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What? How is this a policy issue? Your comment makes zero sense.
Online retail has mushroomed, pushing out the weaker competitors. What's more, retailers such as Wal Mart and Costco aren't hurting either. Small wonder bottom-feeder malls are dying on the vine. There are far better options out there for consumers now--and more cost-effective ones--than ever before.
The one negative blowback of all this? Municipalities that configured their revenue to rely on retail sales taxes are beginning to hurt. I would imagine that property taxes will go up as a way to compensate.
I think in addition to what's mentioned above, the lack of variety is also killing malls. We saw this transition while living in Colorado Springs in the 90s. Chapel Hills Mall shifted from having a variety of unique stores filling the space between anchors to clone storefronts selling pretty much the same merchandise as one another with just different names above the doors. Mostly targeted at teens and overpriced. Basically nothing for sale that would make me want to go there.
Same thing has happened to our local small town mall -- pretty much empty. Yet there have been a string of separate individual stores open up lately. Many have moved out of the mall and into their own buildings for some reason.
It's not just rural mall which are struggling. One of my local malls is about two lose two of its anchor stores: Sears and Younkers. I don't think they have any idea how they're going to fill those spaces.
Internet shopping is obviously the elephant in the room, but there are other things at play. I live in an area called the Tri-Cities, with each city at one point having its own indoor mall. At the broadest definition, the CSA has maybe 500,000 people in it, spread out over many counties.
One city's mall has already folded with its stores shifting to a new "lifestyle center" deveolpment. Lifestyle centers are popping up everywhere, even in cold weather states, and are replacing traditional indoor malls. The mall is being repurposed to manufacture cannabidiol.
One city's mall is basically on life support. It was recently bought by a group that specializes in rehabilitating small town malls, and they've renovated the facility. Still, Sears closed, the JC Penney is dank and dark, and they can't seem to achieve any momentum in getting stores into the interior of the mall. It's basically a moonshot to keep it going.
The third city's mall is the area's destination mall and continues to do well.
Most small metros can only support one superregional mall. Higher end malls in larger metros are doing well. When I lived in Indianapolis, some of the smaller, more working class malls were really struggling.
I'm guessing that, had the OP been alive a century ago, he would have been carping about how the butcher, the baker, the dry goods store, and the greengrocer were all folding due to the encroachment of Piggly Wiggly and A&P.
Out with the Old in with the New. Seeing this with Sears,JCP and Macy's you fail to adapt or do it to late, it's lights out. Someone else will pop up eventually in their space. Online plays a role as well. But over here, Deptford and Cherry Hill Malls do great. Deptford is one of Sears better locations as well, but their are 2 malls not far away that are ghosts towns. To many in an area.
Yeah, that big "USA" meeting where "they" decided to close stores no one wanted to shop at anymore was specifically designed to harm its citizens. Makes perfect sense.
Retail was way overbuilt in the 90s and 00s. Experts were sounding the alarms more than a decade ago, but few listened. As a result, there is 46 sf of retail space per capita in the United States, 2x that of the UK, 3x more than Canada, and 7x that of Australia.
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