This is pretty much what my local mall looks like right now. The whole "all the malls died out" thing is mostly a myth, in my experience. Every time I go it's absolutely full of people.
this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2025
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I moved from a more populated area to one that is...not. I had a thriving mall, current city's mall is almost abandoned.
My local mall got leveled and replaced with a giant Amazon distribution center. So now we have two anecdotal stories about malls.
I qualified my statement, so not sure what you were hoping to achieve with your comment.
Also, that can happen for any number of reasons that are entirely unrelated to whether or not malls are dead. Like, for example, Amazon offering an obscene amount of money to the owner of the mall to buy it out for the real estate.
Same. All of my local malls were packed during the holidays. Malls never died off; the only ones that shut down were the old and outdated ones that never renovated, and thus failed to attract businesses that customers actually want to shop at. The malls that kept up with the times are still thriving.
Some malls died out, but the really big ones that are placed somewhere smart are still plenty busy. The death of the big department stores is what did a lot of the damage.
Yeah, the malls at big walkable transit hubs are doing fine, here. It's the ones with hectares of parking lot that seem to close, here. But I do not have data to back that up.
Hated going Christmas shopping in the stores. No parking, crowded, having to go to multiple stores looking for things, lines. If you wanted something from a store or other catalog you’d have had to order it several weeks in advance due to shipping and handling times. You were limited to what the stores had generally because there really wasn’t any other way.
People today who didn’t experience the non-online life don’t have a clue how much faster it is to buy things now. I won’t say the variety is a whole lot better, but access to the existing inventory is way better.
I would say we’re no happier with the increased accessibility to “ stuff “. Sure there’s a threshold between abject poverty/starvation and Bezos’ daily plastic Chinese landfill filler delivery, but having the world at our fingertips may have done more harm than good.
Remember "allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery"? Because that was the norm back on the day.
Absolutely.
This is just Chaddy today, right?
What do they look like now? Or am I missing the joke? Not American.
Pretty much the same in the part of the country I live in. Malls never went away here.
We visited one this weekend just a few days before Christmas. Massive parking garages, 3 floors. Almost completely empty. Food court had only 2 places open. Only about 1 in 5 store fronts had anything open. So few people there it almost felt like it was closed and we weren’t supposed to be there. Super weird.
This is my experience with several of the malls in my and my grandparents city
Now, mostly undecorated, half the stores closed, and a few old people roaming about. Almost liminal.
Not like that at my local mall at all. Decorations everywhere and more people than ever.
The local one got brought back from the brink with a casino. Still half dead inside though other than the casino.
The one near me died and was converted into a community college so at least a positive came out of it
Oh that's nice!
In the US...If they're one of the ones that have managed to survive... Not much different, honestly. Lots of them are closing or are being piecemeal converted to other businesses, however. So much so that it's a thing we, as a country, point at.
Malls all died out 10-20 years ago with the advent of online shopping. Malls were all at the outskirts of town and their rents kept driving higher and higher, running small local businesses out. As online shopping gained traction, people decided they would rather wait a few days for what they wanted rather than deal with the hassle of driving 45 minutes to the mall for a few things.
I have never witnessed this supposed "dying out". All the malls in my area are decked out for Christmas and have tons of people there all the time. I've been multiple times myself even in the last couple of months.
People always talk about this as a given, but I've never actually seen it. Ultimately, malls are one of the few remaining third spaces that you can be for free. That matters a lot.
My dad worked for an anchor tenant when i was in highschool. 7/10 of his stores were in malls with only the big box stores, nothing in the small store fronts
Not just online shopping. The return of the strip mall. Just with a Starbucks to make it trendy.
This is local anecdata but of the four main malls near me, only one has turned into a ghost town. The other three have thrived and they are hopping.
I've noticed here over the past few decades malls are closing but it started with the poorer (downtown) malls in the 90s and are closing almost perfectly along economic lines.
There are still some malls but the ones thriving seem to be fairly affluent, with Nordstrom & Coach stores. All the "middle class" malls look increasingly vacant and liminal, and the "poor" malls already closed.
Oh really wow, I never knew!
There are replacement "lifestyle centers" and whatnot now, but the iconic mall from the 80's is essentially dead. Most of them only had anchor tenants (Macy's, Kohls, Dillards, Sears, JC Penny's) 15 years ago when i was in highschool, and that trend has not gotten better.
Lifestyle centers sounds like a lot of marketing speak.
90s.
I'm not sure about that.
The style of the gap logo on the storefront suggests this should be no later than 1988, according to the logo history on wikipedia
Kinda weird because to me here in 2025, their original rounded logo seems way more modern than their actual 90s one, but that's just logo design fashion over time, I guess!
This is the type of tism I am here for!
They changed their logo for 8 days once??
And the guy responsible was forced to resign. Talk about unpopular!
It kinda looked like it was pulled out of Microsoft word circa 1990 if I remember correctly
Was it safe for them to put up the decorations off the ledge that way? I can't picture in my mind how they would get it on there without someone dangling from the air putting it on.
Using a stick from the level below or a scissor lift.
Not anymore?
No the blues brothers trashed the place and it was never the same
Looks about the same today with the decorations imo
Well, I lived in Council Bluffs in the 80s. So all our malls were weird brutalist nightmares.
So many memories Christmas shopping in malls with my grandparents/grandfather especially. He may have been a shite father but he was a decent grandfather and I miss him