Scenes from a Dead Mall
Pictures courtesy of Deadmalls.com
Something strange is happening to retail spaces in America. In increasing numbers, shopping malls are dying. The big boxes that were once a staple of consumer culture are terminally ill, and if nothing is done about it, they could soon become extinct.
Once a proud creature, the mall was king of the suburban jungle. The shopping mall has long served as a symbol of crass consumer culture – a privatized, sanitized public space where the only form of human interaction is shopping. They typified the 1980s, making regular appearances in cult movies of the decade like Fast Times at Ridgemont High for example, or as the backdrop for the legendary car-chase sequence in The Blues Brothers. But something has changed.
Many malls that were once vibrant are gone. Their windows have been boarded up, their colorful exteriors are fading and their cheesy 80s neon signs have been reduced to shards of glass, scattering their weed-covered parking lots. The Galleria Mall in Sherman Oaks, California for example, where Fast Times at Ridgemont High was filmed, closed in 1999. The Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, the set for The Blues Brothers, was dead before the film crew arrived – It closed in 1979, its rotting carcass resuscitated especially for the movie. Approximately 4,000 others sit empty across the country as desolate, melancholy memorials to a previous age of mass consumption.
The blame has been placed at the feet of large anchor stores like Target and Sears that used to be the lifeblood of such places, which are increasingly opting to go it alone in their own designated spaces. Without these big brand anchors sustaining a steady flow of foot traffic, smaller stores struggle to survive. The emergence of online shopping has also delivered a fatal blow to the mall’s delicate ecosystem. But the posthumous mall hides a more valuable insight into consumer culture. Hidden in their afterlife is an omen for capitalism’s more transient future.
When a mall dies, its shell becomes something else. Dead malls serve as the ultimate blank canvas for graffiti artists. Many live on as undead skate parks, their deserted urban landscapes are the perfect place to hone kickflips and railslides without the risk of crashing into a soccer mom or security guard, and they also make ideal spots for free running. A new trend known as ‘urbex’, (short for urban exploration) has blossomed from our fascination with decaying urban spaces, as postmodern adventurers infiltrate dead buildings, swapping stories, videos and photos of their expeditions online (there are some, such as deadmalls.com, exclusively dedicated to exploring old shopping centers). These living-dead malls are teeming with afterlife, illustrating what really drives us when we’re left to our own devices - what we are really trying to get from a trip to the mall. It’s not so much products themselves we crave, but authentic experiences.
Updated
Some great feedback on Reddit about this post - The Galleria Mall in Sherman Oaks, California that I mentioned, where Fast Times at Ridgemont High was filmed, closed in 1999 but also came back to life in 2002 as a new upscale shopping center (thanks to IvyMike for pointing that out). These new type of “malls with no roof” are taking the place of many deadmalls, maybe because they can offer something the malls of the 1980s could not.
Old malls couldn’t engender a genuine feeling of community (not that I’m arguing a mall really is a “genuine” community - try organizing a protest at a privately owned mall…) for many people, and that was the experience we were really going to the mall for. You can buy the same type of goods as you could at a mall in the 1980s, but the experience you consume at a “mall with no roof” is different.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:59 am
Interesting post. However, to simply blame anchor stores is too simplistic a view. What about urban sprawl and the move from inner cities to suburban housing? When a downtown area becomes more of a business only local, where is the need for a shopping mall. Businesses that are too short-sighted to recognized trends and adapt to them are bound to go out of business. It’s the beauty of a free market economy.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:20 am
It’a because there are newer, bigger malls.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:21 am
It’s because there are newer, bigger malls.
October 14th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Good point Mandi. Malls, as was pointed out to me on Reddit, have also become decentralized and people prefer shopping “areas” instead, which are basically malls without roofs that are designed to create more of a feeling of community.
Which very much speaks to the last point I was making, that we go to the mall because we want to buy an experience, not a sweatshirt. We didn’t stop wanting to buy a wide variety of goods at the mall, we just stopped wanting that kind of experience and began demanding something else.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:18 am
In Florida, it is not uncommon to see buildings of businesses that capsized or moved stay empty for years on end. Developers, county commissioners, and residents favor new construction, as opposed to demolition and reconstruction. If it isn’t the best and the brightest, in the hottest new area, it isn’t worth going to. I feel that this is a tremendous waste of land and resources. There are fewer and fewer green areas due to overdevelopment, and more and more buildings stand empty and decaying. The more empty buildings in an area, the less likely businesses that still remain will be successful. I firmly believe that our local and state government needs to encourage developers (whether by carrot or stick) to reuse rather than build on open land and add to urban sprawl.
October 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am
In New Jersey, probably the mall capital of American, more bigger and bigger malls keep opening.
For example:
http://www.meadowlandsxanadu.com/static/node1315.jsp
October 14th, 2007 at 10:53 am
People move farther outside the city as a city grows and becomes older. Everything new is on the edge of that growth. Those businesses on the inner part of a city close or are torn down and made into something new. This happens all the time and is not a really big issue.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:09 am
Let’s hope “nothing is done about it”. Malls were a blight upon the American landscape, destroying local businesses and family run operations.
Big box stores represent the corporation, another blight on America. Importing cheap goods from slave labor countries. Selling baubles and trinkets and useless crap to moronic American zombies.
Good RIDDANCE. This can’t happen soon enough.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:11 am
I’ve been watching this with some curiosity. The answer seems to be that there’s a pretty fixed demographic that keeps shopping malls alive. Those folks tend to migrate out of one area and into another over time. Shopping malls seem to have a problem following them.
The other odd factor, however, is that I’ve seen malls die in well-populated, affluent suburban areas. The anchor stores seemed to be the last to go. In general, I think it’s because consumer shopping habits have shifted away from the traditional anchor stores. A lot of the Items I used to shop for at Sears, Penny’s, and other department stores I now buy at more specialized stores. Home Depot, Kohl’s, etc. haven’t positioned themselves as anchor stores for shopping malls.
I’d say that in general the monolithic department store _chain_ is a dead concept. There may be local market demand that will support a traditional department store, but it’s no longer a universal demand. Specialty stores carry goods that are widely available over the internet, so there’s a limited demand for a store that presents this type of goods in person.
Lastly, I’d take this as a sign of the impact of the income divide in the US today. There is demand for goods and services for the very affluent…and Wal Mart. This is probably a sign of the poor health of the Middle Class in the US.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:48 am
50 year old crappy malls are closing? Whodathunkit?
October 14th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
Mostly effects of urban sprawl - Malls like to plunk down just beyond the edge of the current population - perform for ten to fifteen years - while housing sprawls past them. When it’s too far to go back to the old mall then it drifts and mall tenants depart for the next new mall at the new edge of the population.
And I agree with the wealth separation - the widening gap is continuing. - due in part to the baby boomer life changes and boomlet post high-school/college years. When the boomers were in their high-school/college years it created the drifting 1970’s.
October 14th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
>Big box stores represent the corporation, another blight on America. Importing cheap goods from slave labor countries. Selling baubles and trinkets and useless crap to moronic American zombies.
October 14th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
William Gibson, who wrote the essential 80s scifi “Neuromancer”, wrote a big scene of his early 90s “Virtual Light” novel (set around 2020 or so) set within a creepy mall, abandoned for several years or decades.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
“In 1954, Congress changed IRS rules to effectively make shopping malls the mother of all tax shelters. The change allowed developers to depreciate, or write down, the value of new buildings in seven years instead of 40. The rule made it easy for developers to show losses instead of profits and encouraged the frequent trading of property, which led to the shoddy construction and inadequate maintenance that have contributed to today’s dead-mall phenomenon.”
Kansas City News
also from JStor (membership requiered)
All the World’s a Mall: Reflections on the Social and Economic Consequences of the American Shopping Center by Kenneth T. Jackson
October 14th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Maybe the reason is that the original construction was so shoddy as to not be worth maintaining? All these stores moved on to newer construction?
October 14th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Mandi’s thesis of urban sprawl and suburbia being the downfall of American shopping malls couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, there is not an ounce of truth to it at all.
The first shopping malls came about in the 1950s. What is often considered the first mall, Southdale, opened in 1956 in Edina, MN. It was the first climate-controlled mall.
Urban sprawl/suburbia BEGAN in the 1950s. So as malls were in their hey days, American suburbia enjoyed its hey days.
Today, more people are moving back to the inner cities. Shopping malls are closing in favor of smaller strip malls or stand-alone stores and the move to Big Box America. Walmart and Target have done as much as anything in eliminating old fashioned shopping malls.
But to be clear, urban sprawl had absolutely nothing to do with traditional malls going away. On the contrary, that trend is what made them in the first place!
Brad
MN
October 14th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
The economics of malls no longer make sense. Manufacturers can now distribute their wares in so many ways that render the idea of a single high-rent boutique shop lost inside a massive labyrinth of competitors with practically zero visibility and surrounded by nearly a kilometer of sprawling parking an absolutely archaic idea.
Why would I go to a mall, where I need to battle for parking and walk a mile just to get inside, only to promptly get hopelessly disorientated in a maze of winding, twisting, sensory-overloading corridors specifically designed to be as inefficient as possible on route to whatever alphabet letter section I’m in vague search of, while enduring nail-grating Musak and recycled air pumped throughout man’s most insidious artificial environment, when I can just go to an outlet or big box concourse near my house, practically drive right up to the front door, see the store and merchandise from the outside, be virtually guaranteed of stock due to massive inventory warehousing, and be done all my shopping in one or two niche stores that cover all my needs?
Or better yet, buy it all online and have it shipped for free?
I haven’t been to a mall in almost a decade, and I consider that a good thing. Good riddance.
October 14th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
It’s the InterNets - no questions about it.
October 15th, 2007 at 6:19 am
Don’t kid yourselves. Retailing hinges on the import of low cost goods from China. Retailers that exist and prosper import and hide it well with private labeling from monolithic trade companies. In exchange for mortgaging our manufacturing infrastructure, we get shoddy low cost goods from a communist tyranny. The huge profits allow for the minor decor changes and “lifestyle” advertising advancing a feeling of exclusivity, while simply selling the same goods at a larger markup from a smaller storefront. It wasn’t a choice of “consumer tastes” it was the economics of the modern day “robber-barons” of import.
October 15th, 2007 at 8:41 am
This is going to piss some people off but I really don’t care.
Maybe it’s because they went non-smoking. Ya that’s right you heard me. I know my patronage to malls has gone down from once a month to maybe once a year - if that - since our local mall has gone non-smoking.
Just my 2 cents.
October 15th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
[…] an idea: why not, instead of letting dead malls turn into decaying urban eyesores, we turn them into […]
October 15th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I’m not sure what malls you’ve been looking at but the King of Prussia mall has been thriving in SE Pennsylvania for decades. Maybe you’re looking in depressed areas???
October 16th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Malls are dying as the economy is dying, there is no money in America. The corporations and rich people have all the money, i.e. Bill Gates and they are moving overseas.
October 17th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Hey, neat post.
I felt compelled to comment simply because I can’t believe that there is a website out there called “deadmalls.com”. Does anyone else find that funny?
My take on this issue is that malls will be decreasing, yes (because of amazon and other online sales), but I still know a lot of older, stubborn people that don’t know anything about internet shopping and don’t want to learn. Those people will continue to drive business to the malls.
Malls also have a market that something like amazon doesn’t have - I can go right down the street whenever I need something and pick it up at the mall. When I need a last minute gift, I go to the mall. So there is a still a market, but without a doubt that market is shrinking.
October 19th, 2007 at 2:17 am
That mall looks old.
October 21st, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Capitalism has its own peculiar ethic that nobody understands. It must be the case that the consumer informs the retailer if a product is possibly defective, even if there is no chance of refund. Consumers must be organized, and be ready to recount a history even if they do not have a receipt.
They must try not to shop with preconceived notions about their product needs. To assist, they must have ways of tagging a particular object in a del.icio.us or ma.gnolia way. Recursive binomial role association may be the best thing here. Like Binomial NAIM without the relations.
I don’t know. I just hate inefficiency and think that malls are beautiful.
October 22nd, 2007 at 9:17 am
[…] a quick turnover of trends, because as soon as a style reaches the mall (providing it’s not dead), the early adopters are ready for a new one. It’s a very well written paper, which makes a very […]
December 22nd, 2007 at 2:16 am
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August 10th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
As a member of the older end of the Gen-Xers who created the “Mall Rat” phenomenon, I find the decline of the mall very sad. I think that there are many factors that have contributed to this rather than any one clearly defined thing. Certainly, economic considerations have much more to do with it than making malls smoke-free; if anything, going smoke-free made the shopping experience much more attractive to many, especially those with children. It seems that the more upscale stores slowly trickled away, and as they were replaced by the tackier, cheaper element, the people who actually had money to spend and the inclination to spend it trickled away too. As much as I miss the mall heyday, I freely admit that the average shopping mall has very little in the way of stores in which I’m interested in shopping.
So much about our society has changed since I was a high-schooler in the 80s. When I do go to a mall, I do not see the groups of young suburban teens that used to populate the concourses. Sadly, many parents do not feel safe dropping their 13 and 14 year-olds off for the day anymore, and who can blame them? Beyond security concerns, obviously we do not live in the same atmosphere of widespread middle-class prosperity that we did even fifteen years ago, when shopping was one of the most common forms of recreation. There was a lot more disposable income available for blowing at Paul Harris and The Limited when gas was 68 cents per gallon, milk was 99 cents per jug, and sending a child to college did not require a second job and second mortgage in addition to scholarships and student loans. Beyond money, time is another precious commodity that people no longer seem to have. The days of the leisurely 5-hour mall excursion have gone the way of children playing freely with their neighborhood friends (without requiring a “playdate” appointment reserved in advance,) waiting until marriage to have children, and Saturday morning cartoons. Harried soccer moms are too frazzled on the weekend, after their busy workweeks and exhausting rounds of competitive sports, music lessons, visits to the doctor to update the Ritalin prescription, and Pilates to keep that size-0 figure every evening. They have time only for a quick dash into Target or (God help us) Wal-Mart, a run to Giant Eagle (gotta get those FuelPerks!) and a sprint through Starbucks. Real shopping is done after-hours, with the help of giftcards and nearly maxed out Visas, online and impersonally.
Cynical? Yep…I am not a fan of our current culture and I have no problem saying it. Things are too fast, people are too detached, and life is too busy. Among the many things for which I am nostalgic, the glory days of the mall is right up there (along with Chi-Chi’s, Red Barn, and Gold Circle.) Only time will tell if the pendulum will swing back and the mall will re-emerge.
May 12th, 2009 at 2:25 am
you say open air malls with no roof are coming alive but in the late 70’s early 80’s the Garden State Plaza in Paramus NJ was a open air mall no roof with most of the stores closed down they inclosed it and today is one of the biggest busiest malls on the east coast
July 27th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Walmart killed the malls.
August 15th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
In New Jersey, probably the mall capital of American, more bigger and bigger malls keep opening.
December 1st, 2009 at 7:36 am
Things go in fazes. I think malls are still good but as an area ages and decays the income surrounding the area goes down. Then spending decreases. That’s why older malls fail sometimes.
March 4th, 2010 at 12:00 am
Why would I go to a mall, where I need to battle for parking and walk a mile just to get inside, only to promptly get hopelessly disorientated in a maze of winding, twisting, sensory-overloading corridors specifically designed to be as inefficient as possible on route to whatever alphabet letter section I’m in vague search of, while enduring nail-grating Musak and recycled air pumped throughout man’s most insidious artificial environment, when I can just go to an outlet or big box concourse near my house, practically drive right up to the front door, see the store and merchandise from the outside, be virtually guaranteed of stock due to massive inventory warehousing, and be done all my shopping in one or two niche stores that cover all my needs?
April 20th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
My money would be on the fact that there are just bigger and better malls going up. Even with the economy in crisis and less spending going on…people still prefer to hit up those nicer stores.
June 9th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
About one mile to the north of us is where the retail business world died. It’s amazing. I remember just ten years ago it was booming. But neighborhoods age and business moves.