Dead Mall

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vacancies in El Con Mall , 2009.
An empty part of the Shanghai Summit Shopping City in Shanghai , China, 2007.
Vacancy in a southern German shopping center
The Tallahassee Mall wing previously rented by Dillard's , 2011
Randall Park Mall Ohio
From 2010 to 2015, the Marstall Center in Ludwigsburg was considered dead until it was revived by investors as Marstall Ludwigsburg in 2015

A Dead Mall (German: totes shopping center ) is a shopping center is at a high vacancy rate or a low customer frequency, the decay. In the US, shopping centers are considered “dead” when there is no longer an anchor tenant who generates a high flow of customers. Without the increased customer frequency caused by the anchor tenant, the revenues of the remaining businesses, which become unprofitable as a result, decrease, the rental income of the shopping center decreases, which means that it is no longer able to finance maintenance work. An empty business premises belonging to an anchor tenant is called a ghost box , and the remains of logos or advertisements are called brand marks .

causes

The decline of a mall can begin with the socio-economic decline of its surroundings or the opening of a newer, larger mall in the same catchment area. Detached from these location-specific problems, however, there are also developments that generally complicate the business model of shopping centers due to changes in the retail sector: local and regional chains have been replaced by a few national chains. Shopping centers usually have more places for anchor tenants than potential tenants are active in the market. New retail chains are often located in free-standing buildings.

In addition, shopping centers are susceptible to changes in customers' shopping behavior. They tend to be less willing than in the past to travel long distances to shopping centers and to spend longer periods of time in them. The supply of shopping centers is increasingly viewed as an unnecessary luxury, which is why larger shops and conventional shopping streets are preferred to save time. The shopping center business model has so far not responded to the increased emergence of large, free-standing shops. Under the influence of such developments, especially in the USA, there has been talk of a retail apocalypse since around 2010 , which is primarily attributed to competition from electronic commerce and there above all to the industry giant Amazon .

Competition for conventional shopping centers is also growing from lifestyle centers , which combine elements of power centers, large individual shops and shopping streets. In view of these changes, Newsweek declared the concept of the traditional shopping center obsolete back in 2008.

Examples in German-speaking countries

An example of a so-called “Dead Mall” is in the Franconian city of Fürth . The City-Center Fürth shopping center, which opened in 1985, in the heart of the city center and has around 25,000 m² of retail space, has been largely empty for many years - without anchor tenants. Only special item markets and “nail studios” are still in operation in a handful of shops in the former city center, most floors of the three-level building are empty, and escalators and elevators are out of order. The last anchor tenant, a textile department store, left the mall in March 2015 for a new location in the city center. In December 2017, the Fürth City Center was closed for renovation, but is to be reopened in 2019.

It has now been decided to demolish another example, the former “City-Center” shopping center in Eschweiler near Aachen , which was built in 1977 and which was largely empty after the closure of a former Karstadt store (last part of Hertie until 2009 ) and subsequent closings of other shops was standing. After the demolition, the former Formula 1 driver Ralf Schumacher wants to build a new city quarter with mixed use of residential, commercial and retail here together with a partner.

Utilization opportunities

Some dead shopping centers have been revitalized through redesign. Making it more attractive through renovations or refurbishments can attract new tenants, through whom the commercial basis of the shopping center can be restored (e.g. attempted at Zeilgalerie Frankfurt, eventually new building). One possibility for the redesign is the conversion into a megastore . Some of the dead shopping centers were used for other purposes. The Park Central Mall in Phoenix and Eastmont Town Center in Oakland are home to educational institutions.

If no further use can be found, the building will be demolished and the area that has become free will be used for new construction projects.

literature

Web links

Commons : Dead malls  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gray Fields and Ghost Boxes Evolving Real Estate challenges . Uwex.edu. Archived from the original on May 26, 2009. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 16, 2009. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.uwex.edu
  2. ↑ Kris Hudson, Vanessa O'Connell: Recession Turns Malls Into Ghost Towns . In: Wall Street Journal . May 22, 2011. (English)
  3. ↑ Rick Newman, How To Tell When a Mall Is In Trouble , News.yahoo.com. June 26, 2009. Retrieved July 16, 2009. 
  4. ^ Stephanie Rosenbloom: Malls See Plenty of Action, but Less of It Is Shopping. In: New York Times . July 10, 2009. (English)
  5. ↑ Sami Finne, Hanna Sivonen: The Retail Value Chain: How to Gain Competitive Advantage through Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) Strategies . Kogan Page Publishers: 2008, p. 104.
  6. ^ The vanishing shopping mall , The Week. March 26, 2009. Retrieved October 24, 2009. 
  7. ↑ https://www.fox7austin.com/news/retail-apocalypse-how-e-commerce-slowly-killed-the-neighborhood-retail-store-over-the-past-decade
  8. ↑ Tony Dokoupil: Is the American Shopping Mall Dead? , Newsweek. November 12, 2008. Retrieved October 24, 2009. 
  9. ↑ City Center . In: FürthWiki . Retrieved August 12, 2017.
  10. ^ Rudolf Müller: Empty City Center: Ralf Schumacher invests millions , Aachener Zeitung , September 19, 2017, accessed on January 27, 2018
  11. ↑ Ellen Dunham-Jones, June Williamson: Retrofitting Suburbia . John Wiley & Sons: 2011. p. 123. ISBN 978-047004123-9 .