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Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

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Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#181

Post by throwaway17_17 »

inopinatus wrote: post #37
abfan1127 wrote: post #25

Malls seem like the perfect mixed use type property. Stores on 1 floor, offices on 2nd floor, then 2-3 floors of housing. 1 of the big department stores could be a grocery store.

This suggestion put me in mind of George Romero’s seminal 1978 analysis of the potential for reallocation and repurposing of large-scale commercial property, and in 2021 the notion of high-density rehousing for communities displaced by a public health crisis seems all the more relevant.

This is the single greatest comment I have read on the internet in at least 10 years. You have made my night, and probably my weekend too. Thank you, I genuinely needed something to laugh about and you provided in huge amounts.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#182

Post by _Understated_ »

vasco wrote: post #121
samatman wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but the perfect isn't the enemy of the good here. Being able to go for a climate-controlled one-kilometer walk every lunch break is a real luxury for a lot of people, it's way better than a cell in some high-rise near the highway. The mall could have a hackerspace too! It has potential.

The simple solution is work from home because most people already have a home, and simple solutions win. The only reason you're mentioning malls is because they are there, but unless you're a mall-walker on the weekends, I'm pretty sure the average developer's definition of a good lunch break isn't "walking past the mall McDonald's 3 times before returning to your mall wework" or whatever.

Anecdata, but the company I moved to a few months ago have 18 staff: only 3 of us have a dedicated work space (from the morning standups that I can see).

My brother works from home now and he's either in his living room or kitchen and my sister has just moved house and has converted one of the bedrooms to an office but prior to that worked from her dining room.

I've worked from home for a few years and have an office (spare bedroom we didn't use) so it's no big deal for me.

I'd love to see a large-scale survey around home office working.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#183

Post by onion2k »

beambot wrote: post #79

Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, entertainment, etc all under one roof.

It's important not to underestimate how many customers a store in a mall needs to survive. Most need tens of thousands of people to visit the mall every week in order to generate sufficient customers to have enough revenue to be viable businesses. Food-based businesses are a bit different because the same customers can visit every day, but you can't operate a hairdresser or a movie theatre by serving the same few hundred co-working space users every day if you have to pay the sort of costs it takes to run a store in a mall.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#184

Post by vkou »

circleit wrote: post #174
beambot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malls can definitely obtain natural lighting if architected properly (eg sky lights and light pipes) -- malls are no different than other commercial offices. For example: I used to work at GoogleX's "San Antonio station", which was a converted shopping mall, and it had great lighting, even on lower floors. With multiple employers in same building, you'd also have many more socializing options -- including random coll…

Vertical aquaponics farms. Organic fresh produce and protein for every area produced locally.

Indoor square footage is not, and will never will be a relevant constraint on food production.

At $400/square foot to build a mall, and $XY/square foot/year to maintain it, the only thing that makes financial sense to grow in one is black market marijuana.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#185

Post by barry-cotter »

prpl wrote: post #125
freddie_mercury wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Malls as coworking space would be literally the arcologies of dystopian cyberpunk. No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world. It wouldn't be "best" for many people. Maybe "convenient" for bosses who don't like how much productivity they lose when a Meat Flavoured Productivity Unit has to go get a haircut or imbibe sustenance....

I think it’s fairly easy to rebuild an average 2-3 story department store into a large office building with many windows.

I’m not an architect but I doubt that. Refitting a building is expensive and buildings designed for one purpose are not going to be awesome for another unless your extremely lucky. Specialization is real. That said you could definitely retrofit the average department store building into reasonable offices.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#186

Post by cesarb »

numpad0 wrote: post #54
abfan1127 wrote: post #25

Malls seem like the perfect mixed use type property. Stores on 1 floor, offices on 2nd floor, then 2-3 floors of housing. 1 of the big department stores could be a grocery store.

I think it must be human nature that we don’t desire housing and commerce in a single building in the same way as how we’d want kitchen and bathroom to be separate, because buildings in that apartment on top configuration always seems borderline rundown to me. Office + mall examples usually seem to be working fine, except there always are one entrance for each, distanced physically as well as in general aesthetics.

> we don’t desire housing and commerce in a single building in the same way as how we’d want kitchen and bathroom to be separate

Wait, what?

Other than very old houses (which I've been told had the bathroom in a separate building), every residence I know of has the kitchen and the bathroom in the same building. Yes, they are separated by walls, in the same way housing and commerce in a single building would be separated by walls and floors.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#187

Post by [deleted] »

dcolkitt wrote: post #72
blackearl wrote: post #5

Malls need to be remade. I like the few I've gone to that are mostly outside or have some open airways and greenery, art, music, some sort of novelty event or thing to check out. I don't really miss giant generic malls at all. They're used more as a free babysitter and I hate visiting them.

In most suburban areas, the land malls sit on are worth far more than the structure. There's also a desperate need for housing in most metros. Particularly high density single family homes near the center of town. It's cool to imagine alternate uses for existing malls, but I'm guessing the best thing to do would be to demolish them, then convert the land to small, dense housing developments.

[deleted]

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#188

Post by limograf »

notacoward wrote: post #83
blackearl wrote: post #5

Malls need to be remade. I like the few I've gone to that are mostly outside or have some open airways and greenery, art, music, some sort of novelty event or thing to check out. I don't really miss giant generic malls at all. They're used more as a free babysitter and I hate visiting them.

The funny thing is that the early malls were like that. The word "mall" originally just meant an open space, like the National Mall in DC or the "Cuba Mall" that I grew up near in Wellington, New Zealand. The modern shopping mall is distinguished by a single financial entity which owns the land/buildings, provides shared infrastructure (e.g. parking/power), and rents it all out as a package to many mostly small tenan…

Yep. It meant croquet lawn, basically. It's from Pall Mall (ultimately, ball hit / palla malleus) - the place Charles II played lawn games and around which fashionable people would promenade.

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#189

Post by raverbashing »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #88
beambot wrote: post #79

Malls could be the best co-working offices. Ample daytime parking, baller food courts, medical facilities, hair dressers, dentists, cafes, movie theaters, entertainment, etc all under one roof.

Malls as coworking space would be literally the arcologies of dystopian cyberpunk. No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world. It wouldn't be "best" for many people. Maybe "convenient" for bosses who don't like how much productivity they lose when a Meat Flavoured Productivity Unit has to go get a haircut or imbibe sustenance....

> No windows, no natural light, never going outside in the real, natural world. Just one giant homogenised hermetically sealed world.

Malls in the US are like that. But not everywhere

(I'm gonna be honest, US malls are not the greatest)

Re: Mall department stores were struggling; the pandemic has pushed them to the edge

#190

Post by chaostheory »

wikibob wrote: post #169
chaostheory wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Malls need to improve along a number of dimensions. Better dining, easier transportation or integration into live / work / play mixed use, and addition of grocery stores would make them better than Amazon. That's because no one implemented the original vision of the mall, at least in the US. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2015/05/07/victor_gruen_t... "He imagined designing an environment full of greenery and sh…

He is describing a city. Not a North American city mind you, but a true old development city. Human scale. People first, not cars. Everything you need to live within walking distance. This is the vast majority of Europe.

Yes, but he planned on enclosing them all inside one structure so not really a city. Its more like an enclosed village or small town within a city. It’s a revolutionary idea that is being implemented in Asia as we speak
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