The Outlet Collection Seattle (former Supermall) Auburn, WA

[Super S]

Earlier this week, (a couple days before Thanksgiving), since I was in the area I visited this enclosed mall, which opened in the mid-1990s. One oddity that I noticed right away was that this mall lacked any of the traditional department store anchors such as Macy's or JCPenney. However, it does have a Nordstrom Rack store, which apparently was an original anchor, and one of the largest Burlington Coat Factory locations that I have ever seen. Another oddity is that a space that was originally Incredible Universe is now a Sam's Club, and does not open into the mall. There is also a freestanding Walmart nearby.

As for the anchors, I also thought it was odd that both the Burlington store and the Nordstrom Rack store only had cash registers by the inside mall entrances. There were none present near the outside entrances (unless they were locked, I did not go in or out of them, but they did not appear to be locked) In the case of the Burlington store, that's a long walk.

The mall recently changed its name from "the Supermall of the Great Northwest" to "The Outlet Collection Seattle" and has shifted its focus to being an outlet mall. Supposedly anyway. The "outlets" to me looked more like regular mall stores that had the word "outlet" added to their signs and nothing more. Prices were just like any other regular mall. And there were a handful of typical mall stores that did not even appear to try to be outlets, such as a Spencer Gifts, Claire's, Wilson's Leather, and Justice, among others.

The food court was downright pathetic, maybe 4 or 5 open spots, the rest were closed. There was a Dairy Queen and a few local vendors.

The interior seemed dreary to me after dark. There are skylights, but at night the big, long hallways are lit by warehouse-style mercury vapor lights which have a tendency to dim as they age.

The last few times I have visited the outlet type of stores, I have been disappointed in the pricing. This applies here as well. The outlet name does not seem to have much meaning these days. All in all I was very unimpressed by this mall and have no plans to return.

[Alpha8472]

They are probably using the word "Outlet" to attract customers. When people hear the word outlet they think that everything is automatically cheap and on sale. That is not the case and prices are probably just as high as regular stores or even higher.

Shoppers are not as stupid as the mall owners believe. No wonder why this mall isn't doing so well.

While there are a few outlet stores, it seems like the rest of the mall has normal non-outlet stores. Surely this mall has something else to attract customers? Is there a theater, ice rink, bookstore, arcade? Mall owners these days have forgotten what brings in the customers. People want variety. There needs to be something for the adults, something for the kids, something for the teens, and some entertainment that appeals to everyone. While the parents shop you should be able to drop off the kids at the theater, ice rink, arcade, or Chuck E Cheese's.

Restaurants are very important. People want a food court with lots of variety and good restaurants. If the food court is that terrible, customers will simply choose a better mall to shop at.

You've got to have all of the popular places to eat at. You need Starbucks, Panera Bread, Subway, frozen yogurt, ice cream, pretzels. The mall needs to bring in some big name restaurants that are always popular such as Olive Garden, Applebee's, Claim Jumpers, etc. The mall should seriously consider trying to lure In N Out Burger, Sonic, Krispy Kreme, Habit Burger, or some other very popular fast food places to occupy the parking lot. Those places bring in the traffic and can really increase customer counts.

So many malls neglect the overall feel of the mall. No one wants to spend time in a creepy mall that looks like a vacant warehouse. There needs to be comfortable seating areas. There should be couches, lounges, carpeting, etc. to make people feel at ease. When you shop all day you want a nice cozy place to sit and relax. People don't want to sit under the harsh lighting surrounded by concrete benches and industrial floors.

[Brian Lutz]

They are probably using the word "Outlet" to attract customers. When people hear the word outlet they think that everything is automatically cheap and on sale. That is not the case and prices are probably just as high as regular stores or even higher.

Shoppers are not as stupid as the mall owners believe. No wonder why this mall isn't doing so well.

While there are a few outlet stores, it seems like the rest of the mall has normal non-outlet stores. Surely this mall has something else to attract customers? Is there a theater, ice rink, bookstore, arcade? Mall owners these days have forgotten what brings in the customers. People want variety. There needs to be something for the adults, something for the kids, something for the teens, and some entertainment that appeals to everyone. While the parents shop you should be able to drop off the kids at the theater, ice rink, arcade, or Chuck E Cheese's.

Restaurants are very important. People want a food court with lots of variety and good restaurants. If the food court is that terrible, customers will simply choose a better mall to shop at.

You've got to have all of the popular places to eat at. You need Starbucks, Panera Bread, Subway, frozen yogurt, ice cream, pretzels. The mall needs to bring in some big name restaurants that are always popular such as Olive Garden, Applebee's, Claim Jumpers, etc. The mall should seriously consider trying to lure In N Out Burger, Sonic, Krispy Kreme, Habit Burger, or some other very popular fast food places to occupy the parking lot. Those places bring in the traffic and can really increase customer counts.

So many malls neglect the overall feel of the mall. No one wants to spend time in a creepy mall that looks like a vacant warehouse. There needs to be comfortable seating areas. There should be couches, lounges, carpeting, etc. to make people feel at ease. When you shop all day you want a nice cozy place to sit and relax. People don't want to sit under the harsh lighting surrounded by concrete benches and industrial floors.

There are actually a number of restaurants on the perimeter of the mall (Red Robin, IHOP, McDonald's, Burger King) as well as a cinema and a Walmart Supercenter (which opened a couple of years ago and replaced a smaller Walmart that opened with the mall,) but the problem is that for most people there isn't much reason for them to actually go inside. Even if it was fully occupied the food court here is still very small compared to the food courts at places like Southcenter and Alderwood. Not that a food court is always a necessity (Bellevue Square doesn't have one at all, and the Tulalip outlet mall has an even smaller one than this) but a food court isn't something you want half-baked like this.

As for the mall itself, there used to be a lot more interesting smaller stores inside (places that sell odd collectibles and things like that which could be interesting to browse through every so often) but it seems most of these got closed down in the transition from Supermall to Outlet Collection, presumably in an effort to appear more upscale. I haven't been by in a while, but I suspect most of these vacated spaces are going to be vacant for a while.

I actually think that the interior of the Supermall is reasonably nice compared to some places (although I've only been there in daylight) but the whole place feels like it ended up being about twice as big as it really needed to be, which gives the sense of delusions of grandeur that never panned out.

[VibeGuy]

As hard as it may be to believe, the currenet state is an upgrade. Coach, Nike and that entire corner are all new. They also built out the "cut through" where H&M is, that ends in the new food court - previously, it was a racetrack oval with no official path from one side directly to another.

The food court used to be inline, where the "premium outlets" are now, and it used to be an actual outlet mall; Corning-Revere, a HUGE Mikasa, Pfaltzgraff, Harry and David and a bunch of outlet mall staples used to be there. The entire concept was that they had both factory outlets and traditional off-price retailers (Burlington, Bed Bath & Beyond, Nordstrom Rack, Gart Sports) with interior access.

Around 2002ish, the "real" outlets started disappearing, and *really* shitty local operators started moving in. The food court started to die and vacancy was >40% at the nadir. A lot of the spaces became things like "bouncy house playspace" or were used for one-time clearance events (Brooks Sports did a huge warehouse cleanout event there). It was really, really, really grim.

The new food court is pretty good-looking and the new store adds are nice enough (very small Nike Factory Store, though - seems much smaller than the nearby North Bend or Tulalip locations), but they've got a long way to go to make this a great center again.

[Super S]

I did notice the various restaurants on the outparcels, as well as the Walmart.

However, outparcel businesses do not mean that the mall itself is doing well. A good example of that is Kelso's three Rivers Mall, which has Target, Safeway, Red Lobster, Izzy's Pizza, Pier 1, a cinema, and a couple of hotels as outparcels. Yet the mall itself has two empty anchor spaces, only one business left in the food court inside, and is about half vacant.

There is no excuse for a mall as big as Outlet Collection to have such a small food court selection though.

I have found it interesting that indoor malls are struggling so much in the Pacific Northwest when you consider how much rain we get around here. Malls serve an important role as a safe place to walk when the weather is lousy outside. But then again, it isn't so surprising given the state of the economy in some areas, such as Longview-Kelso, where the Three Rivers Mall is located.

[Brian Lutz]

It's not that indoor malls are necessarily struggling here (Southcenter, Alderwood, Bellevue Square and Northgate all seem to be doing just fine,) it's the second-tier malls like Factoria, Everett Mall and the like that have had issues with long-term vacancies (and Totem Lake is still basically a dead mall, even though they have filled some of the long-term vacancies with apparently stable stores.)