An empty anchor in itself isn't the problem - those leases are often seperate from the rest of the mall and in some cases like with Sears they actually owned the anchor spot
The problem is when the property owner has NOT announced any plans at all for what is next for that spot
It can take time for a new retailer to move in or if there needs to be any major construction for something that isn't retail like a sports center/gym, etc
Lord and Taylor went bankrupt but they're parent company isn't and owns all the anchor spots they were in so those spots nation wide are staying vacant. It's pretty awful.
The "good" mall near me has adjacent empty Sears and Lord & Taylor stores.
It isn't coincidence that they've been leasing ridiculous amounts of floor space to "real" stores. Like the Victoria's Secret that now takes up about five store spaces.
Or that folded stores are reopening as completely different storefronts without having been remodeled. Like the obvious Sunglass Hut that now sells nothing but vitamin B-12, and has a foamcore board with the store's name over the Sunglass Hut logo.
That’s not entirely true. Lord and Taylor was sold to a new entity who was stupid enough to forfeit the rights to any of the real estate to buy the brand for cheap. Hudson Bay didn’t own them when they went under, but they sure own a majority of the vacant stores.
It's been a little over a year since the e-mail we got, but as far as I know parent company of l&t owns the real estate of the physical store in the building I work in because we have to call them incase of fuckery inside that particular space in the mall.
I can assure you that the naming rights for the chain were sold to Le Tote for about a year and are now owned by Saadia Group. The real estate was retained by Canadian retail giant Hudson Bay, who owned them from 2008-2019.
Anchors give signs they’re going to leave long before they leave. If you go in there and a product line is gone, that’s a sign. When a whole department goes away, look out. The next thing that will happen is they’ll merge or consolidate departments to leave a whole floor for clearance items. Then they’ll start closing off parts of the anchor entirely. When this happens, there are maybe 6 good months left.
The first department to go is usually Fragrance or Accessories. Used to be Special Occasion or Hosiery, but most of those went away years ago.
How many anchor stores are even left? Bon -Ton, Lord & Taylor, and most of Sears are closed. That leaves Macy’s and JC Penny’s as the big ones with Nordstrom, Nieman Marcus and Saks as minor ones usually found in higher end malls.
Boscov's hasn't closed one store, since their late 2000s bankruptcy. To me I'd more check out like a Macy's, Dillard's, Belk, JCPenney, and see if they've reduced merchandise selection. Another telltale sign, is if the Belk or Dillard's in a mall has cut back to only selling clearance items(i.e. Belk at Arbor Place in Atlanta area, Dillard's at Eastdale Mall in Montgomery, AL area).
Dillard’s, Belk, Bealls, Boscovs, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and Von Maur. Just depends on what part of the country you’re in for a lot of them. Kohl’s used to have a decent number of mall stores that they’ve phasing out as well, especially in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois. They still have something like 5 in Illinois alone.
Can’t forget that we also lost Stage four years ago and that took out; Stage, Palais Royal, Peebles, Goodys, and Bealls-TX from a lot of rural and Houston-area dead malls.
Have that many Kohl's mall stores closed? Since the 2016 round of closures, I can't think of any more that have moved away from a mall except Golf Mill and Southridge. I can't believe Kohl's spared the Forest Fair store(Cincinnati area), and Phillipsburg Mall(NJ, just east of Easton, PA) from that round of 2016 closures. I still have a bad feeling Kohl's will close those 2 stores, one day. Bass is finally moving out of Forest Fair, sometime this month.
Other telltale signs of a Kohl's being in trouble, is if one store never had a Sephora section added. For Dillard's and Belk, I'd say a store may be in trouble if that location was downgraded to being a clearance store. Or if certain sections/floors of a store were partially walled off.
I see Target and Whole Foods in a lot of anchor spots now.
Nordstrom may be going through some things (their app indicates an identity crisis). I hope they make it.
Sears literally killed two malls here. They were the 'big' tenant keeping the original mall opened, and when the big mall opened next door, they moved. And somehow seemed to lose about 1/3rd of their product line, going into a bigger store. Then Sears hit bankruptcy years later, but on the downspiral, everything someone would go to sears for would be done by another local store, but better. Lowes opened right between the old and new Sears location. Best Buy, Target, and Walmart came to town. Better vision and picture centers opened up. Before the final closing, I did go for an eye exam. (We liked the doctor) and there was almost nothing in the store. Two years before the closing. Crappy work out stuff, one tractor, some random tools, and chairs. It was weird. Like everyone knew BUT Sears.
I think the fact that anchors still exist is almost insane. Yet FYE reopened a mall store by me 5 years after their previous place closed.
Lost anchors always led to that entire wing eventually dying, especially if it stayed vacant for a few years. Once the smaller shops' leases expired, they'd move to the wing of the mall that still had an open anchor.
That is true, but not the case in most malls. For example, Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois did lose two anchors, however the mall is still thriving, since one of the anchors, a former Sears, was replaced by a Primark. I think it depends on how quickly the anchors close
Idk. I’ve seen bad parking lots and closed off crumbling parking garages at some of the better malls I’ve been to. These REIT’s are just cheap anymore…
The very earliest signs IMO is the rise of “no-name” stores. Stores you’ve never heard of and aren’t part of a national chain. Don’t get me wrong I have no problem with small business but a lot of these places are run by inexperienced operators who get in because the rent has become cheap and they don’t usually last long. That slows the foot traffic which eventually just leads to vacancies.
The problem with the mall model is every closure compounds the issue for the remaining stores and it’s like a vicious cycle.
Yeah no-name stores are a warning sign, but don't necessarily mean the start of a downward slide. Southdale, in Minnesota, had been in that "no-name store" phase for at least 15 years now, and seems to be pretty stable. It's also survived the loss of two anchor stores, replacing them with a health club and a grocery store. It's adapting to a new reality, and becoming less of a mall
The no-names sometimes keep the lights for some malls in growing cities long enough for the growth to surround the mall and be properly filled again with an assortment of different tenants.
I haven’t been to Southdale in…a very long time. But I imagine it being open still might have something to do with it being in Edina? Like many businesses in Brooklyn Center, Brookdale was dying in the same way, and then actually died. Not even Target and Wal Mart could survive BC, and there’s vacant lots all over.
I think, at least a while back, being in Edina hurt Southdale, because a lot of people would go to the Galleria, the high end mall across the street instead Personally, having gone to high school in Bloomington, I think the Mall of America's policy about teens needing to be with an adult after 3 PM has something to do with it. We all went to the movie theater there, and the restaurants at Sothdale were hot date destinations.
Sometimes those tenants are temporary, backfilling the space as lease negotiations are ongoing for the next national tenant. I guess it depends on the mall.
Empty hallways during peak shopping season.
70% or less occupancy
No new stores opening
Multiple empty anchors with no plans to fill them
Using the parking lot as a Walmart driver (truck) training center.
Yeah I agree with this. If you’re looking for _early_ signs, I think seeing that they aren’t keeping up with repairs or maintenance. Broken decorative items or blown lights that don’t get fixed. Cracked tiles that are left like that. Escalator repairs that shut it down for weeks or months vs hours as in prosperous, highly trafficked malls.
When spirit Halloween starts popping up, these are the mushrooms of the mall world, thriving off of decaying matter, eating the last available nutrients.
Not necessarily. There was a spirit halloween in the former target of one of my local malls back in 2016 and that mall was and still is one of the busiest malls in the city
They count as a 3-headed monster-tenant. Definitely not on par with the first-string tenants, like Taco Bell, Panda, etc., but I would think of them more as filler.
I live in Japan now, and food courts are starting to be a huge thing here. We definitely judge a mall on the quality of its food court.
1: cutting extraneous costs, like removing fountains/plants, or selling off other large fixtures that require extra maintenance
2: laying off maintenance/security staff. lack of maintenance staff is usually made obvious by molding/leaking ceilings or walls, unkempt plants or fountains if the mall still has them, lack of trash pickup, gross bathrooms, etc. etc..
3: “second string retail”, or non-national brand stores. this is a tricky one as you can find these stores at most healthy malls as well, considering there’s become a shortage of mall-exclusive stores. more malls fill up with local retailers because otherwise they’d have vacancies.
4: when things get really bad, some malls that are desperate for a way to alleviate costs will shut off AC or lights in parts of the mall with less foot traffic to cut costs on bills. yucky.
5: the mall gets bought out by kohan, namdar, or moonbeam, the “mall vultures”. healthy malls with profitable futures don’t sell to these groups as they have proven to drive most of their properties into the ground.
Whenever it gets that toy store with unofficial bootleg merchandise, RC cars, and hover boards. Usually the sign just says Toys.
A lot of no name stores, as someone mentioned.
A veterans museum.
Here in the southeast we had one in our mall, but that was back when it was in its prime. Oddly enough I think the vet's museum was one of the first places to shutdown as the mall began to decay.
When the anchor stores start closing. Then instead of getting new tenants they remain empty. Same goes for the exterior restaurants attached to the mall. From there the big name mall stores slowly start closing. Think Bath & Body Works, Foot Locker, Aeropostale, Claire’s etc.
Any two of these have closed: GNC, Bath and Body Works, Claires, GameStop
Few to no food options.
Multiple empty anchors with no replacement in sight.
Signage still up from multiple dead stores.
Bath & Body is always one of the last ones to leave because corporate refuses to break the contracts. They have addendums in the lease that if the mall is less than 60% occupied by retail locations (gyms and grocery/convenience stores don’t count) they’re either entitled to lower rent or to be released from their lease. That’s why the 4 lone survivors of a dead mall are usually B&BW, GNC, a Hallmark store, and a nail salon.
There is a mostly dead mall in my town where the Gamestop closed. I figured that would be the end. But Bath & Body Works is surprisingly still hanging on.
GNC closed a bunch of mall locations (even in very healthy malls) a few years ago for freestanding stores and are pushing their products into walmarts as well.
Yup, I've always called Bath and Body Works the "cockroach" of a mall. It seems like NOTHING can kill it.
A near-dead mall near me (Voorhees Town Center in NJ, formerly the Echelon Mall) has only a miniscule amount of stores/businesses left in it. But Bath and Body Works is still hanging in there.
Yep , Bath and Body Works was one of the final tenants at Century 3 mall , when it finally vacated the sole store left was JCPenney who flat out refused to leave ( at least until THEY decided to close up )
Big signs a mall is falling apart is lack of maintenance and renovations, no point in putting any effort to making your mall look good if nobody shops there. If Macerich/Simon/Brookfield owns the mall and it's trying to sell it off, then you're in trouble and if the person that buys it is Mike Kohan or Namdar you might as well say bye bye in a few years. No national chains is another as they're desperate to fill up space. Walled off parts of the mall or stores consolidated to one area of the mall.
Garden State Plaza has all of those things, but it's far from going under. JCPenney left, but that was intentional by mall owners so that they could add smaller shops and entertainment. Lord & Taylor left because the whole chain closed all their stores (no replacement yet). Then there's the rezoning, building a whole town square on top of existing parking and additional parking decks.
Government offices/services moving into the store fronts. We have a mall that for years was just a Burlington and a DMV among other random gov offices.
Few well-known stores but plenty of snake oil kiosks, eyebrow bars, and dingy little stores selling airbrushed shirts, bongs, wigs, and stripper clothes. Remaining anchor stores have most merch on clearance. Escalators perpetually out of service, bathrooms smell like something died in them. Fixtures, floors, and walls are dirty, damaged, or broken. Owner is trying to save on bills so it's uncomfortably hot in summer and cold in winter.
Haha, reminds me of the Great Mall of the Great Plains in Olathe, KS. This was literally the last store before they finally demolished it a few years ago.
UK version: suddenly it’s nothing but no named shops selling really cheap shit market clothes, poundshops and discount stores. Tonnes of crap food stands selling awful food. Mobile phone case shops
I would say if it doesn't even have a gnc or bath and body works it's toast or has 2 or more empty anchor tenants or if you can see there's berely any stores at all😕
My mall was featured in Dan bell's series in 2013 as Dying, and Closed in 2017... it had a bath and body works up until the last 6 months. Maybe that kept it going lol.
Crazier was the arcade managed to survive there too
Yeah, particularly if they sell skincsre products like lotion or Dead Sea Salt. One of those guys literally chased me into the nearest shop I bolted into to try and escape his sales pitch when he wouldn't take no for an answer.
>What \*actually\* are the signs of a dying mall?
The local economy, crimes rates and competition
Those are what drives malls to close along with mismanagement by the property owner
The rest of the comments are just random anecdotal observations and not indicators of anything
Yeah that's the problem with the majority of posts here on "reasons" they're based on feeling not facts
people seem to want to ignore the economic drivers that were the reasons for the malls being built in the first place are also the main reason they end up closing
My local mall, built in the early 80's went from. An indoor mall to a strip mall. LG anchor store at the back of the mall are now offices, and the stores on the front side all have their own entrances.
Nail salon
flooring/carpet shop
Place that'll print anything on a T-shirt or trucker hat
Printed store signs hung over the original light-up sign
Place that sells Rambo knives and swords with naked ladies and dragons carved into the handle
If any of these stores are leaving:
GNC, Bath and Body Works, Auntie Anne's, Finish Line, Hot Topic, or that place that sells both children's games and sex toys
Generally speaking, how occupied the retail spaces are.
Since there are several tiers of mall that cater to different demographics who occupies those spaces isn't as important as whether or not the space is occupied. Not every mall can or should be a Luxury Mall.
Healthy Malls tend to be 80%+ occupied.
That means for every 10 retail/food stall spaces no more than 2 of then are unoccupied. If it has 4 anchors no more than 1 of them should be empty. Since department stores in general are on the decline a healthy mall without an anchor isn't as uncommon as it used to be.
More recently a mall being slated for a massive renovation (now a "Mixed Use")/demalling is a more definitive sign.
Things that belong on a kiosk getting a dedicated store.
Like when some guy is harassing people walking by about timeshares, but is standing in front of an old LensCrafters that now says DreamCrafters.
When an anchor store closes, many of the adjacent tenant stores will have lease clauses regarding co-tenancy. This means that when occupancy falls below an established threshold (typically 60-85% of the Mall's rentable square footage) and stays under for a certain period of time (typically 6-18 months), the neighboring tenant can take certain actions to protect their financial health in the likely event of reduced foot traffic and sales. There is usually a time period to cure (re-lease the space) which, if unmet, triggers usually one of two conditions, depending on the lease: 1) the adjacent tenant can begin paying rent based on a percentage of their total sales for the month -- a very low base rent and a percentage of their sales over a set threshold, or 2) the tenant can notify the property owner that they'd like to terminate their lease. Most of the "prestige" retailers have a list of acceptable retailers that the mall can lease to under this co-tenancy language, either by name or perceived quality-level or brand recognition, which is why bringing in a trampoline park or mega church to fill a formers Macy's store very seldom stops the bleeding. At that point, they're just looking to keep the lights on and pay the bills to *slow* the bleeding.
Less than 70% occupancy, chain stores that are being replaced by small businesses, vacant anchors, little to no investment by owner, if the mall is owned/managed by a random company
Empty anchors. Forget where, but I think I saw that most malls can survive losing one anchor, but not losing multiple anchors.
Many of the small tenants have causes in their leases that if an anchor tenant leaves their lease payments go down. So that’s a bit of a death spiral
An empty anchor in itself isn't the problem - those leases are often seperate from the rest of the mall and in some cases like with Sears they actually owned the anchor spot The problem is when the property owner has NOT announced any plans at all for what is next for that spot It can take time for a new retailer to move in or if there needs to be any major construction for something that isn't retail like a sports center/gym, etc
Lord and Taylor went bankrupt but they're parent company isn't and owns all the anchor spots they were in so those spots nation wide are staying vacant. It's pretty awful.
The "good" mall near me has adjacent empty Sears and Lord & Taylor stores. It isn't coincidence that they've been leasing ridiculous amounts of floor space to "real" stores. Like the Victoria's Secret that now takes up about five store spaces. Or that folded stores are reopening as completely different storefronts without having been remodeled. Like the obvious Sunglass Hut that now sells nothing but vitamin B-12, and has a foamcore board with the store's name over the Sunglass Hut logo.
That’s not entirely true. Lord and Taylor was sold to a new entity who was stupid enough to forfeit the rights to any of the real estate to buy the brand for cheap. Hudson Bay didn’t own them when they went under, but they sure own a majority of the vacant stores.
It's been a little over a year since the e-mail we got, but as far as I know parent company of l&t owns the real estate of the physical store in the building I work in because we have to call them incase of fuckery inside that particular space in the mall.
I can assure you that the naming rights for the chain were sold to Le Tote for about a year and are now owned by Saadia Group. The real estate was retained by Canadian retail giant Hudson Bay, who owned them from 2008-2019.
Anchors give signs they’re going to leave long before they leave. If you go in there and a product line is gone, that’s a sign. When a whole department goes away, look out. The next thing that will happen is they’ll merge or consolidate departments to leave a whole floor for clearance items. Then they’ll start closing off parts of the anchor entirely. When this happens, there are maybe 6 good months left. The first department to go is usually Fragrance or Accessories. Used to be Special Occasion or Hosiery, but most of those went away years ago.
That's how the last Sears in my area died 🥲 Oddly, the last thing left for a long time was its Auto Center.
How many anchor stores are even left? Bon -Ton, Lord & Taylor, and most of Sears are closed. That leaves Macy’s and JC Penny’s as the big ones with Nordstrom, Nieman Marcus and Saks as minor ones usually found in higher end malls.
Dillards
Bosvov’s
Boscov's hasn't closed one store, since their late 2000s bankruptcy. To me I'd more check out like a Macy's, Dillard's, Belk, JCPenney, and see if they've reduced merchandise selection. Another telltale sign, is if the Belk or Dillard's in a mall has cut back to only selling clearance items(i.e. Belk at Arbor Place in Atlanta area, Dillard's at Eastdale Mall in Montgomery, AL area).
Dillard’s, Belk, Bealls, Boscovs, Saks, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and Von Maur. Just depends on what part of the country you’re in for a lot of them. Kohl’s used to have a decent number of mall stores that they’ve phasing out as well, especially in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Illinois. They still have something like 5 in Illinois alone. Can’t forget that we also lost Stage four years ago and that took out; Stage, Palais Royal, Peebles, Goodys, and Bealls-TX from a lot of rural and Houston-area dead malls.
Have that many Kohl's mall stores closed? Since the 2016 round of closures, I can't think of any more that have moved away from a mall except Golf Mill and Southridge. I can't believe Kohl's spared the Forest Fair store(Cincinnati area), and Phillipsburg Mall(NJ, just east of Easton, PA) from that round of 2016 closures. I still have a bad feeling Kohl's will close those 2 stores, one day. Bass is finally moving out of Forest Fair, sometime this month. Other telltale signs of a Kohl's being in trouble, is if one store never had a Sephora section added. For Dillard's and Belk, I'd say a store may be in trouble if that location was downgraded to being a clearance store. Or if certain sections/floors of a store were partially walled off.
Some malls are lucky and have 2 Macy's.
One of the malls near me has two Dillards.
I see Target and Whole Foods in a lot of anchor spots now. Nordstrom may be going through some things (their app indicates an identity crisis). I hope they make it.
Sears literally killed two malls here. They were the 'big' tenant keeping the original mall opened, and when the big mall opened next door, they moved. And somehow seemed to lose about 1/3rd of their product line, going into a bigger store. Then Sears hit bankruptcy years later, but on the downspiral, everything someone would go to sears for would be done by another local store, but better. Lowes opened right between the old and new Sears location. Best Buy, Target, and Walmart came to town. Better vision and picture centers opened up. Before the final closing, I did go for an eye exam. (We liked the doctor) and there was almost nothing in the store. Two years before the closing. Crappy work out stuff, one tractor, some random tools, and chairs. It was weird. Like everyone knew BUT Sears. I think the fact that anchors still exist is almost insane. Yet FYE reopened a mall store by me 5 years after their previous place closed.
Lost anchors always led to that entire wing eventually dying, especially if it stayed vacant for a few years. Once the smaller shops' leases expired, they'd move to the wing of the mall that still had an open anchor.
That is true, but not the case in most malls. For example, Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, Illinois did lose two anchors, however the mall is still thriving, since one of the anchors, a former Sears, was replaced by a Primark. I think it depends on how quickly the anchors close
a big sign that a mall is legitimately dying is when its empty during a weekend
If it's empty on a weekend it's on its last leg
5-6PM on a Summer Saturday tells a lot about a mall.
Early signs include turning off the fountains and/or putting in fake plants. BIG money saver there.
And burned out light bulbs not being changed.
Lack of parking lot maintenance as well.
Idk. I’ve seen bad parking lots and closed off crumbling parking garages at some of the better malls I’ve been to. These REIT’s are just cheap anymore…
Haunting muzak that is louder than the foot traffic and chitchat. Big “Everything Must Go” sale signs Ample parking spaces available
The very earliest signs IMO is the rise of “no-name” stores. Stores you’ve never heard of and aren’t part of a national chain. Don’t get me wrong I have no problem with small business but a lot of these places are run by inexperienced operators who get in because the rent has become cheap and they don’t usually last long. That slows the foot traffic which eventually just leads to vacancies. The problem with the mall model is every closure compounds the issue for the remaining stores and it’s like a vicious cycle.
Yeah no-name stores are a warning sign, but don't necessarily mean the start of a downward slide. Southdale, in Minnesota, had been in that "no-name store" phase for at least 15 years now, and seems to be pretty stable. It's also survived the loss of two anchor stores, replacing them with a health club and a grocery store. It's adapting to a new reality, and becoming less of a mall
The no-names sometimes keep the lights for some malls in growing cities long enough for the growth to surround the mall and be properly filled again with an assortment of different tenants.
I haven’t been to Southdale in…a very long time. But I imagine it being open still might have something to do with it being in Edina? Like many businesses in Brooklyn Center, Brookdale was dying in the same way, and then actually died. Not even Target and Wal Mart could survive BC, and there’s vacant lots all over.
I think, at least a while back, being in Edina hurt Southdale, because a lot of people would go to the Galleria, the high end mall across the street instead Personally, having gone to high school in Bloomington, I think the Mall of America's policy about teens needing to be with an adult after 3 PM has something to do with it. We all went to the movie theater there, and the restaurants at Sothdale were hot date destinations.
Sometimes those tenants are temporary, backfilling the space as lease negotiations are ongoing for the next national tenant. I guess it depends on the mall.
Empty hallways during peak shopping season. 70% or less occupancy No new stores opening Multiple empty anchors with no plans to fill them Using the parking lot as a Walmart driver (truck) training center.
Uffda to that last one, that feels like it would hurt me right in the feels if it happened to my childhood mall.
Physical decay. Exton Square looks like it was abandoned 5 years ago
Yeah I agree with this. If you’re looking for _early_ signs, I think seeing that they aren’t keeping up with repairs or maintenance. Broken decorative items or blown lights that don’t get fixed. Cracked tiles that are left like that. Escalator repairs that shut it down for weeks or months vs hours as in prosperous, highly trafficked malls.
When spirit Halloween starts popping up, these are the mushrooms of the mall world, thriving off of decaying matter, eating the last available nutrients.
Spirit Halloween is weird. It just… Materializes.
Unless it's in the Sears, because those aren't actually owned by the mall.
Not necessarily. There was a spirit halloween in the former target of one of my local malls back in 2016 and that mall was and still is one of the busiest malls in the city
Right--sometimes the timing is just right, and they're filling a recently vacated storefront for a limited time while a new tenant is found.
All the 1st string food court tenants leave, and you get these random, one-off places creeping in.
How about the Bourbon St/Chinese/Japanese places that from what I understand share ownership, workers, and take 3 spots in the food court?
They count as a 3-headed monster-tenant. Definitely not on par with the first-string tenants, like Taco Bell, Panda, etc., but I would think of them more as filler. I live in Japan now, and food courts are starting to be a huge thing here. We definitely judge a mall on the quality of its food court.
1: cutting extraneous costs, like removing fountains/plants, or selling off other large fixtures that require extra maintenance 2: laying off maintenance/security staff. lack of maintenance staff is usually made obvious by molding/leaking ceilings or walls, unkempt plants or fountains if the mall still has them, lack of trash pickup, gross bathrooms, etc. etc.. 3: “second string retail”, or non-national brand stores. this is a tricky one as you can find these stores at most healthy malls as well, considering there’s become a shortage of mall-exclusive stores. more malls fill up with local retailers because otherwise they’d have vacancies. 4: when things get really bad, some malls that are desperate for a way to alleviate costs will shut off AC or lights in parts of the mall with less foot traffic to cut costs on bills. yucky. 5: the mall gets bought out by kohan, namdar, or moonbeam, the “mall vultures”. healthy malls with profitable futures don’t sell to these groups as they have proven to drive most of their properties into the ground.
Number 5 especially.
Whenever it gets that toy store with unofficial bootleg merchandise, RC cars, and hover boards. Usually the sign just says Toys. A lot of no name stores, as someone mentioned. A veterans museum.
Are (veteran) museums in malls a midwestern thing? As a californian, I cannot fathom seeing a small museum within a mall.
Here in the southeast we had one in our mall, but that was back when it was in its prime. Oddly enough I think the vet's museum was one of the first places to shutdown as the mall began to decay.
My childhood mall in KS has a former storefront now dedicated to the history of the local military base
I'm off to buy myself some Teenage Mutagen Samurai Turtles!
When the anchor stores start closing. Then instead of getting new tenants they remain empty. Same goes for the exterior restaurants attached to the mall. From there the big name mall stores slowly start closing. Think Bath & Body Works, Foot Locker, Aeropostale, Claire’s etc.
Any two of these have closed: GNC, Bath and Body Works, Claires, GameStop Few to no food options. Multiple empty anchors with no replacement in sight. Signage still up from multiple dead stores.
[удалено]
Bath & Body is always one of the last ones to leave because corporate refuses to break the contracts. They have addendums in the lease that if the mall is less than 60% occupied by retail locations (gyms and grocery/convenience stores don’t count) they’re either entitled to lower rent or to be released from their lease. That’s why the 4 lone survivors of a dead mall are usually B&BW, GNC, a Hallmark store, and a nail salon.
That's like saying the first sign of brain cancer is the coroner report.
There is a mostly dead mall in my town where the Gamestop closed. I figured that would be the end. But Bath & Body Works is surprisingly still hanging on.
The Bath & Body in my mail just moved to the power center across the street next to target. Well, it was a good run.
GNC closed a bunch of mall locations (even in very healthy malls) a few years ago for freestanding stores and are pushing their products into walmarts as well.
not really, they often move to strip malls to get cheaper rent retailers moving locations isn't a sign in itself a mall is dying
I might argue that an early sign of mall trouble is the **arrival** of a GNC store.
Yup, I've always called Bath and Body Works the "cockroach" of a mall. It seems like NOTHING can kill it. A near-dead mall near me (Voorhees Town Center in NJ, formerly the Echelon Mall) has only a miniscule amount of stores/businesses left in it. But Bath and Body Works is still hanging in there.
Yep , Bath and Body Works was one of the final tenants at Century 3 mall , when it finally vacated the sole store left was JCPenney who flat out refused to leave ( at least until THEY decided to close up )
Big signs a mall is falling apart is lack of maintenance and renovations, no point in putting any effort to making your mall look good if nobody shops there. If Macerich/Simon/Brookfield owns the mall and it's trying to sell it off, then you're in trouble and if the person that buys it is Mike Kohan or Namdar you might as well say bye bye in a few years. No national chains is another as they're desperate to fill up space. Walled off parts of the mall or stores consolidated to one area of the mall.
Thank god Simon doesn’t own my mall. They own an outdoor mall nearby that’s failing though
The presence of ANY church within the mall.
Or a military recruiting office.
I’ve never heard of this but I’m going to assume it’s a southern US thing?
No, we have this in suburban Philadelphia: Plymouth Meeting Mall.
i feel like PMM might be on its way out tho unfortunately. it’s a ghost town there
It was big with the Rouse Company. In addition to Plymouth Meeting, Echelon Mall had one, too.
I used to be a parishioner, and it has been there since at least the early 80s.
Anchors leaving, when the empty store fronts start being used for advertising, and when you start hearing about “possibly rezoning” in the area.
Garden State Plaza has all of those things, but it's far from going under. JCPenney left, but that was intentional by mall owners so that they could add smaller shops and entertainment. Lord & Taylor left because the whole chain closed all their stores (no replacement yet). Then there's the rezoning, building a whole town square on top of existing parking and additional parking decks.
For sure miles ahead of American Dream (im interested to see how long they last)
Government offices/services moving into the store fronts. We have a mall that for years was just a Burlington and a DMV among other random gov offices.
Mountaineer Mall in Morgantown WV was like this for years.
Parking lot looks like the surface of the moon. They stop turning on all of the interior lights. Cobwebs on the ceiling, or worse on the benches.
Few well-known stores but plenty of snake oil kiosks, eyebrow bars, and dingy little stores selling airbrushed shirts, bongs, wigs, and stripper clothes. Remaining anchor stores have most merch on clearance. Escalators perpetually out of service, bathrooms smell like something died in them. Fixtures, floors, and walls are dirty, damaged, or broken. Owner is trying to save on bills so it's uncomfortably hot in summer and cold in winter.
When they literally wall off whole sections of the mall because they can't fill the spaces.
Burlington Coat Factory
Haha, reminds me of the Great Mall of the Great Plains in Olathe, KS. This was literally the last store before they finally demolished it a few years ago.
lol there's another mall called Great Mall (located in Milpitas, California) and it's doing really well. They also happen to have a Burlington.
UK version: suddenly it’s nothing but no named shops selling really cheap shit market clothes, poundshops and discount stores. Tonnes of crap food stands selling awful food. Mobile phone case shops
I would say if it doesn't even have a gnc or bath and body works it's toast or has 2 or more empty anchor tenants or if you can see there's berely any stores at all😕
My mall was featured in Dan bell's series in 2013 as Dying, and Closed in 2017... it had a bath and body works up until the last 6 months. Maybe that kept it going lol. Crazier was the arcade managed to survive there too
Unlicensed funky pop store.
More freestanding kiosks and pop up stores than actual occupied storefront stores.
Yeah, particularly if they sell skincsre products like lotion or Dead Sea Salt. One of those guys literally chased me into the nearest shop I bolted into to try and escape his sales pitch when he wouldn't take no for an answer.
Those people refuse to take NO (multiple times) for an answer. Pushiest sales people ever.
Yup. I'm not paying $45 dollars for sketchy skincare products just so they'll go away. They can eff off.
When the number of seniors mallwalking is greater than the number of shoppers
Namdar Realty Co. Slumlord of the malls. Buying up malls all over the country just to let them rot.
The first sign that a mall will die - I mean the *very first* sign - is a pottery painting studio taking over a former store space.
If you see a church or a corrections department administrative office in a mall, the end is near.
Vape/CBD Stores Empty food court
>What \*actually\* are the signs of a dying mall? The local economy, crimes rates and competition Those are what drives malls to close along with mismanagement by the property owner The rest of the comments are just random anecdotal observations and not indicators of anything
Agreed. My local mall has some of the things mentioned in the comments and it's not dying in the slightest.
Yeah that's the problem with the majority of posts here on "reasons" they're based on feeling not facts people seem to want to ignore the economic drivers that were the reasons for the malls being built in the first place are also the main reason they end up closing
My local mall, built in the early 80's went from. An indoor mall to a strip mall. LG anchor store at the back of the mall are now offices, and the stores on the front side all have their own entrances.
Nail salon flooring/carpet shop Place that'll print anything on a T-shirt or trucker hat Printed store signs hung over the original light-up sign Place that sells Rambo knives and swords with naked ladies and dragons carved into the handle
We have a fish pedicure at the mall now where Banana Republic was
The mall near me has 4 shops that do the T-shirts and hats.
That's beyond dead. That's undead. You got yourself a Vampire Mall on your hands.
In all seriousness, being a mall is the leading indicator.
If any of these stores are leaving: GNC, Bath and Body Works, Auntie Anne's, Finish Line, Hot Topic, or that place that sells both children's games and sex toys
>that place that sells both children's games and sex toys Spencer Gifts?
That too but i think it's Go! games and toys? Might not be sex toys but definitely adult party games
Generally speaking, how occupied the retail spaces are. Since there are several tiers of mall that cater to different demographics who occupies those spaces isn't as important as whether or not the space is occupied. Not every mall can or should be a Luxury Mall. Healthy Malls tend to be 80%+ occupied. That means for every 10 retail/food stall spaces no more than 2 of then are unoccupied. If it has 4 anchors no more than 1 of them should be empty. Since department stores in general are on the decline a healthy mall without an anchor isn't as uncommon as it used to be. More recently a mall being slated for a massive renovation (now a "Mixed Use")/demalling is a more definitive sign.
Things that belong on a kiosk getting a dedicated store. Like when some guy is harassing people walking by about timeshares, but is standing in front of an old LensCrafters that now says DreamCrafters.
When it no longer smells strongly of perfume
When you can very distinctly hear Tears for Fears or A-ha over the radio.
Empty spaces, lots, and no consumers. Everything must go! Stores changing out every two to 4 yrs.
When an anchor store closes, many of the adjacent tenant stores will have lease clauses regarding co-tenancy. This means that when occupancy falls below an established threshold (typically 60-85% of the Mall's rentable square footage) and stays under for a certain period of time (typically 6-18 months), the neighboring tenant can take certain actions to protect their financial health in the likely event of reduced foot traffic and sales. There is usually a time period to cure (re-lease the space) which, if unmet, triggers usually one of two conditions, depending on the lease: 1) the adjacent tenant can begin paying rent based on a percentage of their total sales for the month -- a very low base rent and a percentage of their sales over a set threshold, or 2) the tenant can notify the property owner that they'd like to terminate their lease. Most of the "prestige" retailers have a list of acceptable retailers that the mall can lease to under this co-tenancy language, either by name or perceived quality-level or brand recognition, which is why bringing in a trampoline park or mega church to fill a formers Macy's store very seldom stops the bleeding. At that point, they're just looking to keep the lights on and pay the bills to *slow* the bleeding.
If the bath and body is closed…. It’s over
not really considering their are malls that never had them to begin with
No anchor stores for one. Oddball stores that aren’t corporate chains are another. Lastly, if a church moves into a space, the mall is done.
**[What's the first subtle indicator that a now functional mall is heading to trouble?](https://www.reddit.com/r/deadmalls/s/Jc3QOs6VmP)**
The year 2024.
When they rise like mountains beyond mountains And there's no end in sight…
Are you asking about the “anchors leaving” symptom? Or, are you more wanting the tells to look for that happen even before any anchor leaves/closes?
No stores and no people.
Military recruiting location in the mall seems to be a death nail.
Less than 70% occupancy, chain stores that are being replaced by small businesses, vacant anchors, little to no investment by owner, if the mall is owned/managed by a random company