The mall is not dead. In fact, it's not only not dead - the mall is back!
As a 56-year-old Generation X male, I grew up at the mall in the heyday of the mall. Even in my small town of Alton, outside St. Louis, the Alton Square Mall was a vibing place with numerous options for tweens and teens to hang out. Playing Defender at Tilt, browsing concert posters and somewhat racy items at Spencer Gifts, flipping through record/cassette/CD collections at Record Bar and Musicland, trying on endless pairs of sneakers at Foot Locker ... there was no shortage of crass commercial consumerist indulgences. It was the 80s, and honestly the classic mall film Fast Times at Ridgemont High captured the spirit quite well.
Alas, we've all noticed, noted, and occasionally lamented the demise of the shopping mall in the twenty-first century. Countless abandoned mall properties sitting like industrial graveyards across the United States remind us of how online shopping decimated many local economies. No matter how many times properties try to rebrand and remodel, the golden age of malls has certainly passed. Yet, there are pockets of thriving mall life across the country, such as Park Meadows Mall in Lone Tree, Colorado, where I've been for the past quarter century.
In fact, a couple years ago I pondered and pitched a few magazine pieces about Park Meadows and how "the mall is not dead." I proposed spending a weekend at the mall as a "mall writer in residence" to spotlight and capture the spirit of what has enabled Park Meadows and mall culture to continue thriving in a southeast Denver suburb. Unfortunately, I had no takers on the feature and quietly moved on to other writing projects. However, it appears I'm not the only one noticing and writing about the mall.
For Gen Z -- the obvious offspring of Generation X -- the mall is still the place to be, as A New Generation of Mall Rats Has Arrived. According to this recent Wall Street Journal feature, there is a new group of young people living the mall rat life, but in an update for the digital age and twenty-first century, this group is filled with social media mavens and influencers who are documenting the experience:
Savera Ghorzang scrolls through her phone all the time. But when she needed an outfit for her Valentine’s Day date, the 24-year-old went to the mall.
“I don’t really like online shopping,” she said. “I’m an instant-gratification girl. I need it now.” Ghorzang held her phone in one hand and a $29 black lace top in the other as she documented her shopping trip on Instagram.
The first digitally native generation is resurrecting an old-fashioned American pastime: Shopping at the mall.
Gen Z’s retail-spending growth is outpacing all other generations, according to data firm NielsenIQ, with the generation’s global annual retail spending expected to exceed $12 trillion by 2030. The cohort also spends a greater proportion of their discretionary dollars in physical stores than older generations, according to data firm Circana.
Younger shoppers’ mall enthusiasm is a bright spot for a business that has struggled with property closures and declining foot traffic in recent years, in part because the millennial generation never warmed to hanging out at the mall in the same way Gen X had. Gen Z has helped boost a recent recovery, with demand for mall space rising again.
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