Death to Malls! Long Live Amazon!

The life and death of malls

Excerpt:

By 1960, there were 4,500 malls in America—some open, many enclosed. By 1975, that number had risen to 16,400, and by 1987, there were 30,000 malls accounting for half of all retail dollars spent in the country. .

.. the Mall of America, birthed near the peak of the mallification in 1992. At the time, it was an unbelievably audacious project: with its amusement park, its 12,500 parking spaces, its five hundred stores, its 4.2 million square feet of space. It made us feel so small, just as it made our needs feel so large.

... To many, the Mall of America seemed to be a turning point. And it may have been one. Malls have been on the decline since the late 1990s, hit first by online retailing, then by the recessions of 2001 and 2008. Vacancies have climbed. Dead malls became a peculiar suburban blight. Not a single enclosed mall has been built since 2006. Today, anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of malls are expected to fail in the next ten years.

Comment: It's not much of a Mall but Four Seasons Mall in Plymouth is completely vacant. The City of Plymouth blew it by not letting Wal-Mart develop it. I worked at Western Woods Mall in Cincinnati during college (shoe salesman). I met many chicks there which was a highlight. (Meeting chicks was almost as important as making $$ for me!). Deadmalls is a website devoted to the topic. I'm not much of a shopper and I never go to the Mall. Kathee rarely goes. The Mall of America is too big ... too far away. Hate it! Image source. Also see Time Magazine "Stores that Are No More". At dinner with my brother in law Thursday: "Everything I need I can find at Wal-Mart or Amazon"