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Garden State Plaza, and the town of Paramus in general. Paramus (specifically Routes 4 and 17) is home to 5 major malls and sees more retail sales than any other zip code in the country including Beverly Hills.
On any given day it's no surprise to see limos and high end chauffeur driven cars with the NYC/Upper East Side hoity toity contingent make the 10 mile drive to enjoy NJ's zero percent sales tax on clothing and shoes. Paramus maintains the title of retail sales capital even with the town being virtually shut down on Sundays due to Bergen County's blue laws.
Tysons Corner Center/Galleria in Northern Virginia deserves an honorable mention.
Malls today are alot like where Drive-Ins and Diners were circa 1990. It will never truly go away like those businesses, but most retail will be in the form of what's found in most strip malls: restaurants, service businesses (salons, spas, tax accountants, fitness centers, technology repairmen, law firms), and supermarkets. Outlet malls are still in pretty good shape for now. Big Box stores like hardware chains will survive, but the Kohl's and Best Buys aren't as sustainable. Unfortunately, this has caused a big uptick in freight usage.
I feel like of all those categories listed below, entertainment looks to be the most important going forward. It truly brings out the community and keeps the mall active, even if its as little as a movie theater. But the escape rooms, arcades, special events, children's play centers, art exhibitions, and something I'd like to see in the form of karaoke or dancefloors will be the main reason to visit nowadays. The second most important is the perimeter of the mall. The old parking lot moat doesn't really to be as effective like it used to be, and having bus stops, multi-family residential development, and other fine supplementary develop is the key to maintain a thriving mall. Still, its nice to check out products first hand rather then purchasing them online since you not only know exactly what you're receiving, but you can also receive it instantly rather than wait for delivery. We'll find out in a few years after all of this is completely settled to see if malls still have a place today.
Mall of America has the most votes? I've been there numerous times over the last couple of decades.....can't imagine why there are those who think it's the best. My favorite mall has always been the Oak Brook Center in Oakbrook, IL. Even that, I'm sure by now, has gone downhill. Too bad it wasn't on this list. Anyway, over the years, the Mall of America has changed, as malls do, and it's not been for the better. The demise of all malls, is happening everywhere, and it's too soon to know what will come of it, in the long run. I predict that a couple of decades from now, malls will be a "new" thing, and people will marvel at the ability to do all their shopping in one location, indoors, no less! I, for one, am not liking this trend.
Not just malls, though, downtowns everywhere, offer less than before. Is it fun to order clothes, and then, send them back, as they weren't a good fit? I always found it easier, to just hang them back up on the rack, or, as most did, leave them in the dressing room on a hook, and go grab another size.
Tysons Corner Center/Galleria in Northern Virginia deserves an honorable mention.
Malls today are alot like where Drive-Ins and Diners were circa 1990. It will never truly go away like those businesses, but most retail will be in the form of what's found in most strip malls: restaurants, service businesses (salons, spas, tax accountants, fitness centers, technology repairmen, law firms), and supermarkets. Outlet malls are still in pretty good shape for now. Big Box stores like hardware chains will survive, but the Kohl's and Best Buys aren't as sustainable. Unfortunately, this has caused a big uptick in freight usage.
I feel like of all those categories listed below, entertainment looks to be the most important going forward. It truly brings out the community and keeps the mall active, even if its as little as a movie theater. But the escape rooms, arcades, special events, children's play centers, art exhibitions, and something I'd like to see in the form of karaoke or dancefloors will be the main reason to visit nowadays. The second most important is the perimeter of the mall. The old parking lot moat doesn't really to be as effective like it used to be, and having bus stops, multi-family residential development, and other fine supplementary develop is the key to maintain a thriving mall. Still, its nice to check out products first hand rather then purchasing them online since you not only know exactly what you're receiving, but you can also receive it instantly rather than wait for delivery. We'll find out in a few years after all of this is completely settled to see if malls still have a place today.
Predictions that the personal computer would lead to the death of paper have proven greatly exaggerated. Yes, many of us have now forgotten what checks or bills in the mail look like, but enough of us still print out emails and things like that to keep paper alive.
So it will be with brick-and-mortar retail. Especially the high-end stuff. It seems to me that the stores that are really hurting are the general merchandisers and clothiers who serve the broad middle and upper-middle strata of the market, and even then not all of them; Brooks Brothers and Lord & Taylor may have filed bankruptcy, and the latter will disappear as of Feb. 27, but Nordstrom is holding on, at least for now, and Bloomingdale's appears to help keep Macy's Inc. afloat.
The interesting thing about the malls on that list is that only one of them — the Mall of America — has what I'd call a significant entertainment component. (I think the new American Dream Mall in the Jersey Meadowlands also has an indoor amusement park, but it appears developers aren't rushing to retrofit these on existing malls, and new malls simply aren't coming on line.)
FWIW, I think I heard a week or two ago that King of Prussia plans to build multifamily housing either on its perimeter or in place of one of the shuttered department stores. At least two mid-level malls in this area have demalled and added housing and offices to their mix; one, the former Echelon Mall in New Jersey (now Voorhees Town Center) moved the borough hall into space that had been part of Macy's, while the other, Granite Run Mall outside Media, added a major entertainment component (multiscreen movie theater and arcade) to its mix, much as you predict above.
Mall of America has the most votes? I've been there numerous times over the last couple of decades.....can't imagine why there are those who think it's the best. My favorite mall has always been the Oak Brook Center in Oakbrook, IL. Even that, I'm sure by now, has gone downhill. Too bad it wasn't on this list. Anyway, over the years, the Mall of America has changed, as malls do, and it's not been for the better. The demise of all malls, is happening everywhere, and it's too soon to know what will come of it, in the long run. I predict that a couple of decades from now, malls will be a "new" thing, and people will marvel at the ability to do all their shopping in one location, indoors, no less! I, for one, am not liking this trend.
Not just malls, though, downtowns everywhere, offer less than before. Is it fun to order clothes, and then, send them back, as they weren't a good fit? I always found it easier, to just hang them back up on the rack, or, as most did, leave them in the dressing room on a hook, and go grab another size.
Oak Brook, if anything, is more upscale now than maybe when you were there. There is new construction all over the mall at this moment. I read where it was one of the top five most valuable in the U.S., but I wish I could get my hands on that source. Extremely upscale and modern.
The Mall of America to me seemed cheesy with a rougher than average crowd. I have heard good things about the King of Prussia Mall outside of Philly.
Predictions that the personal computer would lead to the death of paper have proven greatly exaggerated. Yes, many of us have now forgotten what checks or bills in the mail look like, but enough of us still print out emails and things like that to keep paper alive.
So it will be with brick-and-mortar retail. Especially the high-end stuff. It seems to me that the stores that are really hurting are the general merchandisers and clothiers who serve the broad middle and upper-middle strata of the market, and even then not all of them; Brooks Brothers and Lord & Taylor may have filed bankruptcy, and the latter will disappear as of Feb. 27, but Nordstrom is holding on, at least for now, and Bloomingdale's appears to help keep Macy's Inc. afloat.
The interesting thing about the malls on that list is that only one of them — the Mall of America — has what I'd call a significant entertainment component. (I think the new American Dream Mall in the Jersey Meadowlands also has an indoor amusement park, but it appears developers aren't rushing to retrofit these on existing malls, and new malls simply aren't coming on line.)
FWIW, I think I heard a week or two ago that King of Prussia plans to build multifamily housing either on its perimeter or in place of one of the shuttered department stores. At least two mid-level malls in this area have demalled and added housing and offices to their mix; one, the former Echelon Mall in New Jersey (now Voorhees Town Center) moved the borough hall into space that had been part of Macy's, while the other, Granite Run Mall outside Media, added a major entertainment component (multiscreen movie theater and arcade) to its mix, much as you predict above.
Milwaukee's newest mall, Bayshore Town Center (an outdoor mall), has already added residential. An easy thing to do, when you're dealing with an outdoor mall, as opposed to a big, cavernous building.
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