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.
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.