BACK IN 1888
I live in what, according to old photos and anecdotal reminiscences, was a vibrant downtown in a small city.
According to both sources, there were multiple movie theaters where there are now parking lots, small stores and store front churches; large m stores that have become college campuses and apartment buildings; and streets crowded with pedestrians where now the sidewalks are relatively empty.
Although experiencing a renaissance with boutiques, specialty restaurants, micro breweries, art spaces, and live performance venues, the downtown area had only been saved by stalwart artists and merchants who kept the main street from becoming a blocks long plywood village.
The down town area began with shops catering to the needs of the citizens with stores specializing in certain categories of products in multiple outlets. Overtime the convenience of selling these products in one location rather than multiple outlets created the general stores which grew into grocery stores and department stores, and the downtown area became a destination point that enjoyed the enhancements of restaurants, theaters, museums, and specialty stores.
This all ended when malls became the vogue and stores left the downtown area to gather with other stores in one convenient location. Multiple stores in multiple downtowns gathering in one location meant they left those downtowns, leaving their empty structures behind, taking the people and foot traffic shopping with them.
The loss of money from those who rented space for their downtown stores, the loss of taxes raised through property and sales tax, and the decrease in money being spent in the restaurants and specialty stores that benefited from the foot traffic brought death to what had been vibrant.
The mall killed downtown.
The peanut store whose aroma wafted through downtown is now only a memory shared.
Whether it’s through retail evolution or simply Karma, the malls are facing the fate of the dead and slowly resurrecting repurposed downtowns.
I recently listened to a radio interview in which the president of the mall owners’ association bemoaned the decline in mall shopping because of the convenience of sitting home, ordering products on line, and letting them come to you rather than you going to them. The convenience they had promised when the mall moved to town is giving way to the convenience of online shopping.
Sears had been ahead of the curve when it started doing this with catalog shopping, but lost out and gave into brick and mortar stores, but as malls die, so too do the Sears stores that used to anchor them.
Malls, like the old downtowns, are now filled with empty stores, stores that sell those specialty items not wanted by enough people to bring in enough income to pay the rent, and food courts that sell food that no one will want to bother riding there to buy.
Like the owners of downtown buildings, mall owners are now trying desperately to attract customers before they must find a way to repurpose the mall to avoid the financial loss.
What they did, the internet is now doing, the difference only being who is adversely being affected.
The mall owners want sympathy now for what is happening to them, sympathy they dismissed when killing downtown was the future of merchandizing they promised.
But, as with the malls ruining downtown, perhaps malls being killed off by online shopping is just the next step when it comes t buying things beyond the artisanal.