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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

#81

Post by bsanr2 »

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.

Better yet, set aside some of that housing for small business owners who would have their locations in the development. Explicitly zone it for commerce as well as residential, like all of the old small town and city neighborhoods people are clamoring to get into.

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

#82

Post by wyre »

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.

> the best thing to do would be to demolish them, then convert the land to small, dense housing developments.

This could be said about most real estate, I think.

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

#83

Post by notacoward »

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 tenants. Enclosure is an optional feature. Later in life I lived near one of the earliest US malls built on this model - Shoppers World in Framingham, MA. It was not enclosed. It was basically a ring (or maybe more of a figure eight) with two stories of balconies over a shared courtyard. The familiar enclosed structure came later.

Ironically, Shoppers World itself became unable to compete with the newer enclosed Natick Mall across the street, so it was torn down. Now the name persists, but it's basically a big parking lot with a dozen or so isolated big-box stores around the periphery.

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

#84

Post by mertd »

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.

That's what a normal town looks like pretty much anywhere outside of North America. I don't know town planners love exclusive zoning so much here.

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

#87

Post by brudgers »

shard wrote: post #71
brudgers wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The retail portion of a mall is so much more valuable that it is difficult to make economic sense out of that sort of configuration. [1] Architecturally isolating access and services for residential and office uses will tend to dramatically increase costs of those lesser uses...you don't want random mall patrons to have access to the residential areas. If the offices are accessible from the mall use, then why not bui…

I think one point is that there are only so many stores one mall can support, depending on the local population size. If land is expensive, then building on top of the mall to further utilize the land can become economical. As to whether offices or apartments are the better choice, that would depend on the local supply and demand of each.

Major projects take a couple of decades to get out of the ground. What was the demand like for housing ten years ago? What is the demand for office space like today? What was the demand for retail twenty years ago? (Low, low, and low) [1].

I agree there are only so many stores a mall can support. At that point the economically sound strategy is to stop building. It's not to layer on incidental complexity that provides lower returns at increased risks. It will only create problems syndicating investors for the project.

[1] Retail was still recovering from over-supply from the S&L pre-crisis and under-demand from the dot.com crash. At the low point of the cycle it could have been perfectly sensible to start planning a retail project on the prediction that retail could only come back and in the hope of timing the up-cycle correctly. But you would not have been building a mall. You would have been planning a power center.

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

#88

Post by freddie_mercury »

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....

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

#89

Post by BariumBlue »

flubert wrote: post #13

"Malls are dying" seems like a "the suit is back" sort of meme. I've literally been hearing this for 20+ years. And the mall near me seems busier than ever. Someone must be pushing this for some reason. People shorting mall real estate?

Pretty sure that "Malls are dying" is large part negativity bias - cities don't get "too crowded" with malls, so we never experience having "too many" of them, but we DO experience having them close down. A mall closing down will stick out much more to a person than a new one coming up.

It doesn't help that malls are practically designed to get old and decrepit - malls are built to a completed state - once one is built, it will never get "bigger, newer, and better", it will only get more and more older and "outdated". They weren't DESIGNED to be updated and last for decades.

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

#90

Post by notacoward »

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.

A while back I was hearing about large department stores, especially Sears/Primark, considering conversion to data centers. They're everywhere, so not hard to find one in a desired location, and they usually have good access to relevant kinds of infrastructure (especially power). And sellers who are desperate to wring some money out of them before they literally fall apart. Conversion wouldn't be free, of course, but it seemed like a way to get a new DC for far less than it would cost to build its equivalent from scratch. Haven't heard about the idea for a while now, though. Not sure why.
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