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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

#241

Post by alistairSH »

noir_lord wrote: post #199
harikb wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because most people already have a home Assuming that everyone has a comfortable and spacious home with a desk&chair area is, well, a bad assumption. A bunch of people I know are now working significantly more time from a couch, in a clearly non-ergonomic position. We will see and hear about the real damage 5 years from now.

We are 3 up (two adults, 1 child) in a 2 bed flat (apartment) with no garden and for the last year both my partner and I have been WFH full time (in my case I changed job to one that is 100% remote forever). I couldn't agree more, the transition for me was trivial - I'm a developer who plays games, I already had a nice chair, two 27" 4K displays and a fast desktop so for me my hardware/comfort improved - for my partn…

Just curious, where are you that you're moving from a small-ish flat to a home with enough garden space for a stand-alone ADU/man-cave/office?

I assume you're moving out of the city and into the suburbs or similar?

I wonder if the last year of WFH will actually make suburban sprawl worse in the short- to medium-term? Lots of people moving out of city flats into suburban homes for just the reasons you mention. I can't blame them, but it's probably not sustainable either. [and easy for me to say, as I already own a suburban home]

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

#242

Post by sunsipples »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #64

First they got rid of the music stores. Then bookstores disappeared. Without them, there is no fun in going to the mall, haven't been to one in ages.

In my hometown in Australia, there was a shopping area (small chain grocery store) and a newsagent. Across the road was a foodhall, real estate agent and adult book store. Once the book shop went, the area struggled to keep customers and it became fast food and people travel to the next suburb for groceries. Maybe all shopping centres really need is access to porn?

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

#243

Post by ehnto »

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.

You can do that already, a food court is about as good as working in some open plan offices so why not just park up on a court table for a few hours?

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

#244

Post by alistairSH »

harikb wrote: post #148
vasco wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> because most people already have a home Assuming that everyone has a comfortable and spacious home with a desk&chair area is, well, a bad assumption. A bunch of people I know are now working significantly more time from a couch, in a clearly non-ergonomic position. We will see and hear about the real damage 5 years from now.

Yup. Even people with floor space had to make significant adjustments. We had to buy 2 office chairs, 1 desk, and ended up buying some other furniture to make the wife's home office more pleasant. Probably $5000 total. Would have rather spent that on something fun, but oh well.

Our employers did at provide additional monitors (both of us already had suitable laptops), which was nice and better than many received.

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

#245

Post by ghaff »

alistairSH wrote: post #241
noir_lord wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are 3 up (two adults, 1 child) in a 2 bed flat (apartment) with no garden and for the last year both my partner and I have been WFH full time (in my case I changed job to one that is 100% remote forever). I couldn't agree more, the transition for me was trivial - I'm a developer who plays games, I already had a nice chair, two 27" 4K displays and a fast desktop so for me my hardware/comfort improved - for my partn…

Just curious, where are you that you're moving from a small-ish flat to a home with enough garden space for a stand-alone ADU/man-cave/office? I assume you're moving out of the city and into the suburbs or similar? I wonder if the last year of WFH will actually make suburban sprawl worse in the short- to medium-term? Lots of people moving out of city flats into suburban homes for just the reasons you mention. I can't…

Many demographics were moving out of American cities through at least the mid-90s. A city like Boston was losing population until that time. The influx of, especially, college-educated young people is fairly recent. There's no particular reason to think it has to continue.

I know a bunch of people who were in urban apartments who have moved to larger places a number of hours out. There's a huge spike in real estate prices outside of cities now.

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

#246

Post by alistairSH »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #223
ilyanep wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how in the US, instead of building all these services and offices near each other and walkable from people's homes, we insist on ideas that force people to drive dozens of miles to get a walkable and convenient experience.

To be fair the US has the space to do what Asian and European countries couldn't. Also America was basically virgin land. The invention of the car and highways shaped US cities when Tokyo and Paris were already centuries old. Also are Americans really unhappy with suburbia?

Also are Americans really unhappy with suburbia?

Yes and no.

I'm an avid cyclist, so follow local traffic and infrastructure plans and related political/governmental issues. I live in a fairly dense suburb about 40 minutes outside DC (near Dulles Airport).

From what I can see, there is a subset of people who love owning a yard and having some of their own space for kids or gardening or whatever. And they like having a garage to store all their crap (and occasionally a car).

But, within that group, there is often a sort of despair (probably too strong a word) about the rotting infrastructure that surrounds them. Potholed roads, bridges literally crumbling, too much traffic, etc. This group pushes hard for more road construction, more sprawl, etc despite studies that mostly show more infrastructure doesn't help (demand always catches up). And they don't want to fund it via taxes.

There is another group that lives in the suburbs by necessity. Jobs are out here, costs are manageable, etc. They'd move to a city, if it were easier/affordable. I fall into this group. I actually sold my single-family home a few years ago and bought a smaller townhouse in a denser neighborhood so I could walk more places. Cost was the same and I enjoy the downsized home/yard, ability to walk/cycle for coffee or beer, and walk to work (thought that last bit was dumb luck on an office move).

And the vast majority are somewhere in between. Mostly ambivalent. Maybe some notion of the "American Dream" (big colonial home, white picket fence, etc), but content somewhere in the middle.

tl;dr - Americans like the cost and convenience of the suburbs, but much of that comes from indefinitely deferred infrastructure investment (though a massive chunk of suburban residents don't actually realize just how badly that spending is being deferred).

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

#247

Post by viraptor »

_Understated_ wrote: post #182
vasco wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> my sister has just moved house and has converted one of the bedrooms to an office

This is an interesting change happening in many places now and I wonder how it will impact the higher end of the market (and expectations) in a long term. Some people in larger houses recently went from 4 bedrooms with lots of space to 1 bedroom, 1 nursery, 2 offices. (yes, nice problem to have in practice, but still interesting)

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

#248

Post by alistairSH »

bobthepanda wrote: post #172
ryukafalz wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right - I moved to the city because here in the US it's the only option to get any human-scale density. The next level down that you can commonly find is car-centric suburbia. The remaining human-scale places in the US outside of city centers are mostly isolated remnants from before we started knocking them all down to make room for cars. Nobody's building new ones. (Unlike some other countries.)

The neat thing about malls is that they are 1. Usually already located at a crossroads; you want a mall at a busy junction to attract custom 2. Usually already a local transit hub, since they tend to be a major concentration of jobs 3. Are separated from any pesky residential neighbors by major roads and/or large swathes for parking 4. Have a lot of land in the form of said large swathes of parking These characterist…

#1 is a mixed bag. Access by car is "easy", but traffic can be awful.

#3 is a negative. The separation from housing makes them LESS suitable for office space.

Put the two together, and even if the mall is redeveloped into nice office space with room to walk around, people outside the mall have to drive to do so. For people on the other side of those major arteries, they literally have to drive 1-2 blocks to walk around the mall (or former mall).

None of which is to imply we shouldn't redevelop malls into mixed use "urban" hubs. But, we shouldn't assume that redeveloping the mall in isolation will succeed. The surrounding area might need significant changes to fully utilize the former mall zone.

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

#249

Post by jeffrallen »

koolba wrote: post #218

The end state of US malls is going to be when Amazon secretly purchases a large number of them, converts the department stores into distribution centers, opens them en masse, and provides a $1/item discount for orders picked up at the mall. That will provide the necessary foot traffic to rent out the rest of the mall to small time players that will try to compete with Amazon. Unfortunately, they'll have all their sal…

The food courts will be subsidised by Amazon, using 1 day before expired products from Whole Foods. The food courts will have an amazing automated delivery system with robots and overhead tracks whisking around salads and burgers.

Mall security will be offered for free by Pinkerton, on condition that they get to keep the parking lot fines.

Ring cameras on Pinkerton guards will identify known union organisers via facial recognition, and a they will be delivered "special" salads, laced with E Coli bacteria.

This fictional future was brought to you by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th... and https://www.parkingpanda.com/blog/post/top-10-cities-with-hi... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajneeshpuram

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

#250

Post by ArtWomb »

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.

I work out of (and take meetings in) Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan all the time. Lunch time crowd is a boisterous mix of Conde Nast fashion editors and Goldman Sachs analysts. All hating their jobs, ready to gossip. The food court is top tier. Blue Ribbon Sushi. MomoFuku japanese fried chicken and beer. You can stroll down to the marina to watch the boats bobbing in the hudson river. Or try on the trenches at Burberry.

But the best part is the proximity to the 9/11 memorial. The bottomless reflecting pools gargantuan in size where the former twin towers once loomed. Nothing quite focuses the mind like a few minutes at that historic work of public sculpture.

>>> Americans do more of their shopping online and gravitate to specialty brands and discount chains

The phenomenal rise of mobile shopping apps like PLT, DePop, Nova, and Shein provides a remarkable case study in instant commerce. One, the merch is so cheap, even teens can afford to wear an item just once. Two, the auxiliary market around creating digital content by fashion influences perpetuates the virtuous cycle. The compensation of course coming in the form of promotions, gift cards, commissions ...

Ultra-fast Fashion Is Eating the World

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/ultra-f...

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