Are malls ever built in rural areas?

[Mgyeldell]

There is the Mall at Barnes Crossing in Tupelo MS that is in a pretty rural area. but it does serve a population of over 140k.

[MOKAN]

Originally Posted by the city

I know I have heard of Wal-Mart Supercenters being built on outskirts of town. I have never heard of malls built in rural areas. I think of the traditional sense that malls are in suburban neighborhoods or alone freeways in commercial districts.

I think of the mall as one symbol of suburbia. But I know malls are in urban areas as well. Are they in rural areas too?

I don't know what you consider "rural areas", but in 'rural' Kansas (outside and far from major metro areas), small towns with just 20,000 people have malls.

Small towns with as few as several thousand have Walmart Supercenters.

A lot of the smaller towns that don't have malls have (or had) a JCPenney, Sears, Radio Shack, local department stores, sporting goods stores, etc. on their Main streets or Squares.

Small towns were very neat places in the past, some still are. Getting a mall, however, almost always destroyed a town's downtown because all the stores would leave for the new mall.

[Icy Tea]

Morgantown Outlet Mall was built in the late 1980s, I think. It was in a very rural area, between amish farmland and woodland. Its gotten somewhat more built up since then with some new housing and a new shopping center in Exton nearby.
It went under as the outlet business spread to other areas and the local monopoly on it waned. Then it went to being a furniture outlet and then finally it closed again. Dead Malls is a fascinating website.
Schuylkill County Mall is on a mountain top and is just about dead. There is nothing sadder or creepier than walking around a dead or dying mall with closed up store fronts and empty anchor stores. Small malls are kind of sad too.
I've been to many malls having gotten the Mall rat gene from my dads side of the family. May uncle had color slides of the Berkshire Mall from when it first opened back in the early 1970s. And I can remember the old King Of Prussia Mall way back before they enclosed it and made it 4 times as big. And then there was Plymouth Meeting mall, cool for having two levels.
Those places had awesome Christmas decorations and villages back then.

[goofy328]

Originally Posted by MOKAN

I don't know what you consider "rural areas", but in 'rural' Kansas (outside and far from major metro areas), small towns with just 20,000 people have malls.

Small towns with as few as several thousand have Walmart Supercenters.

A lot of the smaller towns that don't have malls have (or had) a JCPenney, Sears, Radio Shack, local department stores, sporting goods stores, etc. on their Main streets or Squares.

Small towns were very neat places in the past, some still are. Getting a mall, however, almost always destroyed a town's downtown because all the stores would leave for the new mall.

I don't consider under 20,000 rural. I used to. But those type of areas are often suburban, exurban, or anchored by some area that is technically, incorporated. A truly rural area is like, one stop light, or areas so small you have to bus to a school an hour away. Definitions may vary, but when you speak of malls, are we talking about strip malls or indoor malls?

I've noticed that towns that small do often have a Penneys, or Sears, or some other freestanding department store. That was the norm before the era of shopping malls. Those stores were around before shopping malls, and will continue to be around long after those shopping malls have passed away.