Zombies Are The Only Things Missing: America's Abandoned Shopping Malls

Ragnar47183

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Mar 5, 2014
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That Hyena Bloke said:
Ragnar47183 said:
We need to see more of a reason to go to malls. Put an auto shop in one. If you are getting work done on your car chances are youd spend the day at the mall while your car gets its repairs. Put a bowling alley in there. Get fucking creative. Make people actually want to come.
That's not a thing in the US? In Australia the vast majority of shopping malls have at least one auto shop, sometimes more if they specialise in something.

We have our share of abandoned malls too, but they're often because someone thought it would be a good idea to build a second one in a small town or charge too much in rent.
Not to my knowledge. The only stores in the majority of the malls here are clothing shops and shoe shops. Also usually the only food in the food court is the same generic asian food, and pizza place, and a chick-fil-a.

In fact there is a mall near me that just went bankrupt and is on the verge of closing. There are maybe 5 shops in the whole place.
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

Henchgoat Emperor
May 15, 2010
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I could swear one of those pics looks like the mall used in Kevin Smith's Mallrats but then most malls have that samey look. I remember when malls were the big hangout for kids and young adults (hell I haunted a few myself for about a year). Now though I prefer not to bother unless I've no other choice in the matter... I've become somewhat (insert whatever that psychosis is for hating large crowds) and can't stand to be in a mall for more than 10 minutes. Maybe I just dislike being around people in general more as I get older.
 

Batou667

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Oct 5, 2011
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I don't know why, but pictures of abandoned buildings and urban decay excites me more than porn. Not in a sexual way, I might add, but just in terms of interest and aesthetic appeal.

One use for these malls would be those expensive "zombie experience" weekends people do for team-building and stag events - pay 50+ students to dress as zombies and let a group of survivors try to last a couple of days hiding, scavenging for food and using limited supplies of Airsoft ammo...
 

snowpuppy

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Feb 18, 2011
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Makes me think of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiPauZw06fo
Urban decay, ho!
 

marioandsonic

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Nov 28, 2009
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There's currently two malls in the area where I work.

One is bigger and fancier looking, and has a movie theater. Aside from that, though, it only has maybe 10 stores in it (including an anchor store), which is pretty depressing. Growing up in the 90's, that was considered the better, flashier mall. But at this rate, if that movie theater ever goes, so will the rest of the mall.

The other is a bit smaller, but it actually seems to be one of the few malls around that's doing well. It has a food court, a couple fountains, an arcade (was closed for a while, but a new one opened recently), and pretty much every store space is filled and active. As for why it's doing better, I'm guessing it's because it's in a very good location. It's near the intersection of two big US routes, and the area in general is a thriving commercial office and retail center.
 

BeeGeenie

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May 30, 2012
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There used to be three malls in my town. Now there's 2, although it's more like 2 halves of a mall. One has a couple decent anchors, and the other went the discount store route.

I think a lot of "Superstores" like Walmart are stealing the mall's thunder nowadays, although they're clearly not suited to be cool hangouts for teenagers.
 

mattaui

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Oct 16, 2008
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There are lots of reasons that malls are failing, but not all of them are doom and gloom. Most of it is a simple shift of shopping patterns, development priorities and working habits. The ones most related to economic miscalculation were the ones coming into being during the height of the financial crash, since even if they did get finished before the financing dried up, they found themselves with a shortage of tenants.

It looks like most of these featured malls are older, disused ones. I live in Dallas, and I have to think the DFW metroplex has always had a glut of malls. But the older, less used ones either got torn down entirely or reworked into new concepts.

Of course, one of the oldest is still one of the best, NorthPark Center right down the street from me. It's essentially a mall and an art museum in one, built around a park.

http://www.northparkcenter.com/
 

Living Contradiction

Clearly obfusticated
Nov 8, 2009
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I'm just puzzled that the cities where these malls are located aren't using them. Perfectly good large-scale buildings with plenty of separation and all the amenities built-in? Why aren't we seeing city halls and other bureaucracies gobble them up?

My hometown saw the main branch of the library move into a half of a dying mall dead square in downtown with nary a squeak. They love the massive amounts of storage space for books and archives. As well, because the city owns it now, no astronomical rent requirements or headaches when they want to knock down a wall or restructure the plumbing. You know who bought the other half? A telemarketing firm. We're talking about a building that takes up an entire city block with underground parking. If a business who's sole source of income is talking to people over the phone got half of this, these places cannot be that expensive. Hell, if they're half as burnt out as Seph Lawless indicates, the city could probably have them condemned and confiscate them. Zero cash outlay, massive infrastructure acquired.

Think of it: A way to make the red tape of city living easier for everyone to deal with. Have all the licensing bureaus in one place with stacks of free parking and clear signage. Move City Hall out of its cramped building (you know, the one they're always having to renovate to make more room for the files and wheelchair ramp) and into a spacious and airy building that can easily be reached by all and serve as both a place for the public to speak to its representatives (imagine a Town Hall Meeting in an anchor store. You could put in an amphitheatre and still have enough room to give the politicians space to practice their speeches) and enough room to hang on to the voluminous records that running a city creates.

Or to take another tack, push Steve and Mr. Fixit's idea one step further: a clearinghouse for all local social services, not just the homeless. From a battered women's shelter where the department store used to be to a soup kitchen in the food court to employment agencies, teen recreation centres, food banks, counseling drop-in centres, addiction services, helplines and medical walk-in clinics taking up the shops and booths. All of these services are evergreen; they never see a drop in usage and often get overrun when they do open up in a community where there is nobody to provide these services.

The biggest hindrance to practically any social service existing tends to be "How much space can we afford while still offering a quality service?" If cities were to buy back these dying white elephants in their cores and clean them up (hint: Get the high schools in on this. Community service + class credit = clean mall), you've got easily accessed, centrally located space that doesn't ask, "How much can we afford?" but instead asks, "How big do we want to be?"
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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We of Pittburgh are proud of our zombie-less malls. It is proof of our zombie-killing dedication and badass nature.
 

Saika Renegade

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Nov 18, 2009
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I've watched some malls, mostly the smaller or older ones, gradually, slowly die off as shops and anchors go out of business, until there's a sparse few outlets struggling to hold on. In the last few days it's downright surreal. Store faces are blank and empty, but services still run while there's a store or two still active in the complex.

There's something vaguely disquieting about escalators running at minimal power in a huge building with only three active stores and almost no shoppers while almost every other shop is stripped down to the bare walls. I can only compare it to the Langoliers and the feeling that somehow the past will come crumbling down any moment now.
 

Therumancer

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Nov 28, 2007
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Riff Moonraker said:
I dont find these pictures to be creepy, or eerie, at all. I find them sad. My "coming of age" decade was the 80s, where the whole mall thing was a huge freaking deal, and seeing these pictures as well as seeing the same thing happening at the mall in my hometown just saddens me to no end. Its just another reminder of how much financial trouble this country is really in, and why we absolutely have got to figure out a way to fix it. Hint... its not going to be our government that fixes this, but rather the people. What the government needs to do is stop hitting its people below the belt and allow them the breathing room to work our magic again. Man, these pictures really bummed me out. :(

Well, there is a lot more to it than what's being presented here. A lot of the urban blight has been caused by the "Big Box" stores like Wal*Mart and their few competitors (K-Mart, Target). Basically Malls succeeded by playing home to specialty stores where each store would focus in one product, or type of product, and be able to provide lower prices than department stores (which pre-dated them) by buying the products in larger bulk and then being able to lower the price per unit and undercut the competition. Wal*Mart was pretty much the department store striking back, learning lessons from how the originals died, and instead buying EVERYTHING in bulk and having enough stores to distribute it, and then undercutting what even specialty stores could do. Wal*Mart also engaged in predatory pricing where it was willing to take a loss in the short term to undercut competition in each area until everything was out of business. People commented on this as it was going on, and the malls were getting hammered, people were warned about the blight this would bring, but all they cared about was that it was $1 less on a product. Not to mention of course that as big as they are, your typical "superbox" is still a smaller area than a mall, and as a result people have to walk less to get what they need, not to mention only having to check out once (as opposed to visiting half a dozen different stores, waiting and checking out in each one, and of course they might be in radically different sections of a mall involving a lot of walking and moving up and down between levels).

The big question of course is whether specialty stores will in turn go through an era of striking back, at which point the smaller stores will of course want to organize into malls and such again.

E-business has also had a huge effect as well, the simple convenience of ordering through something like "Amazon" and just having it delivered. Given that the big online retailers also buy in huge bulk like "Wal*Mart" they can set similar prices. Not to mention that with the rising prices of gas and such, it actually becomes more efficient this way because you might spend more on gas to travel to and from a store (depending on where you are) than you'll spend in shipping and waiting a day or two.

In short, while the US economy is a mess, it should be noted that a lot of this is also due to the way business is done changing radically. Whether it's for the better or not is debatable. I myself as a child of the 80s and 90s mourn for the mall, as well as other institutions like the video store (I used to love browsing a video store, grabbing a couple of movies and some Chinese Takeout and heading home). Of course at the same time when you look back with nostalgia you tend to forget how much time you spent waiting in lines, trying to find a table at a food court, or all about how much of a pain in the arse it was to take your movies back to Blockbuster where they had something of a god complex.
 

Riff Moonraker

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Mar 18, 2010
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Therumancer said:
Riff Moonraker said:
I dont find these pictures to be creepy, or eerie, at all. I find them sad. My "coming of age" decade was the 80s, where the whole mall thing was a huge freaking deal, and seeing these pictures as well as seeing the same thing happening at the mall in my hometown just saddens me to no end. Its just another reminder of how much financial trouble this country is really in, and why we absolutely have got to figure out a way to fix it. Hint... its not going to be our government that fixes this, but rather the people. What the government needs to do is stop hitting its people below the belt and allow them the breathing room to work our magic again. Man, these pictures really bummed me out. :(

Well, there is a lot more to it than what's being presented here. A lot of the urban blight has been caused by the "Big Box" stores like Wal*Mart and their few competitors (K-Mart, Target). Basically Malls succeeded by playing home to specialty stores where each store would focus in one product, or type of product, and be able to provide lower prices than department stores (which pre-dated them) by buying the products in larger bulk and then being able to lower the price per unit and undercut the competition. Wal*Mart was pretty much the department store striking back, learning lessons from how the originals died, and instead buying EVERYTHING in bulk and having enough stores to distribute it, and then undercutting what even specialty stores could do. Wal*Mart also engaged in predatory pricing where it was willing to take a loss in the short term to undercut competition in each area until everything was out of business. People commented on this as it was going on, and the malls were getting hammered, people were warned about the blight this would bring, but all they cared about was that it was $1 less on a product. Not to mention of course that as big as they are, your typical "superbox" is still a smaller area than a mall, and as a result people have to walk less to get what they need, not to mention only having to check out once (as opposed to visiting half a dozen different stores, waiting and checking out in each one, and of course they might be in radically different sections of a mall involving a lot of walking and moving up and down between levels).

The big question of course is whether specialty stores will in turn go through an era of striking back, at which point the smaller stores will of course want to organize into malls and such again.

E-business has also had a huge effect as well, the simple convenience of ordering through something like "Amazon" and just having it delivered. Given that the big online retailers also buy in huge bulk like "Wal*Mart" they can set similar prices. Not to mention that with the rising prices of gas and such, it actually becomes more efficient this way because you might spend more on gas to travel to and from a store (depending on where you are) than you'll spend in shipping and waiting a day or two.

In short, while the US economy is a mess, it should be noted that a lot of this is also due to the way business is done changing radically. Whether it's for the better or not is debatable. I myself as a child of the 80s and 90s mourn for the mall, as well as other institutions like the video store (I used to love browsing a video store, grabbing a couple of movies and some Chinese Takeout and heading home). Of course at the same time when you look back with nostalgia you tend to forget how much time you spent waiting in lines, trying to find a table at a food court, or all about how much of a pain in the arse it was to take your movies back to Blockbuster where they had something of a god complex.
I didnt even think about the Wal-Mart thing, good point. I cant help but grin as well, when I read about heading home with Chinese food, and a new movie to watch (on the VCR)... ah, the good ole days. :)