What’s Up with Dead Malls?
If you are like me, abandoned buildings and other relics of the past inspire intense curiosity and nostalgia that we cannot easily explain. I did not fully discover this interest of mine until I one day decided to dig deeper into what was happening with Eastland Mall, a failed shopping mall in my hometown of Charlotte, NC. I was surprised to discover that there is an entire community of photographers, bloggers, and YouTube filmers who are fascinated with documenting the history and demise of shopping malls like Eastland Mall, seemingly ordinary features of American suburbia that are rapidly disappearing in the background as we move on with our lives and shop in new ways.
I am an undergraduate freshman student at a public university, and this new-found interest of mine has captivated me for the past few months. After doing a major research inquiry report for my introductory Rhetoric and Composition class, I have gained a new perspective on a fascinating issue. I think my initial interest in the topic stemmed from the fact that institutions like shopping malls were not a major part of my life growing up, and I think that is becoming increasingly true for young adults of my generation. After reading news stories, blog posts, and web sites devoted to preserving the history of these iconic American institutions, I was instantly more curious. How could the American shopping mall be an icon of the American retail culture if very few people I know actually spend a significant amount of time there? How are these enormous monstrosities, these “temples of consumerism”, still surviving in an age where Wal-Mart and Amazon seem to be the first place that America’s suburban shoppers think to go when they want to buy things such as everyday necessities or gifts for the holidays?
These questions pressed in my mind, and they became only more pressing by the haunting photos of abandonment that a quick Google search of “dead malls” revealed to me. Even for a young guy like me who wasn’t even alive when most of today’s shopping malls were first built, I could feel the wave of nostalgia wash over me as I read stories of when these grand new indoor “utopian experiments”, (as they were called by the John Gruen, the widely-attributed founder of the enclosed shopping mall as we know it today), were first built. The stories of nostalgic baby boomers paint the picture of how shopping malls defined new suburban communities from the 1950s to the 1980s and became a destination for families to do their weekend shopping. Those who were children during the heydays of these malls associate them with fond memories of childhood, and it is incredibly disheartening to see them fall by the wayside as many of the malls and their surrounding communities went into complete decline over the next few decades.
Through my research to better understand this transformation, I learned a lot about the history of the shopping mall. The concept was popularized during the suburban boom of the 1950s, a time in American history that was known for the postwar prosperity and emphasis on traditional family life. Suburbs sprung up around major cities across the United States at an unprecedented rate. Middle class families were looking for a private and safe haven to raise a family, and the private neighborhoods being built accomplished exactly that. The indoor shopping mall played on these same values that dominated the suburban populations — they were designed to be an indoor retail utopia, a protected shelter where shoppers could bring their families and wander the bright and open corridors, feeding on their desires to have only the best possible goods for their homes. Spending a day at the mall was just the thing to do for so many families at that time.
However, clearly this all has changed over the course of several decades. Today’s dominance of “big box” retail and online shopping has created an undeniable shift in consumer culture away from the shopping mall experience, but this is not the only reason that shopping malls are dying. The real issue at stake seems to be two major changes: a change in values, and a change in demographics. Urban sprawl is the driver of both of these changes, and it is an ongoing phenomenon. The suburbs that arose 50 years ago are no longer on the outskirts of many cities. They are becoming increasingly urban environments as their buildings and homes age, and the hotspots for raising a family continually relocate to new places further away from the city center. What is left behind in the older suburban neighborhoods are relics that are becoming very out of place — homes and shopping centers designed for privacy which now find themselves in an increasingly urban environment. When institutions like indoor shopping malls don’t adapt to this environment, they ultimately fail.
These abandoned relics of a former era pose a huge challenge for developers looking to take advantage of an opportunity to redevelop the enormous properties the old malls inhabit in order to revive the surrounding communities. This is where developers must take note of the change in values that is occurring. Now, more than ever, people value convenience and public space. The former is a result of increasing traffic problems resulting from urban sprawl and the culture of the automobile (try reading http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/biz-columns-blogs/development/article18771834.html to see how this issue is playing out in Charlotte, NC), and the latter is a result of a resurgence of the desire of a community atmosphere like that of a walkable downtown. In essence, the new inhabitants of the aging suburbs where dead malls are located don’t want more subdivisions and shopping malls — they want a mix of retail and public space that suits their wants and needs.
According to many urban planning experts, the concept of the mixed-use development is becoming the go-to solution for redevelopment of dead mall sites. While every case is unique (the demographics of the surrounding neighborhoods and the market needs of the community must be considered), using this concept as a baseline for redevelopment has brought a lot of success to reviving these urban eyesores. Mixed-use developments are designed with convenience in mind, embodying a vision of an outdoor space that places housing, retail, and office space all within walking distance. Consolidation of needs curbs the necessity of traveling by automobile, and the outdoor downtown-inspired walkways give residents and shoppers a sense of an authentic public space that the indoor shopping mall was never truly able to accomplish. These developments are already springing up and thriving in many new outer-ring suburbs, but the new challenge for developers to address is how they can re-purpose the mixed-use concept for urban infill projects such as the redevelopment of an old shopping mall site. Nonetheless, the potential is certainly there considering that many of the inhabitants of the aging suburban neighborhoods are young professionals and empty nesters who are not likely to find an appeal in traditional shopping malls or massive “big box” centers.
There is no universal formula for the redevelopment of a dead mall site. Developers must consider the market of values and needs for the surrounding community, or else the result will just be a continued failure of careless overdevelopment. However, variations of the mixed use concept have had a record of success in redeveloping dead mall sites. For example, the former Echelon Mall in New Jersey was transformed into the Vorhees Town Center, a mixed-use development that was designed to be a one-stop destination, emphasizing the formation of a community space that satisfied a variety of needs rather than overwhelming consumers with too much retail. Also, the Northgate Mall on the outskirts of Seattle redeveloped many of its parking lots into a destination with services designed for the neighborhood’s large senior citizen population, including a public park, a library, and a jitney service. And there is even the Highland Mall in Austin, Texas, an endangered mall that was transformed into a high-tech community college campus, essentially reviving the surrounding neighborhood that was in rapid decline. The Highland Mall redevelopment into Austin Community College is only one of many examples of where developers were able to use the existing land (and even buildings) of dead mall sites and turn them into something completely new that satisfies the changing needs of the surrounding communities.
It seems clear to me that the only way to combat the inevitable decline of many shopping malls is to consider redevelopment. For many reasons the indoor shopping mall is not as appealing to consumers as it was decades ago, and the existing malls are increasingly finding themselves out of touch with the demographics and values of the community. This is the reason why these fantastic retail destinations of the baby boom generation are becoming depressing eyesores today. All of the nostalgia-inspired exploration and documentation of dead malls on the Internet may be fascinating for people like me, but eventually it will be (if not already) in the best interest of many aging suburban neighborhoods to redevelop the malls that are still standing into mixed-use developments that are more in touch with today’s values and retail culture.
Scott Caughran is a freshman undergraduate student at the University of South Carolina. He wrote this blog post as a means to recast a research inquiry report for his Rhetoric and Composition class to a public audience. Comments, reactions, and feedback are welcome, but please be respectful. This is only intended to be a general reflection of what can be learned about the issue of dead malls.
