The Real Reason Malls Are Closing

[BlueTrain]

The merchants I mentioned had something called "Old-fashioned bargain days," with sales people wearing old-fashioned clothes, which I don't remember too well, old things in the windows and things like that. I don't recall that there was any parade or anything like that. But the funny thing was, I didn't know anyone of my parent's generation who were actually born there. My mother did graduate in 1932 from the high school I attended but she was born in the next county over. My father, who never went to high school, was from Virginia, down close to the North Carolina state line. But even in 1920 the population was greater than it is now. Between 1910 and 1920 the population just about doubled. Those must have been good years for the town.

On the other subject, locally there is an area that has an underground (Crystal City underground) in Arlington, across the river from D.C. It's confusing if you aren't familiar with it, of course. But the whole Crystal City area is booming--there's even a "town center" called Pentagon City. There used to be a small appliance factory there at one time.

 

[ChiTownScion]

"Old Home Week" used to be a tradition in many small towns in the Northeast, and possibly elsewhere -- a week-long series of celebrations of community spirit where all the folks who'd moved away were invited back to renew old acquaintances. That really doesn't exist anymore -- you rarely have towns with deep-rooted populations these days, with people being pushed out of their native communities by gentrification or the need to find jobs that don't exist anymore. There's nobody left to welcome the Old Home Folks back home.

Thanks to Facebook, I've been able to socialize/ meet up with former grade schoolmates. Some of them have such rose colored memories of childhood in that bedroom community suburb. Quite honestly, I tolerated it- at best. Even at its earthiest, I doubt that a seaside small town in Maine could have been as boring, as backward, and as depressing as the wannabe Levittown suburb where I had to spend 14 years of early life. I deliberately chose a private high school where no one else from that town was attending, and it's a decision I have never regretted. I got away as fast as I could and would have never considered living there as an adult.

Now, the irony is that I have gotten to know some of the very people from the local public high school (it no longer exists) who would have been my peers. And as adults, most of them are a lot nicer and more fun to be around than the social climbers with whom I actually DID attend school. But I think that we were all very different 40- plus years ago, mostly for the better. (Maybe it was the spouses we chose who civilized us. I don't know.) Perhaps on all sides, what is remembered and the reality that existed are two theoretical parallel lines that will never meet.

 

[Benzadmiral]

My work (air quality testing) takes me into many malls across the country. On days when I have been on the road I have to stop and think about what city I am in as all the malls I test are identical...
The same crap stores selling the same crap merchandise to teenage girls. Without that demographic malls would close tomorrow. And don't get me started on the music ....at the end of my day I desire a stimulation free Zone!!!

.

This is my problem. There is nothing left in the malls -- here, anyway -- to appeal to men. In the '60s to the '90s or so, ther were men's clothing stores, bookstores, gadget stores and even toy stores. Now? If I drop Miss Linda off at Penney's so she can use some of the forest of coupons she has, I glance at the men's section, walk out into the mall proper, and find . . . nothing. The "jewelry" stores, if they're not Rolex dealers, all have the same Citizen watches. There are no bookstores. Sure, there's Victoria's Secret (as there used to be Frederick's of Hollywood), and you can entertain yourself looking at the big posters of the lovely models . . . but even that wears off after a while.

In 1974, the Plaza at Lake Forest, the giant mall in New Orleans East, had Spencer's Gifts, Walden Books, an ice cream parlor, a skating rink (! yep), a hobby store, a movie theater, and more. You could imagine that the shopping district of Heinlein's Luna City would look like that, and if you went through the right door you'd find the office to rent your space suit and be able to step out on the surface of the Moon. My imagination works just as well now as it did then, but the current malls don't spark it at all.

Early shopping centers here had movie theaters, one or two banks, a grocery, a place to have your car worked on, a drugstore -- truly one-stop shopping for people in the 'burbs. Not no mo'.

 

[ChrisB]

Along those same lines, downtown Houston has a large underground tunnel network connecting buildings. Within the tunnels are shops and restaurants that form a sort of mall, I guess you could say.

Munich has the largest underground shopping mall in Europe at the Stachus.

 

[BlueTrain]

Maybe what you're saying is that malls now don't have anything to appeal to men who are 40 years older than they were in 1974. But there's a lot going on here.

The ownership of the mall, which probably includes several malls, is a distinct and separate entity from the stores occupying the malls. The stores have their own problems, already discussed in depth here and there. Their problem is mainly competition from on-line retailers. The book stores, never that strong to begin with, may have been the first to go. Stores that sold fashions that were rather faddish, like "Up against the wall," didn't change as fast as their customer base and customers are notoriously fickle. The idea of a grocery store in a mall seems odd now but they work fine in a strip mall and I guess they work as part of a big box concept like Wal-Mart. For that matter, the whole idea of a supermarket isn't that old, not so old that it was something new when my parents were coming of age in the 1920s, not that they lived in town.

One local mall (Northern Virginia) that impressed me when I first moved here around 1973 is gone now. Virtually all the stores that occupied the mall then are either out of business, having either gone bankrupt or bought out, or no longer operate retail stores. So the mall was eventually turn down and replaced with what is essentially a two story strip mall, the stores on one side being higher than the ones on the other side. There is no indoor portion now, all the stores opening only to the outside instead of to an inside corridor. But it's till a bustling retain center just the same; just different.

 

[Benzadmiral]

"L'enfer c'est les autres." -- J-P. S.

What's the French for "Especially when you have to wait in line behind a lot of them"?

 

[BlueTrain]

It doesn't matter how long the line is; all that matters is who you're standing behind.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Speaking of ordering online, a couple of weeks ago the UPS man left my package on top of the potted plant that sits next to my front door. Today FedEx left a heavy package in front of my door so that I couldn't open it. USPS routinely shoves packages that aren't designed to fit into a small mailbox...into my small mailbox.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Maybe what you're saying is that malls now don't have anything to appeal to men who are 40 years older than they were in 1974. But there's a lot going on here.

The ownership of the mall, which probably includes several malls, is a distinct and separate entity from the stores occupying the malls. The stores have their own problems, already discussed in depth here and there. Their problem is mainly competition from on-line retailers. The book stores, never that strong to begin with, may have been the first to go. Stores that sold fashions that were rather faddish, like "Up against the wall," didn't change as fast as their customer base and customers are notoriously fickle. The idea of a grocery store in a mall seems odd now but they work fine in a strip mall and I guess they work as part of a big box concept like Wal-Mart. For that matter, the whole idea of a supermarket isn't that old, not so old that it was something new when my parents were coming of age in the 1920s, not that they lived in town.

One local mall (Northern Virginia) that impressed me when I first moved here around 1973 is gone now. Virtually all the stores that occupied the mall then are either out of business, having either gone bankrupt or bought out, or no longer operate retail stores. So the mall was eventually turn down and replaced with what is essentially a two story strip mall, the stores on one side being higher than the ones on the other side. There is no indoor portion now, all the stores opening only to the outside instead of to an inside corridor. But it's till a bustling retain center just the same; just different.

I think that was one I used to manage. Is there a Sears across the road, formerly a Saks Fifth Avenue?

 

[BlueTrain]

I was referring to Seven Corners Mall. The building across Route 7 was a Lord & Taylor. There as a Garfinkel's at one end and a Woody's, I think, at the other end. The inside corridors I remember being rather narrow. One of my memories of the mall was seeing lines outside "The Magic Pan," I think it was, when crepes were in fashion. It's funny what we remember. Landmark Mall was still open at the time. You probably remember "Landmark Underground."

I also remember from an issue of National Geographic, the most educational magazine I can think of, that featured a photo of Parkington Shopping Mall in an article about Northern Virginia. There was also a photo of a woman with a goofy smile with a lot of packages getting into her convertible car at the mall. It opened in 1951 and after remodeling, is now called Ballston Common Mall. I haven't been inside since the remodeling. Another photo showed people (with goofy smiles) refinishing furniture in the basement common room somewhere in Fairlington Village, which hasn't changed much in the time I've lived here.

There have been as many malls torn down around here as presently exist, I think.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I was referring to Seven Corners Mall. The building across Route 7 was a Lord & Taylor. There as a Garfinkel's at one end and a Woody's, I think, at the other end. The inside corridors I remember being rather narrow. One of my memories of the mall was seeing lines outside "The Magic Pan," I think it was, when crepes were in fashion. It's funny what we remember. Landmark Mall was still open at the time. You probably remember "Landmark Underground."

I also remember from an issue of National Geographic, the most educational magazine I can think of, that featured a photo of Parkington Shopping Mall in an article about Northern Virginia. There was also a photo of a woman with a goofy smile with a lot of packages getting into her convertible car at the mall. It opened in 1951 and after remodeling, is now called Ballston Common Mall. I haven't been inside since the remodeling. Another photo showed people (with goofy smiles) refinishing furniture in the basement common room somewhere in Fairlington Village, which hasn't changed much in the time I've lived here.

There have been as many malls torn down around here as presently exist, I think.

That was the one! It was built in the 1950's as a open-to-the-sky shopping mall. When it was built, it was waaaay out there in suburban Virginia.

At some point in the 1960's it was roofed over into what we think of as a shopping mall. At some point after I left, with the collapse of W&L and Garfinkel's, the owners accepted that it couldn't compete with the newer, larger malls built further west, and re-modeled it again so that there was no indoor public space. Everything was (and is) now leaseable space. The small parking lot got smaller with the construction of stand-alone restaurants on the Route 7 side. I wonder how they got a zoning waiver allowing them to reduce the parking-spaces-to-retail-area ratio.

There was never any crime there to speak of, with one or two spectacular exceptions.

John Allen Muhammad (the "D.C. sniper") set up in what was nominally the employee parking lot across Route 50. On October 14, 2002, he shot across the highway, killing a woman who had just finished shopping at the Home Depot store.

But the proximity of large numbers of low-priced rental housing units did not make an appealing market area for high-end retailers (e.g., Saks Fifth Avenue replaced by Sears).

The first job I had in shopping center management was as the assistant to the manager at Landover Mall in Prince George's County, around the Beltway. Crime was an issue there. The last I heard was that it had been entirely demolished but for the Sears store at one end (an "anchor" is shopping center parlance). I expect that Sears/KMart had a very long, very low-cost lease and weren't inclined to give it up.

 

[BlueTrain]

I also worked in Landover on the other side of the beltway from the mall when Capital Center (arena) was still there. I thought Landover Mall was as nice as any other for what it was. I believe that Sears actually owned the land the store occupied but I don't know if it's still there or not. The company I worked for had actually moved from north of Silver Spring. The new commute was 30 miles but not that bad.

There is a mall outside of town near where I'm from. In theory it destroyed the downtown but that's not really true. I wouldn't call it a thriving mall, either, but the local economy there isn't that great. I keep wondering how it supports the huge car dearerships around there, one of which occupies the space where the old drive-in movie used to be. The other one is across the road.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

The music and other accoutrements in those tweeny mall stores are specifically meant to drive away those who aren't the target demographic. The Boys grind their wheels exceedingly fine -- and more than a few subscribe to the idea that the kind of people standing around inside a store are as much a component of the image to be manipulated as the staff and the merchandise. Basically, stores that play music that is annoying to people older than 25 are telling such people, very specifically, that they aren't The Kind Of People that store wants coming thru their door.

So, that would make sense, except that the same garbage 12 year old music was playing today in Brooks Brothers and Talbots. What gives???? Talbots demographic is not 25, and neither is Brooks Brothers as hard as they are trying to be.

 

[totallyfrozen]

Perhaps malls are closing in your local, but they are actually building new ones in mine.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[GHT]

"L'enfer c'est les autres." -- J-P. S.

Je possède une voiture, toutes les autres voitures sont en circulation.

Speaking of ordering online, a couple of weeks ago the UPS man left my package on top of the potted plant that sits next to my front door. Today FedEx left a heavy package in front of my door so that I couldn't open it. USPS routinely shoves packages that aren't designed to fit into a small mailbox...into my small mailbox.

Fedex probably left your package in front of your door because it was too heavy for the driver to throw it.

 

[redlinerobert]

Most malls are closing because most people simply don't give a shit what they wear or how they look anymore. Those of us that do care how we present ourselves in public are going extinct.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Most malls are closing because most people simply don't give a shit what they wear or how they look anymore. Those of us that do care how we present ourselves in public are going extinct.

I've always considered language choice as part of one's presentation.

 

[Edward]

I would put it down to the internet: malls, such as they existed in the UK, have always been about cutting price for the most part, or at least making 'big box' shops a little bit more accessible. The big shopping centre types that have been around over the last thirty odd years are mostly still there and doing well, albeit that the content of them has changed. Most are based around cinema, restaurants, and the sort of showroom hops (large items of furniture, sofas and the likes) as well as groceries, newsagents.... the sort of stuff that by and large there is a direct market for and that hasn't been beaten out by the web, either because people want to try first, or the model revolves around impulse buys (Tiger, for instance), or because it's a service that can't exist online (restaurants). Here in London, Tottenham Court Road used to be the big place to buy electronics and stereo equipment; those stores are all gone now, replaced by the web, replaced by restaurants, coffee shops, sofa stores.... The killer blow for the electronics stores has been customer service. When I could take a faulty item back to the store easily for repair or replacement, that was an incentive. When they all outsourced to customer support lines and you had to deal with somebody picking up your bits for return, it became as easy to do it online. Transport is probably an issue in places like London where private car ownership is falling: over a certain size, it's easier to order online if the company doesn't offer home delivery.


I also find that it's a rare shop that actually stocks what I want to buy. Beyond the basics that I can get in my local supermarkets (food, underwear, electric kettles, toaster, the odd bit of clothing), I can only find what I want 90% of the time by going online. Can't go to a physical store and buy what isn't there.

Variation on a theme: what in God's name makes "shop on-line / pick up at store" and option anyone wants? I guess if you can't get deliveries to your house, but otherwise it's like undoing all the convenience of on-line shopping.

I live in a third floor flat in a secure block. If something is sent Royal Mail or Parcelforce, I'll either get it, or at lest notification that they tried to deliver, and I can pick it up from my local post office. If, as is sadly now the norm, the delivery is via some private courier, home delivery simply isn't an option for me. They try to deliver during the working day (with nil advance notice), leave no information about attempted deliveries, and then even if I do manage to find where the item is before they return it (usually because the seller has provided a tracking number), it's quite often at some industrial estate south of the river, three busrides away... My only option is to have a large amount of my stuff delivered to the office or I'd never see it. Where click and collect is an option and there's a local delivery spot, it's just like going to the post office to pick it up, and often cheaper. The branded 'Click and Collect' service in the UK delivers to my local supermarket, just over the road, and is typically free.

They closed because people would come in and try out their goods (strollers, cribs, highchair, car seats) and buy online. Apparently people would tell the couple this, "oh, I'm just trying it out to order it on Amazon."

It's inevitable people will check things out locally then shop around for a better price; this is a pre-web phenomenon. To be so brazen about it, though, does seem rather rude.

Back to retail, I think there are a lot of us who just prefer to not have to deal with humans.
...
How we do just about everything has changed a great deal in the last decade or so. Heck, I order a pizza online and the son of a gun has it at the door in 30 minutes! No interaction beyond "thanks" needed!

There is that. Sometimes I can be crippled with reluctance to use the telephone or even ask for something in a restaurant or shop (this alternately amuses and infuriates Herself, who struggles with how a guy who could happily parade around dressed as Dr Frank'n'Furter in front of an audience of hundreds really doesn't want to ask the busdriver where our stop is). The internet is wonderful for that. I even hate the idea of voice -activated tech: I dread the day when I'd be forced to speak this post instead of being able to sit in silence and type it.

This is my problem. There is nothing left in the malls -- here, anyway -- to appeal to men. In the '60s to the '90s or so, ther were men's clothing stores, bookstores, gadget stores and even toy stores.

That's the inevitable result of raising a generation of men to think it's effeminate or somehow 'gay' to have any interest in 'shopping'.

Je possède une voiture, toutes les autres voitures sont en circulation.


Fedex probably left your package in front of your door because it was too heavy for the driver to throw it.

Yeah..... Not sure what's worse, receiving a broken item, or having the driver steal it!

 

[OldStrummer]

It's interesting to see so many suburban Washington, D.C. shoppers and business people here. This area has been "home base" my entire life. I remember when Landover Mall opened, and it was quite nice and attractive. But the crime and surrounding neighborhood ran it down to the point where every store had its own security personnel on guard at the store entrance. Inviting? No.

To keep this short, my own opinion is that shopping malls came as a result of cultural change and economic growth, and they are fading away for the same reason. I work part-time in a running store, which is known as "run specialty" in the business. Specialty stores were the original marketplace, and I see them as the result when the "mall" disappears. Even with the Internet, there is a need for specialty stores. I won't buy running shoes online, not only because I'm hard to fit, but I also have the knowledge of what comprises a running shoe, and can evaluate customers to determine what category of running shoe best suits their biomechanics.

I'm the same way with hats. I've bought hats online and a recent experience had me exchange a size large for a size medium. I had to wait several weeks for the "dust to settle," and when my replacement hat arrived, IT WASN'T ANY SMALLER! I resorted to hat reducers rather than go through the shipping+credit process again.

On the other hand, two weeks ago I was in California and visited an actual hat shop located in an actual downtown setting and bought a hat I tried on that fitted me perfectly. It wasn't my plan to do so, but the experience of actually having a selection from which to try (as well as the atmosphere of the shop) did the trick. Vive la Specialty Shop!

 

[belfastboy]

I have the misfortune as a contractor to work in malls from time to time. Each time it reminds me why I don't shop in one......if you are not a mom or a 15 year old girl there is nothing there to buy. Specialty stores have given way to a generic blandness of trashy "fashion " for teenage girls. One exception is my local mall that houses the best shoe repair guy around these parts. Luckily he is younger than I so should be good for the duration.