homepage Forums SimHQ Community Community Hall 20-25% of shopping malls predicted to close in 5 years

^ Yup, Dollar Generals and Family Dollars are all over the place. We go to the Dollar General in my pic all the time and you're correct, it's more about convenience than price.

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Wife and I spent a weekend in Houston last year (I think) and we noticed that...

The once famous Galleria Mall was all but dead.
The trendier CityCentre outdoor shopping (also where our hotel was located) seemed much more populated.

Loved hanging out at the mall in the early 80's, especially music stores (Musicland, Camelot) and Spencer Gifts, both a rarity these days. The outdoor shopping centers seem to be doing pretty well here in Baton Rouge, as well as the newer and larger indoor mall (always lots of traffic and cars). Sometimes I think, like myself, that BR is stuck in the 80's and that's fine with me. What we need is a new 70's/80's roller rink, I could burn off some serious calories to disco all over again!

Something else...

A couple of years ago, in the town of Clinton, LA (parish seat), Walmart built a brand new smaller grocery-only store. Lasted no more than a year before it became a Dollar General.

A store pays a premium to rent Mall real estate - Amazon has them beat before the customers even thought of doing any shopping

Gotta love Louisiana - I always love visiting the Southern states. Very friendly people, or perhaps I just always got lucky down south and only ran into the *-holes in California?

Anyway, same thing is happening here down under in New Zealand. For years and years retailers have been taking the piss, overcharging people for Chinese crap. And up to 10 years ago, I guess people put up with it, with us being so far from the rest of the world and all.
But over the last 10 years, broadband has made it to most house holds in whatever form available (ADSL, VDSL, optic fibre, cable) . Small population and geographical challenges probably made us one of the last western countries to get broadband rolled out this way?

Either way, people here now have taken to ordering stuff online in a massive way. Amazon, eBay, etc. with a lot of stuff being ordered directly in the USA. Even our own NZ postal service saw this coming and offers free freight and mail forwarding services in the USA, UK and China, to assist Kiwi's purchasing from "domestic-only" sellers on Amazon. The result is a rapid decline in the retail sector here and retailers are crying foul about unfair competition and demand the government put up steep import taxes etc. Only very recently did I discover things like Alixpress - I knew it existed but was afraid of getting ripped off or something. But that platform has matured massively and I frequently order electronics and other stuff in China now. And often it's the same budget stuff as you find here, except I pay a fraction of what retailers charge here.

I personally have no issue with this whatsoever. Why shouldn't we make globalization work for us common folk? If you're in the import/export business, then you're just a no-value-adding-ticket-clipper that really has no justifiable business model in this day and age.

And as a result, we see malls dwindling here as well. With the added factor of a big earthquake thrown in, with malls either being closed or needing to be teared down. No loss if you ask me - free up the land for housing, restaurants and other more useful places than malls.
(Never understood the fascination people had with malls, I always found them extremely depressing examples of opportunistic consumerism.)

Both Waldenbooks and BT Daltons went out of business over 15 years ago.


Retail brick and mortar is dying for the most part but there will always be exceptions. The Apple stores being one of those. I'm not surprised that Amazon is trying their hand at brick & mortar and they will most likely succeed.

When young it was a good place to go to look at girls.

It's mostly tourists and teenagers who still go for the shopping mall experience. Most everyone else buys their stuff online.

Malls were good places to see a wide variety of goods in one place, rather than driving to multiple stores spread across miles.

Women's clothing stores will always be brick and mortar, I think. Ever really pay attention to how they shop? You can't mentally flowchart the process because there's no logic. A garment can check all of their boxes, only to be put back on the rack because, "Meh." "I don't care for the color/material." "It's kinda pricy." "It's not me." All of which could have been determined before removing it from the rack and spending 15 mins. trying it on.

Oh, I get it now. The idea isn't to find what you need as quickly and painlessly as possible, the shopping is actually enjoyable. Coming home with something is just a bonus.

Kinda like a man in a gun store?

LOL Mark! I know exactly what you are talking about. I remember as a kid taking several books and magazines with me to the mall whenever I had to go shopping with my two older female cousins who would literally take 4-5 hours to get a couple of outfits at a clothing store.

I remember being dragged to the mall with my Mom when I was really young. She would go to twenty stores, only to go back and buy from the first one we went into. Ugh ! Along the way she would run into someone she would know every ten feet. Usually ice cream was the pay off at the end of it, and of course the "don't tell your father I bought this". I guess I have always kind of hated malls.

Does that mean no more Paul Blart movies?

I pray heavily that will be the case!

That's what the fanny pack is all about!

Seriously, as long as I have a place to sit (most nicer stores have comfortable seating where you try on clothes), I can entertain myself for hours. Bottled water, music and a paperback (while watching her purse), wife comes out every 10 min. or so and does a little modeling for me, then back to my 80's/90's techno-thriller (currently reading Tom Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon", large book, barely fits). Lots of walking, a nice lunch, then on the way home I play it up a little as she's thanking me for making the 'sacrifice' of taking her shopping.

So while *real* men are home watching college football (or being dragged to the mall with no choice), I'm stretching out my legs chillin' in the women's stores with a dorky fanny pack and a purse! Bah. I'm too old to care how it looks.

I don't wish for the demise of shopping malls, especially the indoor malls on a rainy day.

I don't see a flask of booze in there.

wow Mark! You really have this mall travelling survival kit thing really planned out. LOL

What? No PLB?

All I know is 20 years ago I was making half what I make today, and that money went FAR further. My personal experience there isn't even remotely unique.

Yeah, I can easily see that being the case for many people. While most retail items have actually gone down in price over the past 20 years; other things like groceries, rent and housing costs have gone way up.