(Excerpt) Once-thriving malls across the nation are closing their doors, being demolished, or shutting down entire wings without any concrete plans for redevelopment. These malls, now considered dinosaurs in the retail industry, are battling for business against glitzier, more modern shopping centers, big box retailers, redeveloped main street shopping districts, discounters and entertainment centers.Traditional malls are undergoing changes of use to storage, university classrooms and new forms of retail. Recently, malls in Landover, MD, Ogden, UT, Muskegon, MI and Johnstown, PA have closed, a mall in Durham, NC is losing its anchor store, while a pair of regional malls in Toledo, OH and one in Oak Ridge, TN are treading water just to stay afloat. A declining mall in Spotsylvania, VA is hoping that the addition of a Costco will help revive the site. The Landover Mall in Landover, MD, once one of the region’s first and largest enclosed shopping malls, closed late May.
Read the full article here.
Just sad.
ReplyDeleteAnd I still don't understand why open air malls are supposed to be better, particularly in the extreme weather conditions in many parts of the US.
Interesting article, even if it was from 5 years ago. And though I didn't live anywhere near DC, I've read the story of Landover Mall dying from other dead mall websites, and it's amazing to think its death was almost 5 years ago, as of now!!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of that, does the Sears that was once attached to Landover still operate on the site of this former mall? It always seems that due to the fact that Sears owns such a high percentage of the land that their stores sit on, that they're always(seemingly) the last anchor to pull out of dying malls.....
-Allan
Cora, I just responded earlier on a retail email group I belong to about the death of regional malls and how this lifestyle center crap/faux streetscapes with cheap Home Depot bricks and no architecual imagination whatsoever are nothing but phases and cycles of what is trendy.
ReplyDeleteEventually people will get tired of either freezing their asses off or sweating their asses off and they will beg for indoor climate control.