07-14-2017, 03:23 AM
Largely moved from a thread likely to duplicate this one.
On the old Howe and Strauss forums there was a thread on Dead Malls, one-site shopping for seemingly everything that a middle-class (in the day, largely white) family wanted. Shopping malls were glitzy, high-maintenance environments that offered large department stores (including the now-defunct Montgomery-Ward and Mervyn's) as well as some regional chains that got bought out (in Michigan, Marshall-Field bought out Hudson's, and Macy's bought out Marshall-Field). We now have Sears and J C Penney on life-support, with many of their stores closing as the chains approach what looks like the end.
High-maintenance is fine if one has the means. When the first shopping malls were built for the (white) middle class (and back then the middle class was almost exclusively white), suburban shoppers still paying at most modest rents or having mortgage payments whose value was already gutted by inflation could be free spenders by current standards. Parents went to the traditional department stores and kids chose to go as quickly as possible to boutique-like stores. One paid full retail in those boutiques, whether for books, records, specialized clothing, toys, or hobby kits. This could allow for higher property taxes and the cost of air conditioning and heating for the owners.
It's easy to blame politicians for the decline in relative earnings for most Americans (since about 1980 the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer, which means that the middle class that could spend freely on clothing, books, entertainment software, and crafts can no longer do so. There is rent to pay and of course the highest-cost system of medical payments in the world.
Yes, the mall lost its thrill. Some declined earlier as the local demographics changed, some of the earliest suburban malls dying even in the 1970s. (Think of Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, the defunct mall through which Dan Akroyd and the late James Belushi drive a car in 1980 in The Blues Brothers. The mall was closed in 1979). But that mall was in a poor location with respect to highways, and it was in an area that declined rapidly due to demographic change. Poor people replaced the middle class in Harvey, and the mall died.
The traditional department store had its problems, largely an aging clientele. At one point I remember on an educational TV program in the 1980s that the typical customer of a traditional department store was 59 -- then borderline between the GI and Silent generations. A business model that depends upon an elderly clientele not replenishing itself with new elderly customers is in deep trouble. The typical customer of the time is now in the early 90s and is generally not a reliable customer.
Here is a link to Dead Malls Note that it has been little upgraded in ten years. There are YouTube videos on dead malls, but beware: those videos can be depressing.
Here's a story on a shopping mall that I remember when it was new back in the 1980s -- and it is dying:
Collin Creek Mall, Plano, Texas
(I haven't been in Greater Dallas for twenty-five years). But this mall is thirty years old, and it is most likely fully depreciated in view of IRS regulations for tax accounting).
I worked for Dillard's Department Stores for a couple of years until ulcers made me resign; around 1980 one was a perfect applicant for a job out of college or one had to settle for something near minimum wage
(Dillard's seems to be thriving, but it was a horrible place to work, one in which employees were expected to participate in cut-throat competition to survive there even if they were paid starvation wages. Cheap swipe at a former employer now that it no longer matters).
(I lived in the greater Dallas area back then, and for good reason I try to avoid describing where I now live).
...Not one enclosed mall has been built since 2006, probably reflecting the economic realities of retailing even before the Little Depression of ten years ago, and it won't be until the 2050s at the least before any equivalent of the shopping mall reappears in America as a significant reality in shopping and real estate.
The next time that the generational constellation has people on the cusp between a Civic and an Adaptive generation at age 30 will be at least fifteen years from now, when people of such age have largely forgotten what "Sears" and "J C Penney" were. Maybe we will also have decentralized the economic opportunities more and we will have vastly reformed the business of medicine.
On the old Howe and Strauss forums there was a thread on Dead Malls, one-site shopping for seemingly everything that a middle-class (in the day, largely white) family wanted. Shopping malls were glitzy, high-maintenance environments that offered large department stores (including the now-defunct Montgomery-Ward and Mervyn's) as well as some regional chains that got bought out (in Michigan, Marshall-Field bought out Hudson's, and Macy's bought out Marshall-Field). We now have Sears and J C Penney on life-support, with many of their stores closing as the chains approach what looks like the end.
High-maintenance is fine if one has the means. When the first shopping malls were built for the (white) middle class (and back then the middle class was almost exclusively white), suburban shoppers still paying at most modest rents or having mortgage payments whose value was already gutted by inflation could be free spenders by current standards. Parents went to the traditional department stores and kids chose to go as quickly as possible to boutique-like stores. One paid full retail in those boutiques, whether for books, records, specialized clothing, toys, or hobby kits. This could allow for higher property taxes and the cost of air conditioning and heating for the owners.
It's easy to blame politicians for the decline in relative earnings for most Americans (since about 1980 the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer, which means that the middle class that could spend freely on clothing, books, entertainment software, and crafts can no longer do so. There is rent to pay and of course the highest-cost system of medical payments in the world.
Yes, the mall lost its thrill. Some declined earlier as the local demographics changed, some of the earliest suburban malls dying even in the 1970s. (Think of Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois, the defunct mall through which Dan Akroyd and the late James Belushi drive a car in 1980 in The Blues Brothers. The mall was closed in 1979). But that mall was in a poor location with respect to highways, and it was in an area that declined rapidly due to demographic change. Poor people replaced the middle class in Harvey, and the mall died.
The traditional department store had its problems, largely an aging clientele. At one point I remember on an educational TV program in the 1980s that the typical customer of a traditional department store was 59 -- then borderline between the GI and Silent generations. A business model that depends upon an elderly clientele not replenishing itself with new elderly customers is in deep trouble. The typical customer of the time is now in the early 90s and is generally not a reliable customer.
Here is a link to Dead Malls Note that it has been little upgraded in ten years. There are YouTube videos on dead malls, but beware: those videos can be depressing.
Here's a story on a shopping mall that I remember when it was new back in the 1980s -- and it is dying:
Collin Creek Mall, Plano, Texas
(I haven't been in Greater Dallas for twenty-five years). But this mall is thirty years old, and it is most likely fully depreciated in view of IRS regulations for tax accounting).
I worked for Dillard's Department Stores for a couple of years until ulcers made me resign; around 1980 one was a perfect applicant for a job out of college or one had to settle for something near minimum wage
(Dillard's seems to be thriving, but it was a horrible place to work, one in which employees were expected to participate in cut-throat competition to survive there even if they were paid starvation wages. Cheap swipe at a former employer now that it no longer matters).
(I lived in the greater Dallas area back then, and for good reason I try to avoid describing where I now live).
...Not one enclosed mall has been built since 2006, probably reflecting the economic realities of retailing even before the Little Depression of ten years ago, and it won't be until the 2050s at the least before any equivalent of the shopping mall reappears in America as a significant reality in shopping and real estate.
The next time that the generational constellation has people on the cusp between a Civic and an Adaptive generation at age 30 will be at least fifteen years from now, when people of such age have largely forgotten what "Sears" and "J C Penney" were. Maybe we will also have decentralized the economic opportunities more and we will have vastly reformed the business of medicine.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.