Fading Malls In America

Earlier this year, for various reasons (weather, allergies), I started walking in the mornings at a local mall rather than in the park around the corner and in the neighborhood. In some ways, it was sadly a sterile switch. In others, doing laps around an old hangout brought some interesting thoughts.

One of those thoughts was that it was almost as if the builders of the place tried to recreate a town square in an area that never had one. Many of the older suburbs of this particular metro do have old town squares. Many of the newer ones do not and never did have them. A town square is and was a place to gather, eat, do commerce, go to a movie or play...all the things (other than religion) that are part of classic Americana - and American malls. 

In most suburban malls, there are shops, movie theaters, food courts, and places to congregate. The aroma of freshly baked pretzels fills the air as every mall seems to have at least one Auntie Ann's. For the most part, the shops with doors facing the walking parts of the mall have them opening outward in a welcoming stance. Unlike most town squares, there are no time pieces in the general areas. (The only clock on a wall in the mall where I walk is in a jewelry and watch repair shop, one of the only original tenets left.) Many malls have fountains, something a retreat leader once called "The Baptismal Font of the Mall," which in a materialist society, yes, could be a thing. After all, all of us clearance rack queens had to get our feet wet somehow.

Back in the day, there were at least two book stores in every mall (the mall where I walk currently has none). Spencer's Gifts which was fun to go through even if nothing was purchased. In many places, there were also arcades. For the members of my generation, when being dropped off at the mall, that was the place the guys headed. 

To say that times have changed is an understatement.

Saturday, August 31, 2024 was the last day one of the malls in the metro region where I live was be open to the public.

Inside the Chesterfield Mall: Days before it closes for good

To be honest, this is/was not a mall I frequented all that often back in the day. To get there from where I live, I would have to pass three others, two of which had most of the same stores. It was very much the epitome of a suburban mall...and it was one of the older ones. There are those who will blame online commerce for this closure, and those who do blame the municipality where this mall is for allowing outlet stores within the vicinity, but the truth is, many suburban malls are dying due to over saturation. 

Simply, too many popped up in the Golden Age of the Mall. And, as there are now so many other ways to shop, it was only a matter of time before the least profitable among them would be sold for redevelopment. This is the fourth mall in my metro region to close in recent years. All of them were the older ones, too. And another is on its way out.

It's sad seeing the change in the guard, but for a mall to stay open, the stores in them need to be profitable, and these places just weren't. In addition to that, many of the shops within the malls themselves are no longer the ones that were there when the places opened. A fair number of those retailers went out of business.

The question remains, then, if the general decline of the mall is going to go to free fall, or if the closures are really more of a pruning of the weakest.

Only time will tell.