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We have a mall that stays busy. It has stores that are one of the highest volume stores year over year for the particular chains. I prefer climate controlled malls and that is where I do almost all of my clothes shopping along with visiting the other various stores. Our weather here is all over the map. In the summer it is way to hot and humid and in the winter is is way to cold to be walking around the outdoor shopping centers....I hate them for the most part.
I don't really think that people necessarily love these newer outdoor mall type shopping centers. I think it is more along the lines that they are so much cheaper for developers to build so they keep popping up everywhere and stores don't have much choice but to locate in them. Our mall stays at almost 100% leased space so it definitely is not having trouble finding tenants.
We have a mall that stays busy. It has stores that are one of the highest volume stores year over year for the particular chains. I prefer climate controlled malls and that is where I do almost all of my clothes shopping along with visiting the other various stores. Our weather here is all over the map. In the summer it is way to hot and humid and in the winter is is way to cold to be walking around the outdoor shopping centers....I hate them for the most part.
I don't really think that people necessarily love these newer outdoor mall type shopping centers. I think it is more along the lines that they are so much cheaper for developers to build so they keep popping up everywhere and stores don't have much choice but to locate in them. Our mall stays at almost 100% leased space so it definitely is not having trouble finding tenants.
I agree about climate controlled malls. I think the final nail in the coffin for malls was when they started converting them to outdoor malls. That concept might work in California or Arizona, but anywhere else it is not going to provide a pleasant experience to keep people shopping there.
I grabbed the first place that came to mind; even in Sacramento, there was an earlier "village" mall built around 1948-49. (Still there.) The four big plaza malls built in 1952-3, about 1955 and 1960 were all rebuilt into enclosed malls in the 1970s. A fifth never was and declined to minimal occupancy, then giant box stores, then (I think) was torn down. Another giant mall was built about 1970 as an enclosed wonderland; the quainte village mall across the street built at the same time has never really been successful.
(My mother was property manager for the owner of three of them; I was a mall rat before there were malls to rat in. )
I don't see enclosing a mall as a big step in the development, but maybe.
The first mall I ever visited was this one - Mid Island Plaza. It opened in 1956. The video is from the 1963. The mall was built in 1956.
I went there around the time this video was made. I loved the carousel!
The Mid Island Shopping Plaza, is in Hicksville NY. It was built on the same potato fields that were used to build America's first suburb, Levittown NY. It was the third post war mall in the US. It was not enclosed until sometime in the 1980s.
Many locals that did not have extreme weather were not first built enclosed. Our weather, winter's and summers, are no where near as extreme as Minnesota in winter, and some southern climates in summer. I think there was some kind of covering - similar to those found at elementary school bus stops during that time.
Living in Las Vegas without indoor malls is hell. There is one, and it's older and in a neighborhood I've been told isn't the best. There are a few gallerias on the Strip, but who wants to be ripped off?
I hate outdoor malls. I shop more and more online because i don't feel like shopping in 100 plus degree weather.
If there was ever a place that needed a shopping mall, it's Minnesota where the weather is pretty gruesome year round. I have been to Southdale many times over the years.
It’s so sad to think that so many small to medium sized towns lured developers to build malls in an effort to increase tax revenue. That might have worked in the 70s, but now people do a lot of their shopping online, and those small malls can’t compete. The towns are, in the end, left with dead Main Streets and dead malls.
If I'm at a mall I'm probably waiting outside at a bus stop. For shopping I'd rather bike or drive directly to that store and park close to the door. Parking some distance out in a vast parking lot lost its appeal some decades ago.
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