Tear Down That Mall

A couple of years ago, in a bid to make fun of 1980s cheesiness, CBS's "How I Met Your Mother" featured a music video called "Let's Go to the Mall." Its main target was the horrible fashion sense of that lost decade, but it was a critique of something else, too. Because the song was set in and about a mall, it subsequently ripped teeny-bop culture and the North American impulse toward consumer escapism.

It's hard to figure out what's changed about malls since then. Malls are a testament to the kind of consumer thinking that got us into the recessionary mess we're in today, after all. And that's why we need to close every single one of them.

Already, malls are in a considerable amount of trouble. Shopping centers on the block are selling for 25 to 35 percent less than they did a year ago. Retail vacancies are on the rise; nationally, 6.6 percent of stores were empty in the third quarter of 2008, a 20 percent increase over the same quarter last year and the highest rate since 2002. Much of the pain is interwoven with the retail sector, where analysts estimate 148,000 stores will have been closed in 2008.

And it will only get worse. Mall stalwarts like KB Toys, Steve & Barry's, and Linens 'N Things are all closing. The recession is expected to rage through 2009, and retail chains will probably be looking at dismal holiday numbers. A mall's chief purpose these days is to be there come the holidays. Now that we're beyond that season, many stores will need to shutter in the new year.

Every store that closes has an impact on the shops left behind. Fewer stores means less foot traffic; less foot traffic means less window shopping; less window shopping means fewer impulse buys. It's a positive-feedback loop that, for malls, is actually negative.

Thus, several of the biggest American mall owners are fighting to stave off bankruptcy as bad bets in real estate have weighed down their ledgers. But, just like with cash-starved families looking to sell their homes, buyers will now only purchase malls for a lowered price since the industry's outlook is so bleak. This would entail huge losses for the mall owners, so they continue to balk. At some point, though, something has to give.

And when it does, there's going to be major consolidation in the industry. Our current economic state is simply not able to sustain so many meccas of merchandise. Some malls will likely close as fewer and fewer chains are willing to spread themselves so thin. Because, really, if Starbucks isn't expanding, then nobody else is, either.

But why just consolidate? Let's close them all. I'm not saying that all of their tenants should close. Instead, the stores that once filled the malls should go and fill other empty storefronts dispersed across the city. Call it the great chain-store diaspora.

To realize just how outdated malls are, let's think of the few benefits they offered in the first place.

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