My local mall has made a huge comeback over the last three or four years. Every weekend all the empty kiosks are taken over and a bunch of tables are set up by antique dealers and traders, and they basically use the entire mall as a giant flea market.
There is also a large fitness center at the mall, as well as a large gymnasium where they do gymnastics and whatever they call it, like gladiator/ obstacle course type training. Those have scheduled classes pretty much all day, and so all those people are constantly coming and going.
Most of the store fronts that were vacated by things like Radio Shack and Aeropostale and other big chains that seem to have evaporated are now filled with small businesses. There’s an independent toy store, music store {instruments not records), liquor store, and a number of small offices such as a dentist and eye doctor, not really traditional mall merchants, but they are driving traffic better than Macy’s had been for decades.
That’s the mall future I want tbh. As long as parking is free. Include a lil park on some corner away from cars and better/cheaper food options and I would hang there all day. Malls in Japan are on another level. Lots of small unique locally owned businesses.
That’s one of the Greta things about Japan, at least the greater Tokyo area. I never felt like I needed a car while vacationing there. Everything was literally a couple minutes walk from a train station and the station wasn’t that expensive. I would have spent the same in gas if I was driving around. According to my Google trains were also just a couple minutes slower than taking a car, nothing significant. Definitely worth it.
What, seven shoe stores and four jewelry stores all right across from one another isn’t sustainable?
It’s funny, like see the absurdity and unfairness of it, but hidden behind that is the fact that like, those four jewelry stores aren’t even competing, they are owned by the same one or two companies, and those one or two companies are owned by the same handful of old country club families, and they also own the mall, half of the other stores, and everything in them is made in factories owned by some other handful of oligarchs. It’s fucked.
My local mall has made a huge comeback over the last three or four years. Every weekend all the empty kiosks are taken over and a bunch of tables are set up by antique dealers and traders, and they basically use the entire mall as a giant flea market.
There is also a large fitness center at the mall, as well as a large gymnasium where they do gymnastics and whatever they call it, like gladiator/ obstacle course type training. Those have scheduled classes pretty much all day, and so all those people are constantly coming and going.
Most of the store fronts that were vacated by things like Radio Shack and Aeropostale and other big chains that seem to have evaporated are now filled with small businesses. There’s an independent toy store, music store {instruments not records), liquor store, and a number of small offices such as a dentist and eye doctor, not really traditional mall merchants, but they are driving traffic better than Macy’s had been for decades.
.
That’s the mall future I want tbh. As long as parking is free. Include a lil park on some corner away from cars and better/cheaper food options and I would hang there all day. Malls in Japan are on another level. Lots of small unique locally owned businesses.
Germany put their malls on top of their train stations. Those malls will always generate revenue.
That’s one of the Greta things about Japan, at least the greater Tokyo area. I never felt like I needed a car while vacationing there. Everything was literally a couple minutes walk from a train station and the station wasn’t that expensive. I would have spent the same in gas if I was driving around. According to my Google trains were also just a couple minutes slower than taking a car, nothing significant. Definitely worth it.
Greta was a typo, or you mean Greta Thunberg-pilled?
This is great. Transforming malls into things that people actually want instead what they are told they want.
What, seven shoe stores and four jewelry stores all right across from one another isn’t sustainable?
It’s funny, like see the absurdity and unfairness of it, but hidden behind that is the fact that like, those four jewelry stores aren’t even competing, they are owned by the same one or two companies, and those one or two companies are owned by the same handful of old country club families, and they also own the mall, half of the other stores, and everything in them is made in factories owned by some other handful of oligarchs. It’s fucked.
I do miss Spencer’s Gifts though. There used to be one in New York in a storefront near Astor Place. The only one I’ve ever seen not in a mall.