Dying urban malls

[pdxtex]

Dead malls usually conjures up images of weedy parking lots and boarded windows out in the suburbs but do any of you know of any urban or central city malls that are dying? Portland most ubiquitous example is the Lloyd Center. By mall standards, its historic, first opening in 1960 when it was possibly the largest mall on the west coast. Working next to it, I've seen the spiraling demise first hand. Now its 40 percent vacant, closed its indoor movie theater and only has one anchor left. There are plans to build a house of blues where the Nordstrom was but that seems to be stalling. The area is surrounded by new housing it doesn't seem to be helping the mall much. Oh yeah, this place is less than a mile from downtown and on the rail line...

[dubu]

last week i went to the lloyd center a couple times and it was busy like the mall in bend oregon right now. people were there to eat, watch ice skating and go to the book store ect. i always thought it was a small mall and most of the place was office space. theres going to be a new pedestrian bridge over there going over the freeway maybe that will help a little. its kinda weird there is (or was) a theater in the mall and across the street is another theater. maybe thats why its dead.

[MonkeyRonin]

The Shops at Aura, an underground (subway/PATH-connected) shopping centre in downtown Toronto (opened 2015-ish) was dead on arrival.


https://www.retail-insider.com/retai...r/2016/10/aura

[homebucket]

It happened in SF recently. It never actually even opened.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/business...n-14274906.php

Giant, empty 6x6 mall sold to developers
SF-based TMG and Pasadena’s Alexandria team up to buy titanic ghost mall
By Adam Brinklow Aug 2, 2019, 1:30pm PDT

The empty Mid-Market mall dubbed 6x6—a $150 million project that has sat vacant since construction completed in 2016—might have a new lease on life. Alexandria Real Estate Equities and TMG Partners will purchase the property together. Neither company has publicly announced the acquisition, and both have declined to comment, but a person familiar with the deal, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the purchase to Curbed SF.

The 250,000-square-foot, glass-and-steel behemoth, with its distinctive double-helix escalator design visible from the sidewalk at 945 Market Street, never attracted commercial tenants, sitting almost entirely vacant.

https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/2/20752...-san-francisco

[softee]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

The Shops at Aura, an underground (subway/PATH-connected) shopping centre in downtown Toronto (opened 2015-ish) was dead on arrival.


https://www.retail-insider.com/retai...r/2016/10/aura

It's slowly filling up. Here's a walk-through from a few months back:

• Video Link

[Obadno]

Malls in general were overbuilt and with online retail the entire industry needs to readjust.

The less succusfull malls will get redeveloped or used in a different way.

I am sure most people notice that the luxury malls in their regions that are more destinations with restaurants, shopping, proximity to trendy neighborhoods are still doing just fine if not thriving while other less "destination" malls that were built for generic shopping are completely dead or dying.

Does not matter if it is in urban areas or suburban areas, Malls were a classic case of overbuilding.

[Chisouthside]

Originally Posted by Obadno

Malls in general were overbuilt and with online retail the entire industry needs to readjust.

The less succusfull malls will get redeveloped or used in a different way.

I am sure most people notice that the luxury malls in their regions that are more destinations with restaurants, shopping, proximity to trendy neighborhoods are still doing just fine if not thriving while other less "destination" malls that were built for generic shopping are completely dead or dying.

Does not matter if it is in urban areas or suburban areas, Malls were a classic case of overbuilding.

But, but other countries also overbuilt their malls!

[MonkeyRonin]

Galleria Mall was another empty 70s timewarp (and scar on the urban landscape) in inner Toronto:


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...at-time-forgot


https://www.toronto.com/news-story/7...ment-proposal/


Like so many other malls though it's being redeveloped, of course.

[pdxtex]

The Lloyd Center is enormous and surrounded by some strategic real estate but I dont know how it could be redeveloped right now. I think were on the tail end of our apartment boom and housing prices are starting to dip back down. The malls two movie theaters always perplexed me. There is an outdoor cineplex with an enormous parking lot which was going to become another apartment building but the investors pulled their dough. The indoor theater closed maybe three years ago. The malls owner is optimistic though. They spent 50 million to give the mall an overhaul. Maybe it worked. Now the mall has TWO Chinese massage parlors!! Interestingly, there is one remaining tenant that's been in business since the mall opened 60 years ago, a carmel corn shop. Wow I should probably give them some business!!

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

The Shops at Aura, an underground (subway/PATH-connected) shopping centre in downtown Toronto (opened 2015-ish) was dead on arrival.


https://www.retail-insider.com/retai...r/2016/10/aura

It's astonishingly horrible down there. I feel sorry for the people that leased space before seeing the end product. AURA's basement would function a ton better if it was part of PATH but it would still need a complete gut and re-design. Even then one has to question if people would use it. YUCK!

[tjp]

Block 37 in Chicago might qualify. I feel like it's improving, but it definitely isn't sucessfull.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Obadno

Malls in general were overbuilt and with online retail the entire industry needs to readjust.

That may be true in the United States but we never got to that point in Canada. We had, and still have, far less retail per person. Inversely, retail sales/sq foot are significantly higher in Canada vs the United States.

Originally Posted by Obadno

The less succusfull malls will get redeveloped or used in a different way.

I am sure most people notice that the luxury malls in their regions that are more destinations with restaurants, shopping, proximity to trendy neighborhoods are still doing just fine if not thriving while other less "destination" malls that were built for generic shopping are completely dead or dying.

Both the US and Canada seem to be on the same page when it comes to this. To survive, higher end malls in Canada went even higher end. They invested billions in renovations, upgrades, and expansion while attracting luxe tenants like Prada, Tesla, and Gucci. These types of malls are doing extremely well in Canada. Mid market malls are closing and getting re-developed. The super low end strip type malls seem to be plodding along for now but suspect they'll end up getting bulldozed for condos as our cities densify.

[Crawford]

The Gallery in Philly is a very large urban mail that went through a painful decline in recent years. It closed and is being redeveloped into an outlet mall. The Gallery is really the very core of Center City Philly, kind of an American version of Eaton Centre, so it's fortunes are critical to the surrounding blocks.

Of course, Center City Philly is quite successful and growing, but the blocks around the Gallery are surprisingly dingy and feel like 1985. It's the one area that needs help. Perceptions around race/class played major roles in the Gallery's fortunes.

[craigs]

Sacramento's awesome new arena, Golden 1 Center, is built on land that was once part of a failed downtown mall. There's still a Macy's there, and maybe more (a local would know the details), but as far as I can tell that old mall is essentially gone.

SF has 6x6 as noted above, which never even opened, but we also have a high-performing mall that has nonetheless lost its two anchors, Macy's and Nordstrom. The owners of Stonestown Galleria on the city's southwest side are openly talking about reinventing the property into a large, mixed-use district with homes, office space, dining and entertainment venues, and some destination retail. We're a way off from any construction, and that mall has not truly failed, but the trends are clear: American malls that depend on big anchor department stores have seen their heyday, and where the land is valuable enough, they will be morphing into something different.

[pdxtex]

Nordstrom is kind of the canary in the coal mine to me. If you had a Nordstrom in your neighborhood and it went out of business, that's bad news.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

Nordstrom is kind of the canary in the coal mine to me. If you had a Nordstrom in your neighborhood and it went out of business, that's bad news.

Well, in most cases I could see that being true, but I'm not sure about the situation in Stonestown. The vacated space is being taken up by Whole Foods, Target, Sports Basement, and an 11-screen cineplex. Developers are even considering constructing housing and a YMCA on their 40-acre property. I guess it's a 'dying mall' in the sense that it's morphing out of the old 'mall' model, but the land is worth so much that it won't be allowed to lie fallow. I would hope that's the case for other urban malls.

Retail has just changed in recent years, and that is especially true in San Francisco. Why trundle out to Stonestown or down to Union Square and drag your purchases home on the train, when you can have the same Nordstrom merchandise delivered to your home?

[Cory]

Originally Posted by homebucket

It happened in SF recently. It never actually even opened.


https://www.sfchronicle.com/business...n-14274906.php



https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/2/20752...-san-francisco

Never understood why that was being built. Literally every store you can think of is about 5 blocks away. Even multiples of the same store.

[JAYNYC]

Originally Posted by pdxtex

do any of you know of any urban or central city malls that are dying?

NYC: Brookfield Place
L.A.: Westside Pavillion
L.A.: Topanga Plaza
Austin: Highland Mall
San Antonio: Rivercenter
San Antonio: Central Park
San Antonio: Rolling Oaks
Houston: Town & Country (was demolished ~2004, later rebuilt as CityCentre)

[GlassCity]

Can't think of one for Vancouver, but Winnipeg definitely has one in Portage Place. Originally opened as an urban renewal project downtown in 1987 to serve as the "middle" between two large standalone department stores at the time (Hudson's Bay and Eatons, which was replaced by an arena after the chain disappeared) through skywalk connections, its flagship tenants are now Staples and Dollarama.


https://www.westerninvestor.com/done...47m-1.23895544


https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manit...sold-1.5265514

At the time it was built, it was built with two pads that would support high-rise development, and a group is now looking to redevelop these pads and renovate the mall, so while it's not in great shape now there's hope for it still.


https://globalnews.ca/news/6317255/p...e-development/

[JAYNYC]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manit...sold-1.5265514

This ^ image is aesthetically horrific, and represents a lot of what's wrong with shopping mall development in North America.

The design team probably thought it created something that looked so cool, contemporary and cutting edge at the time; fast-forward a decade or so, and it's an outdated, soulless whale.