![]() Many states and cities issued stay-at-home orders that effectively shut down malls and other “nonessential” businesses, while others closed temporarily due to lack of customers or an inability to maintain adequate staffing levels. ![]() In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S. Though some economists believed malls could survive these headwinds, no one could have foreseen the gale forces that would tear through the country in 2020 and dramatically change consumer behavior in a way that could prove permanent. Trends toward outdoor “lifestyle centers” and strip malls have also left old-school malls wanting for customers.īy 2019, average mall vacancy rates approached 10 percent, a threshold considered “troubling” by real estate experts. Dead malls image by David Whitemyer / Īdditionally, big-box stores like Walmart, Target and Best Buy-which are typically located in stand-alone buildings-have siphoned business away from enclosed malls and their anchor stores. The Great Recession of 2008 hit retailers hard, with more than 400 bankruptcies at mall mainstays like Sharper Image, Linens ‘n’ Things, Steve and Barry’s and KB Toys. However, the rise in online commerce wasn’t the only factor that contributed to the demise of traditional retail. Online shopping offered consumers a number of advantages over brick-and-mortar stores: they could shop 24 hours a day from the comfort of their homes (or from anywhere at all, thanks to the growing ubiquity of smartphones) they could locate and purchase nearly any product they desired, without having to worry about whether it was in stock on local store shelves and in many cases, they could get the products shipped straight to their doors at no additional cost. In 2020, the company achieved a mind-blowing $386 billion in sales. By 1997, it added music and movies to its online offerings, and within a few years it had added products in virtually all consumer categories. Before it became a global behemoth, Amazon started as an online bookstore that founder Jeff Bezos operated out of his garage in the Seattle suburbs. ![]() The Death and Demise of RetailĪs more homes gained access to the internet, retailers began expanding their storefronts to the virtual world-or opting to abandon physical locations altogether. The results of this epidemic can be seen today in the carcasses that remain, waiting to be razed in favor of large retail warehouses and distribution centers. That tipping point began in the early aughts with the rapid expansion of the internet, and along with several other compounding factors, an epidemic of dead malls and dying malls quickly spread across all 50 states. But with malls being built at a rate more than twice the growth of the nation’s population from 1970 to 2015, supply was destined to exceed demand at some point. ![]() Mall construction continued through the next several decades, reaching an indulgent peak with the 1992 opening of the 5.6 million square-foot Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, which dwarfed the 20 existing “supermalls” of 2 million square feet or more. Penney and Sears, these vast enclosed shopping centers sprang up in suburbs across the country, with 30,000 malls accounting for half the retail dollars spent in 1975. Anchored by major department stores like J.C. During the 1960s and 1970s, retail trends sent the number of malls in the U.S.
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