[llamaorama]

To be fair, suburban malls always were meant to be experiential. I don't think downtown retail has an edge on that. In Houston, at least pre-Covid, the mall situation has been pretty static for like 20 years. All the malls that were nice back in like 1998 are still nice, and the malls that were on the decline then are dead now. Over the last few years there's been an increase in places that are essentially mall-like without being called them - various food halls, mixed use centers, etc. I think people will want to go out when this is over and things will want to gradually come back. Maybe following some mass bankruptcies and store closures the market won't be as overbuilt and crowded for retail.

Honestly I think urban or downtown mall retail was always shaky in cities that weren't NYC or Chicago. In cities with a lot of urban infill the total number of new downtown residents is still what, like 20-30 thousand more than in the year 2000? That's enough to assume a grocery store, a diverse range of small service oriented businesses, restaurants, and maybe some urban format big box, but it would hardly support a destination retail mall. I don't think people really want to go downtown for that in a city like Austin. Downtowns aren't going to die out again, because they'll still have a role for entertainment, government buildings, etc and people want to live centrally.