Posted on 01/17/2024 8:54:30 AM PST by fwdude
It has nothing to do with the strength or adaptability of the mall. It's the proximity of "teenagers."
Malls were the beginning of the deaths of our busy down towns in Massachusetts.
Businesses moved to malls and abandoned Main streets and quaint little shops.
I hate seeing them now but hopefully main street areas come back to life.
JMHO.
They can never not introduce race into everything.
See SNL, the Scotch Tape store (long, long ago, when SNL was funny).
I'm old enough to remember just at the beginning of malls, we'd have large department stores with flagship locations in our downtown business district. Stripling's was one of them. They had a Santa's castle constructed in the store for the holidays and it was something we always looked forward to every year.
We had one local retail empire called "Leonards" which covered something like 7 city blocks downtown, and sold everything from groceries to building materials. Employed thousands of people at all levels. They even constructed a rail service (electric) from a massive parking lot just outside of the downtown area to their main store. Completely free to ride.
Suburban sprawl was the beginning of the death of the downtowns. The malls were a consequence.
I read through more than 40 posts on this thread and didn’t see one reference to “internet shopping”. Now an argument can be made that the entertainment value of the mall declined because of a change in the environment that was caused by rowdy teens and therefore folks turned to internet shopping.
But for me It was simply the convenience of sitting at home to do comparative shopping.
I remember setting a rule in my family that no one was to go to two specific malls in Charlotte. They were not safe, in my opinion.
They are both closed now.
“Our government wants us shopping online.”
Maybe they do, but in my opinion, online shopping is the main reason for the decline of malls.
An advantage of online shopping that’s not mentioned much is that we have such a tremendous amount of goods to choose from, that you can’t put the entire variety into areas that people walk around in.
Clothes is a perfect example. Are you likely to find exactly what pair of jeans you want in a walk-in store? Brand, length, waste, color, style... Try something on in a store and then go to Amazon to buy the exact combination you want.
In the mall nearest us, a Bed Bath and Beyond shut down a few months ago. Today my wife found that a Holly Hobby is moving into the space. A K-mart shut down a few years ago. A Target is now there.
The culprit if you want to call it that is technology.
Yes, that’s true. If they can survive becoming the hunting ground for urban criminals.
If the malls had the guts to replace all doors with ones that could be closed and locked electronically, then any time there was a theft in any store, the doors could be shut and the criminals would have nowhere to go until the police showed up. Even better if the malls had armed security.
Yes, at first there might be some dangerous gunfights, but if the criminals never got away, then they would eventually move on to the unprotected stores on the street.
Mall killed downtown business, covid and big ox stores wounded malls, online retailed finished them off. Retail Darwinism
Urban youths start "shopping" at South Bay Galleria.
South Bay Galleria closes most of its shops because of urban youths.
Urban youths start "shopping" at Del Amo mall.
It's only a matter of time before one of the largest malls in the world is closed.
The target clientele does not want to park out in some large parking lot, waddle a few hundred yards to a heated/cooled atrium, and then waddle a couple hundred yards more to a store, especially if the temperature is more than 5 degrees away from 70 or there is precipitation of any sort.
They want to park near the door of a big box store.
The weird crap sold by the mall boutique stores is now available in wider selection on the internet.
Watch out for those horns!
I moved out of East Cobb, Georgia where my family had lived since before the Civil War. This was 25 years ago (to North Georgia) to a little county with 20K people and a few traffic lights you could count them on one hand. The prime requirement was to be away from a rail, bus or interstate line.
Since then, the county size has nearly doubled - escapees from ATL, economy has boomed, my house value has doubled and still no bus line.... and when I go to a county or city agency they actually try to help me.
Porch Pirates also like on-line shoppers.
I’ll give that to, to a point. the first mall was far away from us it was them expanding over the years that helped kill main streets. There is hardly much room in most Mass towns for suburban sprawl.
Our first mall was built in the 60’s and stayed the only one for years, now they are all over.
That brought a laugh to me because it is so true. There are a couple malls left around here but they are decaying behemoths. Dangerous to enter anymore with the top notch stores all gone..
I loved malls. They were efficient. Literally one-stop shopping — and eating and being entertained. Malls at Christmas were beautifully decorated.
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