When malls die

Highland Mall, Austin's very first, has labored under the tag of being the "ghetto" mall for the last several years. Its owners filed for bankruptcy this month.

The high point of mall culture was the Orange Julius franchise. Mmmmm, orange juice, malt, and egg. Why that ever went out of fashion remains a mystery.

Carousel Center? "Ghetto Mall?" Are you serious? That place is glitzy and shiny and four floors and four wings or something nuts like that. It's the biggest thing around.

But you're right. They're trying to build something even bigger. It looks like a city under a bubble, seriously, they are putting it under glass so as to escape the winter-land that area becomes five months out of the year. All of the flyers and plans talk about how "green" it will all be. Except it'd be greener not to build it, cuz Carousel is more than big enough. Whatever.

Mmmmmm Orange Julius. I used to love that place when the Forum 303 mall opened in Arlington. I remember going when it first opened, but couldn't remember the exact year. Thanks to Deadmalls.com, I can look it up. 1970 was the year. I remember the mall being very futuristic, with strange upside-down triangular parking lot lights which looked more like artwork than industrial lighting. The shape of the lighting, I was told, was a hyperbolic paraboloid. One day, I was also told, we would have those lining our streets instead of regular street lights. Wonder what ever happened to that plan?

Before the mall, there were only outdoor shopping centers. My mother's favorite place was Seminary South in Fort Worth. In the late 1960s, there were rumors that we would have a totally enclosed, climate controlled indoor shopping center. I didn't believe it would ever happen, until Forum 303 opened. But after awhile, the mall got the "taint" of being the "ghetto mall" and was universally shunned in favor of the next mall--Ridgmar? Northeast Mall? Can't remember now, they all run together.

Now, there's Firewheel Town Center, a "new" outdoor shopping center that reminds me a lot of the old Seminary South I used to go to get dragged to on Saturday's when I was a kid.

Although I'm not all that interested in shopping as an entertainment thing, I've always been fascinated by the life cycle of malls. Kind of a strange fascination, I guess, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks about things like that!

You couldn't pay me to go to a mall on most ordinary days, much less "black Friday," but I'll honor this day by taking a look at Deadmalls--thanks for the link, Rod.

One theory I've heard, but have no idea if anything has ever been written about, is that the decline and fall of a mall is directly related to the presence of public transporation.

The issue is obviously one of social class and race, two things that are not going away so it is foolish to ignore them. Malls that survive tend to be far from public transportation so anyone getting to them has to drive there, which often precludes large gatherings of the underclass or young people in packs. If the poorer shoppers cannot get there, there will not be stores that cater to them.

"I was most fascinated by the Hickory Farms store -- by its colors, it's sausagey smell, and the implication that every day was Christmas (I think it must have been all the brightly colored cellophane on the cheeses)."

Ah...I have the very same fond childhood memory.

The toy store was always an inevitable stop...but for some reason, Hickory Farms was always what I looked forward to most.

I think some illumination comes from asking what kinds of retail are replacing the traditional(!) mall.

A lot of new retail development is in what are called "lifestyle centers." These are usually mixed-use (shopping, entertainment, along with some office and residential) that typically have high-end stores, none of which are really large - no obvious anchors. At the other end are the big boxes: Wal-Mart, of course, Target, and their electronics, sporting goods, and home improvement counterparts. And, certainly the internet.

Seen in this way, the shopping mall was another artifact of the broad middle-class based culture of the 1950-80s. Its decline has come at the hands of both the shrinking of the middle class and the specialization of tastes. Mid-level retailers like JC Pennys and Sears, which were among the most common anchor stores, were in some way reflective of America's common culture. While the demise of malls is cheered by lots of urban planner-types, it's worth considering whether it's not symptomatic of another problem.

Chris Rock may have said it best:

"There's no more America! Remember when you were a kid, there'd by an America? You'd go see your Grandma, and go to her little town? There's no more little towns; it's all malls... And every town's got two malls: they've got the white mall, and the mall white people used to go to."

Fascinating history of Bon Marche in Baton Rouge, which has now been reinvented as a research park. There were a couple of attempts to use Katrina housing funding to build mixed use revitalization stuff around there, but I'm not sure how successful any of them have been.

And now in Baton Rouge (with the opening of The Mall of Louisiana on Bluebonnett) I've heard The Mall at Cortana referred to as "The Black Mall" just like the Albertsons on Government street is often referred to as "The Black Albertsons."

I'm not sure that the demographic shifts in these cases are harbingers of doom though. The Government street Albertsons has stayed open while a lot of other big box stores have shut down in the last five years.

I don't know about stores being white or black. Maybe it's just more a class thing?

We do have a black mayor in Baton Rouge now, who was just re-elected with something like 70% of the vote.

"...the kind of liberal, educated white people who deplore this kind of thing aren't the kind of white people who would be caught dead actually shopping in the black mall."

Liberal, educated people don't shop at malls. Any malls. I (white, liberal, educated but poor, in case you're wondering) visit the local mall (most of whose customers are working-class blacks) maybe once every two or three years, when there is something I need and Sears is the only place that has it. I park outside Sears, enter the store, and after the first couple visits now don't even bother to step outside the Sears store into the "mall" part of the mall.

People who shop at malls seem to be either working class/lower middle class teenagers who shop the downscale malls; or very rich suburban ladies who shop at the upscale malls.

Either way, the whole experience is depressing, especially for educated people with any kind of taste. Especially the artificial lighting, ewwww.

I hope they will die off, and the concrete be ground up for recycling.

1) The further north a mall is located is probably inversely proportional to the chances of mall-death. In winter they are exceptionally inviting. There's a reason that malls were invented in the Twin Cities.

2) While working in the Fargo mall, the threat was not blacks-- there aren't many to speak of and what ones exist pretty much aren't all that outwardly different from anyone else, other than skin color. The threat to the mall came from white immigrants-- Croatians and others-- and white teenagers [particularly 13-15 year old girls and the drooling boys trying to impress them] who acted very obnoxiously and drove patrons away. The vast majority of the people with pictures in the security Banned Binder were in those two groups.

One theory I've heard, but have no idea if anything has ever been written about, is that the decline and fall of a mall is directly related to the presence of public transportation.

CC - I think you've hit the nail on the head, linking public transportation and mall problems.

I live in a middle-class neighborhood very near two malls which are directly across the street from each other. Every weekend the bus lines empty out throngs of black teenagers who move about in packs and drive the security people crazy. (One of the malls has a "no-unescorted-teenager" policy after a certain time in the evening. They spend large amounts of their time and money desperately trying to enforce this.)

The local gang-unit has a large percentage of its staff permanently stationed here at the malls. Shootings are not exactly common, but they are not at surprising either. (This very afternoon my teenager witnessed a drug bust, for example.)

They're doomed.

Cloverleaf Mall in Chesterfield County Virginia is located right outside of Richmond City limits. Built in the early 70's, it remained solidly middle-class and prosperous- until the mid-90s, when the City extended the municipal bus line out to the mall. Businesses declined but slowly until couple of murders happened, thereafter only 99 cent stores and subwoofer shops were left. Cloverleaf's customers fled to the Chesterfield Towne Center a few miles west. The last I heard the business owners and the county were fighting plans to extend the city bus line out to that mall.