In 1956, consumer retail was revolutionized when the $20 million, 800,000-square-foot Southdale Center shopping mall opened in Edina, Minn. Its climate-controlled environment offered respite during the freezing Minnesota winter, a forum for bored teenagers, and bargains for savvy shoppers. It was the birth of the American shopping mall: a cultural institution that would extend across the country and define the country’s suburban landscape. While the modern shopper has evolved, the mall has not. No longer able to attract the traffic they once boasted, many malls in the U.S. are now struggling to fill floor space and falling into disrepair. Victims of online shopping, changing consumer tastes and, in some ways, their own success, a number of malls are now trapped in a swift decline. Now they’re referred to as “dead malls.” Many malls have succumbed to “demolition by neglect,” which refers to allowing a mall to sit without any form of maintenance, redevelopment, or filling in vacant spaces until they’re forced to be demolished. No new indoor malls have been built since 2006, and 15% of existing malls are expected to close their stores within the next 10 years.
