Outlets and Concord Mills. SouthPark Mall shoppers did not take kindly to the mall replacing its traditional Christmas tree with the controversial glacier as part of its Santa display, so the shopping center announced this...

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...

So I took the kids out to the mall to shop for Mom two days before Christmas. I want them to know that Christmas is not just about receiving but giving as well. Now let me ask a weird hypothetical. If I showed up at the Mall wearing only briefs and say my wife showed up in a minuscule bra and panties we'd likely be dragged from the premises and arrested. And rightly so, especially if you've seen me in briefs. But no matter what, it's bad, right? So why is it OK for some of these stores to have...

The Department of Homeland Security is urging shopping malls in the United States to increase security in the aftermath of the carnage wrought by al Qaeda’s Somalia affiliate over the weekend in Nairobi. Malachy Kavanagh, a spokesman for the International Council of Shopping Centers, told The Daily Beast on Monday that the department contacted shopping malls Sunday to check on the precautions they were taking against mass shooters. U.S. intelligence officials say there is no specific threat information suggesting that al Qaeda is planning a similar kind of mass shooting in American shopping malls. Nonetheless, security experts worry about copycats....

Five foreign men were arrested during a courthouse break-in early on Wednesday and police said they found photographs of public buildings, water systems and malls from various U.S. cities in their van. The men, at least three of whom were in their 20s, will be questioned by a joint terrorism task force including the FBI and immigration authorities, officials said. Bexar County spokeswoman Laura Jesse said three men were found inside the 120-year-old Bexar County Courthouse, a landmark in downtown San Antonio and two in a large recreational vehicle parked in front of the building. She said all five were...

Moving to broaden its menu — and perhaps by consequence, America’s waistlines — Atlanta-based Cinnabon cut a new slice into the country’s Italian food market this week with the limited introduction of the Pizzabon. “It’s like a regular pizza but smaller and with less taste of sauce,” Karina Agaton, an employee at the Cinnabon’s remodeled Atlanta Cumberland Mall venue, told the Daily News. The new snack, which looks a lot like the chain’s Minibon but without the frosting on top, is only available for now at the company’s revamped Cumberland location, which houses a test kitchen used to try out...

1. I'm convinced several forum members who are impressed by Sweden's Liberal policies on immigration wish to contribute in a constructive manner to this thread:) 2. Which is the biggest shopping mall on Earth? According to Forbes, no mall in the entire US enters the top ten list! (See link below) However, there are many ways to count. If you'd measure them by the number of shops, Emporia would beat number 10 on that list by around 100% even though it will have only half the size. Furthermore, the yearly combined sales of a mall like Emporia, located in an...

Americana Manhasset, the luxurious Long Island high-end shopping mall, frequented by everyone from the Hamptons to Manhattan, features glamorous British model Lily Donaldson showcasing their S/S 2010 collection of premium designer clothing. There’s Lily in Escada, Ralph Lauren, Fendi, Dior, Tiffany, Versace, Salvatore Ferragamo, and much more. All wonderfully summery, breezy, appealing, chic… time to hit the mall.

The shopping malls of America will be among the next major terrorist targets. Malls make such obvious high-value targets that it's difficult to grasp why they haven't been hit up until now. Shopping malls are America's marketplaces, constantly packed with people, with uncontrolled entry, and openly vulnerable to any given form of attack. We need only consider the darkest days of the Iraqi terror campaign of 2006-2007 to grasp how the jihadis view marketplaces. Scarcely a week went by without another Iraqi marketplace bombing, with casualties largely consisting of women and children, mounting from the dozens to the hundreds. We...

The shopping malls of America will be among the next major terrorist targets. Malls make such obvious high-value targets that it's difficult to grasp why they haven't been hit up until now. Shopping malls are America's marketplaces, constantly packed with people, with uncontrolled entry, and openly vulnerable to any given form of attack. We need only consider the darkest days of the Iraqi terror campaign of 2006-2007 to grasp how the jihadis view marketplaces. Scarcely a week went by without another Iraqi marketplace bombing, with casualties largely consisting of women and children, mounting from the dozens to the hundreds. We...