Smart Growth Around America

2008_09_08_bos-ord-sna_069 Originally uploaded by dsearls

Randhurst Mall in Anaheim, California Mt. Prospect, Illinois with a nearly empty parking lot. Compare the size of the building to the size of the total lot.

In many places around the United States, the construction of the enclosed shopping mall sounded the death knell for historic downtowns and small town centers, as people — and retailers — flocked in large numbers away from the center of town and into the new one-stop shopping centers. Unlike the mix of department stores and local shops that make up a downtown shopping district, malls tended to be a homogeneous experience, since most malls featured the same stores all across the country.

Not only that, but the acres of asphalt required to have enough parking for the busiest days of the year left a physical mark on a community’s landscape. The footprint of land required for the building itself was generally dwarfed by the amount of land required for parking.

But people kept going, and new malls kept going up. But the traditional shopping mall as we know it is all but extinct. Developers have trended towards the open-air ‘lifestyle center’ — an imitation of the downtown center that malls were once replacing — but even those are struggling in today’s economy.

Retail has been hit hard by the economic recession — and so have the malls whose tenants are forced to close their doors. Last month, one of the country’s biggest mall operators filed for bankruptcy after it amassed over $25 billion in debt. Malls are highly specific buildings, and if they close, what happens to the physical structure?

New York Times featured a panel of thinkers on the subject of mall vacancy last month to answer this very question. From Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson at the Georgia Institute of Technology and City College of New York respectively, comes this dire prediction about the fate of malls, and hope for what these buildings can become:

“The dominance of the fashion, food-court and family-focused mall is ending. No new enclosed malls have opened in the U.S. since 2006.

In the meantime, vacant malls, shopping centers and big box stores have already been redeveloped into more sustainable, less auto-dependent places more in sync with today’s demographics. Depending on the specifics of each site, we can expect to see future failed malls re-inhabited, re-greened, or retrofitted.”

Not all panelists are so pessimistic about the fate of suburban mall. The one thing they all agree on is that the physical space of dead malls is a tremendous opportunity to build something new. And something better.

Chris Nelson of the University of Utah has also long pointed to abandoned and out-of-date shopping malls as a prime opportunity to make room for more people and reuse a building or a parcel of land that has become a scar on a community’s landscape.

“Strip malls offer a particularly keen opportunity. Look past the big box stores, Nelson said, and you have large, flat, well-drained, developable space linked to existing infrastructure. Broad rights-of-way allow easy access. There is space enough to bring in tracks for light-rail trains or streetcars. They are perfect for much denser, mixed-use developments in which people can live, work, shop and eat, he said.”

Tags: Retail, suburbs, Vacant Property.
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