Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by jamcool »

It would be cheaper to tear down the mall and build something else
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by storewanderer »

I am struggling a little- what is the danger in an indoor mall? The indoor malls are usually wide spaces with very high ceilings and what appears to be ample open space for people when they are in the mall. These indoor malls are not packing people in shoulder to shoulder or even close to that at this point.

If anything it seems like the shops and stores that tend to be small and without much space between people would be more of a danger if too many people got inside at once.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by Alpha8472 »

Indoor malls seem to be a low risk place. The spaces are wide enough that people can space themselves apart. This is just killing retail and restaurants.

Since the mall stores are closed, it forces people to shop at Walmart, Target, or dollar Stores. The real danger is in a crowded store such as Walmart or dollar Stores.

The theory is that by closing malls, it will make more people stay at home. I think people are tired of being at home and they are going to shop anyway. Now they will crowd Walmart and dollar stores. This will spread coronavirus even more.

Perhaps the bar closure thing makes sense. At bars, people are unmasked and drinking in close quarters. Those indoor places should not be open. If a bar were outdoors, maybe it would be ok.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by buckguy »

I don't think anyone is forced to do much of anything---online shopping and and anchor stores being open mean that people have options.

Malls have been dying for about the last 25 years---the business model ultimately will work for only a small number of malls even in large metro areas. The last generation of new retail businesses has gone almost exclusively to big box and lifestyle complexes---whether it's higher end boutique-ish or lower end off-price or "category killer". The mall business model came to discourage all but a narrow range of stores a long time ago. As traffic declined, the willingness to pay common area fees became a barrier to entry and now they retrofit malls with stores that only open outward--at least those places can do contactless delivery and other things that adapt to the pandemic---even before the pandemic, that seemed to be where restaurants often went. Because many inline mall stores are small and you'd still need to regulate entry/exit, labor costs become an issue esp. for slack periods. The ventilation systems in the average mall are decades old and concern about recirculation of air keeps coming up as an issue for people returning to office buildings---with and without open floor plans. Relative to other advanced economies, the US has an oversupply of retail space and so a white elephant retail model like indoor malls can easily disappear. It's much easier to revive a strip mall or a traditional urban shopping area because it can happen gradually and respond to changing local needs----I've watched the revival of numerous DC neighborhoods and the evolution of a major corridor in the 'burbs where I worked. The major barrier is raising rents and pushing out local business, although I suspect the pandemic will mitigate that. One of the problems with malls is that once they go in to decline it seems to become a death spiral.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by SamSpade »

New York state required new air filtration be installed for malls to reopen.
Then, despite phase 4 starting Monday, Staten Island's mall was told "no."
https://www.silive.com/coronavirus/2020 ... ening.html

Their stores that have exterior entrances/exits have been allowed to operate, though.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by Alpha8472 »

The hepa filters on air conditioners can filter out viruses and the air is so clean it is hospital grade sterile air. The risk of infection is drastically reduced. Indoor malls can be very safe if they have these filters.

Some mall stores have back doors. Perhaps if they could open up those back doors and reconfigure, they could be allowed to open.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by storewanderer »

In my area it seems like business at restaurants is falling (they are still open here), but business seems to be spiking again at fast food places and at the grocery stores. It is very noticeable this increased activity. I watched a few fast food drive throughs tonight for 10-15 minutes and they seem to be moving very, very slowly. So they may not be as busy as they look.

I don't know what the malls are going to do. I think it is time to demolish them and put up more housing or something. Great moves by the malls to have a lousy store mix. They should just go over to Vancouver and take a look at the store mix in the malls there to get an idea of what to do. Those malls still have fruit stores, bakeries, almost all have a dollar store (either Dollarama or Dollar Tree), there is the obligatory Tim Horton's too; sure they all have some teen clothing stores but not like in the US where some malls that is all it feels like there is. Also noticed many malls in Canada have furniture stores. US malls (and US department store operators) dug their grave in focusing on "high margin soft goods" and dumping hard goods and mall owners increasing rent too much so it was tough for consumables operators to survive in the mall. Too bad.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by Alpha8472 »

Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California is closed for indoor shopping like all the indoor malls in the state. The only store open for indoor shopping is JCPenney. Sears never reopened and Macy's shut its doors. The few stores that are doing curbside pickup are doing pickup in a dark parking garage. This is not attracting much business. What needs to be done do save indoor malls? Perhaps they should knock down some walls and declare themselves an outdoor mall.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by pseudo3d »

Alpha8472 wrote: July 25th, 2020, 11:29 am Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California is closed for indoor shopping like all the indoor malls in the state. The only store open for indoor shopping is JCPenney. Sears never reopened and Macy's shut its doors. The few stores that are doing curbside pickup are doing pickup in a dark parking garage. This is not attracting much business. What needs to be done do save indoor malls? Perhaps they should knock down some walls and declare themselves an outdoor mall.
What, if anything, will an outdoor mall really change? Outdoor malls need tenants to sign on. Remember in 2004-2007, how the "big thing" was the "lifestyle center"? Nearly every dead mall got some sort of "redevelopment" plan. And then very few of them actually panned out because you need tenants...tenants that could just as easily go into an indoor mall.
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Re: Indoor Vs. Outdoor Malls & Restaurants

Post by Brian Lutz »

This past weekend I was at the Shops at South Town (formerly Southtowne Mall) in Sandy UT, and the mall seemed to be operating more or less normally, and seemed to be doing plenty of business. Almost everyone was wearing masks and distancing as appropriate, and a number of the smaller stores (places like Hollister, PacSun, etc.) had lines outside to enforce capacity limits. The Round 1 arcade also seemed to be operating more or less normally, although it wasn't all that crowded in there. There isn't a movie theater in the mall, but my understanding is that the theaters in Utah are also up and running with capacity limits and showing older films until new releases start again.

There seems to be a distinct difference in how different states and regions are handling this. Some states seem to be trying to find ways to keep things running and also keep things safe at the same time, which seems to be the category Utah is in. In other places they just don't seem to care (Northern Idaho seems to be this way, and anti-mask sentiment seems to be prevalent there.) And then there's the places (mostly the west coast states) that seem to be doing the bare minimum reopening that they can get away with, and even that seems to be under the constant threat of returning to full shutdown. For example, in Washington indoor entertainment centers such as arcades and bowling alleys are not being permitted to reopen until phase 4, and a fair number have already closed permanently since the expectation seems to be that they will remain shut down for at least another 6 months if not more. I haven't been inside Alderwood under the current phase 2 restrictions (I have been outside and seen that they have a large curbside pickup area), but I have been to the Tulalip outlet mall (which is an outdoor one) and even there a lot of stores haven't reopened or have queues. I can't imagine an indoor mall would be any different, aside from possibly having to enforce a capacity limit for the entire structure.
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