In a former job that required me to research and
monitor the shopping center industry, I used to groan whenever I read Wall
Street Journal articles about malls. So myopic was this coverage that I often
doubted whether the newspaper deserved its onetime self-proclaimed image as “the
daily diary of the American dream.”
As the Journal was at the top of the journalism “food chain,” influencing what stories would get covered elsewhere, an unseemly delight appeared to take hold in many instances at other metro dailies about the “death of the mall” and “the retail apocalypse.”
I also doubt that many reporters
asked if the death of malls exceeded, for instance, the death of newspapers—let
alone how these publications’ advertising departments would replace the pages formerly
paid for by department stores that might have vacated malls.
Certainly, large, enclosed centers were undergoing a
transition that could be jarring at times. But my beef with the Journal
was that, more often than not, its diagnosis of malls’ problems was simplistic.
Somehow, it usually boiled down to one factor, constantly
overshadowing anything else: malls were getting clobbered by the Internet.
Then, when COVID-19 came along, the refrain changed: Nobody
will ever go to malls again! Everybody’s going to sit home and order everything
on their computers or smartphones.
Few if any of these articles acknowledged other reasons
why malls were undergoing a sea change, such as a far more competitive physical
retail environment that often featured freestanding big-box stores like
Wal-Mart; the middle class that had once sustained mall department store
anchors now withering, especially after the 2007-09 global financial crisis; and
a long-term shift in consumer spending from goods to services.
In this regard, I read Kate King’s article on Southdale Center this weekend with measured satisfaction.
None of the trends I
mentioned were cited to explain why the “new amenities” included in Southdale (luxury
apartments, an extended-stay hotel, restaurant space, fitness centers) were
expected to boost the performance of this historically important mall
(generally regarded as the first enclosed, climate-controlled, department-store
anchored center in the country).
(BTW, this “new amenities” “trend” is not that new;
malls have been experimenting with them for a decade, maybe more.)
But at least this time, a Wall Street Journal
reporter managed to get through an entire article about malls without using the
words “Internet” or “online sales.” There was no consideration of how correct
doomsayers were about the return of people to malls, but at least there
did seem to be an implicit admission that this was happening.
At some point, Ms. King or another Journal
writer might ask to what extent “omnichannel retailing” (i.e., engaging
consumers in multiple physical and digital touchpoints) is changing the
function of malls in the post-pandemic environment; how successful other malls
have been in changing their properties to a more mixed-use environment with some
combination of office, hotel, apartment, and other spaces to complement retail;
and why, while some malls are indeed declining or even dying, others continue
to flourish.
But thankfully, readers can now better sense that
malls aren’t “dead” but are changing into a type of marketplace originally envisioned
by Southdale’s influential architect, Victor Gruen: a communal gathering place
much like those he knew from his youth in Europe.
