Decline of the Indoor Shopping Mall - What Happened?
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- Опубліковано 26 лип 2023
- I discuss what I consider the top 5 reasons for the decline of the American indoor shopping mall. Do you agree with my list? What did I miss? Let me know!!
All footage in this video are clips from my various mall tours. Please like this video, leave a comment with your thoughts, and subscribe for more tours!
Thank you for watching.
I don’t know if you mentioned it, but something that changed is taking color and fun out of the malls. They took a play land and turned it into an office space where you can shop. Thanks for the video!
That is a great point, a lot of it looks like a doctors office outdoor molding when it's not a storefront you're looking at.
You neglected to mention food court prices went up over the last 10+ years while their offerings declined in quality and quantity. Also, a mall needs a food court that feels comfortable and has an interesting vibe which most malls lack.
I remember back in the 2000s. I was a kid back then. However, sometimes my parents would take me out to different indoor malls. Everybody seemed very happy back then. People would actually take their time. Now, unfortunately, people are no longer even going to those places, because they have social media, and they can buy stuff online. Sure, it is very convenient to buy stuff online, but sometimes it is nice to just go out once in a while. This was a great video! The, sounds like you could be a professional narrator! You do such a great job at narration!
There were a bunch of malls built in Texas and Louisiana small towns of 15,000 people or more. Most of them have been redeveloped but there are still a few that are open. The Texas malls usually had Kmart, Bealls, and JCPenney as the three anchors at opening. The Louisiana small town malls were a mixed bag. Even one very small mall in Shreveport is doing well that was built in a similar style to the tiny malls in Texas. The majority of these malls have been converted to big box retail centers with exterior storefronts only. It is sad to see the loss of the interior mall for yet another outdoor big box center.
I love this video, I just discovered your channel. I love what you're doing. I also love that it's a human voice with human effort that went into this video. I hope you keep this up and your channel grows!
The internet, basically. Why would I get dressed, drive, interact with people, when I've got all I need already in the palm of my hand.
What happened? Amazon and Jeff Bezos. The bigger Amazon has become the more stores close down. Started with department stores closing down now it’s the regular stores in malls. The only malls that are surviving are ones in larger cities where tourism is prevalent. Other malls are just becoming empty, empty spaces turned into gyms or playgrounds for kids.
When I was a teen, the nearest mall was too far away to bike to, and I was too independent to ask my parents for a ride, so the only time I went was usually with my family. A couple times I braved the trek on my bike, but it was along very busy long stretches of highway with no sidewalk to get there, so it was a real ordeal. I didn't get a car until I was 18, and that was just before malls started their decline. I went to malls now and then, just to get the experience I missed out on when I was younger, but I found myself less enthusiastic. I also, as an adult, was less comfortable going into retail establishments to "hang out", without intention to purchase something. I was more likely to spend money at the Tower Records at the strip mall adjacent to the mall, so I'd often go there and skip the mall. I was in community college and living with my parents until I was 23, and I sometimes went to a mall to use the food court as a study space (I rotated between a number of study spaces). One of the malls that I used as a food court study space, I used while it was about to die - it had a second-run theatre (that used to be a first-run theatre when I was younger) about 1 or 2 places open in the food court, and about 2 or 3 other random shops open.
I moved across the country in my mid thirties, and there are fewer malls here (I lived in Chicago suburban sprawl growing up, where you could drive and go into new random suburbs without ever getting on an interstate, and sometimes randomly see a mall you didn't know about). Right now there's three malls in my general area, one a few miles away, a more upper class one about 20 miles away, and a dying one about 15 miles away. The one near me is 2 stories tall, and looks the most like malls I grew up with. I go there maybe 2 or 3 times a year. The dying one is 1-story and older. The anchor stores are smaller, and the macy's is split into two spots in the mall, one with what normally the upper stories would have and one with the lower stories (mens and womens are divided between the two spots). About a month ago I went there for the first time in years, just because I heard it was dying and wanted to see it. The more upper class one, I went to a few times when I worked in an office near there, but haven't been back to since about 2018.
Since I'm in my early 40s, I'm not exactly going to go to the mall to randomly meet/make friends.
OH, and between when I was 20 and 21, I worked at a themed restaurant at a mall. It was a larger mall that I hadn't really been to until I was an adult because it was a bit farther away from home and my family never drove there.
Thank you for sharing your experiences. Accessibility in terms of urban sprawl is certainly a big factor.
One reason I don't see mentioned often is the watering down and homogenization of the mall shopping experience. Mall aesthetics used to be colorful and warm with plants, fountains, and unique stores. Increasingly, they are all the same modern/sterile white-minimalist environments featuring the same stores carrying the same goods. And most of the department chains got too big and can't or won't reinvest in their existing locations, so they look and feel half-derelict. Malls just don't provide the great shopping experience they used to.
Amazon is really failing! Get back to the mall. I loved going there!
It's not just online shopping, when business declined they eliminated shows and promotion also security.
They say Sears failed because they never tried to take the lead in online shopping. Not so. In the 1990s, Sears partnered with the Prodigy online service to sell goods. But dial-up speeds limited the offerings and user friendliness of the service. The experiment lost tons of money and the plug was soon pulled. Sears decided to let others lose money developing online platforms and then try to follow in their footsteps when they succeeded. This was Sears’ fatal mistake.
What happened is these shopping malls got rid of all the fun stuff and put big brand names that no one cares about. Like wtf is Burberry? Didn't even here of that nonsense till a year ago
Burberry is a very expensive brand. It’s like saying you don’t know what Chanel or Louis Vuitton is. And it’s been around for almost 200 years lol Not sure where you’ve been, that people who are no longer even with us knew what it was and you didn’t. 🤣😂 Pretty sure most people do care about that brand, or it wouldn’t have survived since the mid 1800’s. It’s not some cheap Zara or Shein brand. It’s quality clothing. It’s literally number 10 of the most popular luxury brands online. An easy Google search would tell you this.
*online shopping.* but malls also killed many personal-owner physical shops so 🤷🏻♀️
I would put Eddie Lampert as the number one culprit. The demise of Sears sure hurt many malls bigtime.
I think the reasons are valid probably from a female perspective. To give you a male perspective the cell phone did more than just create social media. It killed off a lot of electronic boutiques and businesses that lived primarily in the mall. Through my research, I found that the cell phone can replace a whole lot of different electronic gadgets that people just don't buy anymore. And not only that before cell phones came out they were already on the decline because the profit margin would continue to shrink. Taking alarm clock for example they used to be pretty pricey but over the years got cheaper and cheaper. And then you can start buying them at other stores you didn't have to go to the mall. Same thing with computers, Heck even TVs etc
The necessary malls of 70's 80's 90's are gone. They took the place of the individual shops in your downtown areas of the 40's 50's 60's. Now we all shop online, on my street alone 24\7 I see Amazon Prime trucks & UPS delivery trucks!! Accept it and turn the malls into affordable housing apts to solve the homeless problems in America. Everyone shops online now, even the folks who were slow to accept it. We don't use cameras anymore, we have food delivered to our doors, we ride in Ubers, healthcare uses our phones 4 facetime, appts. One mall closed in my town, norCal🌴_Sprouts is now there as a speciality store, T-Mobile, few others. People like to go out to shop sometimes; they also attend movies as social event even tho we have 75 inch screens at home. It's done with the Malls, I would be looking for new employment!.😮🏢🏫🏬🏭
To be fair, I never went to the malls, except maybe Christmas.
THEY NEED TO BE REIMAGINED. That's all... give me a mall and I'd happily show you.
Amazon happened to malls.
Great video. Keepem coming
You need to keep your pants up while watching these videos Uncle Nole. Just remember you're one maladaptive Behavior away to going back to you know where 👀. 🔥 🌲🦖🌭
@@jekyll2hyde822
This is a definite violation of community guidelines.
@@nole8923 your mom and sister is violations of the ugly guidelines with you
I think you need to use metro area now city population....for example Chicago has a metro population of 9 million....LA has a metro population of over 13 million and has many successful malls currently
@Mall Tours. I have a favor to ask. I used to love going to the Cutler Ridge mall in Cutler Ridge, Florida back in the 80s. It is now called Southland mall. It was beautiful before 1992 when hurricane Andrew destroyed it. They rebuilt it but in a cheap unattractive way and it has nothing like the beauty it once had before the hurricane. Can you do a video on the old Cutler Ridge mall and see if you can dig up some pictures on how it looked before 1992? It’s called Southland mall today but before the hurricane it was called Cutler Ridge mall in Cutler Ridge, Florida. Thanks.
I’ll add it to my Miami trip list!
Amazon
Covid happened, alo g with mom and pop shops too.
Bring them back! Amazon sucks! We need community!
From a male perspective I can say that malls aren't coming back for us for women yes a little bit with fashion and food But even that's very limited. Sears and Kmart could do well but they've been poorly run for years. And as if you have mentioned the demographic change when you get middle class people moving further and further away to new suburbs older malls tend to die because The people are different. If I go to my old mall everybody in there is Hispanic now and they have different shopping tastes as well as being much younger
amazon
I think they should convert the closed ones into homeless housing.
Turn them into affordable housing!! Giving things to people never works. Projects basis for crime, drugs, etc. Pay for your housing, you will take care of it. Have standards to rent the apts!! Even if they are subsidized.
Covid
ive seen so many people say "its not online shopping" i call complete bogus on that why go to a giant concrete indoor mall when you can get exactly what you want even in the color you want instead of exploring a mall for an hour it is infact one of the number one reason why malls are dying online shopping and also a terrible economy the big 2 reasons
Online is the biggest single reason but not the only reason. How do we know this? Strip malls for the most part are doing just fine in the Amazon Era. If online was the end all, be all of retail, we’d be mourning heavy strip mall causalities too.