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Are Malls Over?

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Re: Are Malls Over?

#71

Post by ams6110 »

blahedo wrote: post #62

I'd like to mention three malls that don't purely fit the "greybox" model and may point to a likely future for malls in general. - West Edmonton Mall (Edmonton, AB). In one sense, it is the mother of all greybox malls, surrounded by an asphalt moat. But: it's accessible via local transit, and it's very much in the model of an artificial downtown: it contains hotels, apartments, a hockey rink, an aquarium, and a varie…

Combining residential spaces with malls is an interesting idea. There are a lot of builing codes that now require ground-floor retail on any residential buildings over a certain number of floors, but I've never seen or thought about revitalizing malls by adding a residential component. One downside would be that the parking starts to get taken up by residents rather than shoppers.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#72

Post by analog31 »

blahedo wrote: post #62

I'd like to mention three malls that don't purely fit the "greybox" model and may point to a likely future for malls in general. - West Edmonton Mall (Edmonton, AB). In one sense, it is the mother of all greybox malls, surrounded by an asphalt moat. But: it's accessible via local transit, and it's very much in the model of an artificial downtown: it contains hotels, apartments, a hockey rink, an aquarium, and a varie…

The common thread: Transit.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#73

Post by ams6110 »

kyro wrote: post #49
tsunamifury wrote: post #20

Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not. Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef-driven eateries. What people have abandoned is indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza an…

>> indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza and Chinese chains and the same terrible jewelry stores. What a depressing yet accurate description. Growing up in California suburbia, spending time with friends or family at the (Brea, Santa Ana) malls was always mind numbing. Those places had no life or character. Others didn't seem as bothered, and I've chalked that up to my mood being more…

My biggest problem with malls is the pervasive aroma of human flatulence that seems to be everywhere. Maybe that's why so many of the shops spray perfume/cologne into the air.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#74

Post by sliverstorm »

mgkimsal wrote: post #42
sliverstorm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years. Did you actually attend malls in their heyday? Today's mall is a sad shadow of their former selves, and as a result a poor way to judge how or why we enjoyed them in decades past.

agreed. back in the 80s, the closest mall to me was pretty good - a decent mix of entertainment stores (music, games) and arcades, and water slide for a while, movie theater, and a decent mix of food (well, some of the better food was anchor restaurants in the parking lot). My recollection is there was a lot of natural light on sunny days - large glass sections in the ceiling structure let in quite a lot of light. I…

The indoor style exists because of extreme weather. I personally suspect California got indoor shopping malls back then because most everywhere else had indoor malls too- and they had indoor malls for the same reason they have indoor highschools.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#75

Post by chrismonsanto »

ams6110 wrote: post #58
meddlepal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get it. We need to fix a lot of American mass transit infrastructure though to make this feasible. Getting into the city is not easy or cheap in many places in the United States. And we cannot just rely on the cheap trick of using parking garages and highways to get people into the city anymore - that's part of what killed cities in the first place.

Mass transit is OK for commuters who can tolerate the homeless-shelter-on-wheels aspect of it, but not good for shoppers, since it limits your per-trip purchases to what you can carry.

In Kentucky (and probably the midwest in general), mass transit effectively does not exist.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#76

Post by sliverstorm »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #38
sliverstorm wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine what "experience" we all thought we were enjoying in these grayboxes for so many years. Did you actually attend malls in their heyday? Today's mall is a sad shadow of their former selves, and as a result a poor way to judge how or why we enjoyed them in decades past.

What were they like?

Among other things,

- A sanctioned place to hang out with friends outside of school

- A predecessor to online shopping. If you buy it online today, and you can't get it from Target/Walmart/Etc, chances are you would have gone to a mall back then.

- Lots and lots of different clothes stores. The HN crowd probably doesn't care for this much, but other people liked that part a lot!

- Bustling and full of people. This has its downsides to be sure, but it can be nice to be around other people, and they didn't feel like the ghost towns they do today.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#77

Post by jccooper »

The demographics have changed around the first- and second-generation malls enough that many of them are no longer viable. Since they're huge properties, they tend to rot slowly. They're finally dying. There's probably some fundamental challenges wrt online shopping, and preference for more "natural" environments, but there are plenty of malls that are doing very well, especially the more upscale ones.

Just because not every mall is succeeding, it doesn't mean the whole category is doomed. (Not that I actually like them, but enough people certainly do.)

Re: Are Malls Over?

#78

Post by cperciva »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #31

In Vancouver two malls (Oakridge and Brentwood) are being redeveloped, pivoting away from their car oriented, suburban roots and becoming the anchor of transit oriented complete communities. In 2010 Oakridge got a transit connection for the Olympics which has helped it stay relevant. Now the city is taking advantage of the connection to build a transit oriented community around the site, doing away with outside parki…

There's also a lot of office office space going in at Brentwood and Oakridge. In short, they're shifting from "shopping area to which people drive" to "miniature downtowns connected by rapid transit". (Arguably Metrotown was the first of these, although it was a bit too early to benefit from the condoization shift.)

I think we're going to see a lot more developments like Burnaby's "SOLO District" -- underground parking, 10 acres of ground floor retail, ~7 acres of park space on the roof of the retail space, 1-2 acres of 6-storey office space, and 2-3 acres of 30-50 storey residential space. If you're lucky, you could live, work, and shop without leaving the building -- and if you do need to go somewhere, the skytrain is right across the street, so you probably won't need to drive.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#79

Post by analog31 »

flexie wrote: post #47
tsunamifury wrote: post #20

Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not. Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef-driven eateries. What people have abandoned is indoor, stale, sunlight less, copycat malls with the same awful pizza an…

In Europe, malls are still constructed in many places and they have the advantage of being built a few decades after many of the US malls. Where I live summers are a bit too warm and winters a bit too cold to make outdoor shopping joyful. Also, streets are noisy and full of aggressive drivers and the sidewalks are full of holes and broken tiles. So in the last few years this 1.5M population city has seen the construc…

On a brief but pleasant trip to Switzerland, I got around using their wonderful transit system. Every transit station was also a commercial hub. Big stations had big shops like supermarkets and department stores. Little stations had little shops like bakeries and banks.

Any restructuring of retail shopping in the US would have to include thinking about how entire districts are laid out. It takes one person -- the owner -- to restructure a mall, but considerably more cooperation and time to restructure neighborhoods.

Re: Are Malls Over?

#80

Post by ams6110 »

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #68

Maybe it's because I live in Palo Alto, but it seems, at least here, that there is a hollowing out of the middle end of the spectrum. On the low end, there are still the Target's and the Walmart's, and on the high end you have things like Stanford Shopping Center, Union Square, Santa Row, etc. The middle has taken a real beating though, as has the low middle. I'm not sure who shops at JC Penny, Sears, or even K-Mart…

K-mart's problem is that their merchandise is no better than what Wal-Mart carries, their selection is worse, and the shopping experience in their stores is, in my experience, worse than at Wal-Mart as hard as that may be to believe.

Target seems to be a step above Wal-Mart/K-Mart, and I'm guessing that has been a big part of JC-Pennys' and Sears' problem. The local JC Penny's here has gone, and going to Sears feels like stepping into the 1970s, the store literally has not had a serious rennovation since then. Target stores are new, bright and well-organized and reasonably pleasant to visit.

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