This is what many of America's malls
look like today:
empty,
eerie,
dead.
And while the pandemic has most people
avoiding indoor gathering spaces,
social distancing is not what emptied out the mall.
This footage is from 2018.
For decades, the mall was both an economic and social hub.
And for many, a way of life.
Now, many malls in the United States
have either collapsed or are on the verge.
So, how did we go from this
to this?
The story of the mall begins in the 1950s,
when America was experiencing
an unprecedented economic boom.
The middle class had more money to spend than ever before,
and they were spending it on houses and cars.
Along with this came Eisenhower's Federal-Aid Highway Act,
which meant that people could drive
to their jobs in the cities
while living in a new kind of development,
the suburbs.
Suburban populations rose astronomically,
but they lacked what sociologist Ray Oldenburg called
"third places."
Under this model, home is the first place,
where you live.
The second place is the workplace.
And third places are the vital spaces
where people go to exchange ideas,
form relationships, and create communities.
This could be a park, a bar,
or, in today's times, social-media platforms.
In other words, the third place is a place to hang out.
Enter Victor Gruen, a man who would later become
the "king of retail" for the era.
Gruen, who ironically was a staunch socialist,
had already made a name for himself in America
designing boutique shops and storefronts,
but now wanted to create something far more ambitious,
an indoor downtown.
In what would prove to be his boldest
and most enduring project yet,
Gruen set about designing the mall.
On October 8, 1956, America's first indoor mall,
the Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota,
opened its doors.
Like no building ever constructed before,
the Southdale Center not only had shops,
but fountains, art installations,
a bird sanctuary, and a sprawling courtyard,
all within a single indoor complex.
The mall received mostly rave reviews,
deeming it an attraction on par with Disneyland,
which had just opened a year earlier, in 1955.
Walt Disney himself even cited Gruen
as his main influence for the ideas behind Epcot.
With Southdale all over the news,
everyone wanted to go to the mall.
Malls began springing up in every American suburb,
along with large shopping-center-mall hybrids
and everything in between.
By 1960, just four years after Gruen's first mall,
there were 4,500 large shopping complexes
in the United States,
which averages to at least
three new shopping centers opening every day.
By 1975, malls and shopping centers
accounted for 33% of all retail sales in America.
But Gruen's utopian vision for the mall
had not been realized.
Cheap food courts were installed
where courtyards were supposed to be.
Instead of cosmopolitan communities,
developers often surrounded malls with enormous parking lots
and suburban housing projects,
exactly what Gruen was trying to thwart.
Whereas the mall was designed to be the communal remedy
for suburban individualism,
it instead became its most potent catalyst.
Clip: It's Mall Madness!
The new shop-till-you-drop game that really talks!
Narrator: In the 1980s began the mall's golden age.
Rat: I hate working the theater.
All the action is on the other side of the mall.
Narrator: Shopping complexes continued
to build at a rate of over 1,000 per year.
And in 1986, Consumer Reports named the shopping mall,
alongside the birth-control pill,
antibiotics, and the personal computer,
one of the top 50 wonders
that has revolutionized the lives of consumers.
Movies, board games, and even concert tours
all centered around the mall.
'80s teenagers even looked at the mall
as a place to which they could escape and socialize,
as was epitomized in the cult-classic movie "Mallrats."
Brodie: I love the smell of commerce in the morning!
Narrator: The American mall would reach its peak
in 1992 with its final evolution:
the mega-mall.
Fittingly in the same state as America's first mall,
the Mall of America, in Bloomington, Minnesota,
spans a whopping 5.6 million square feet
with over 500 stores, a theme park with 27 rides,
an aquarium, a wedding chapel, and a movie theater.
The mega-mall was immensely profitable.
Reports showed that consumers were 50%
more likely to buy something
at an attraction-filled mega-mall
than at a regular mall,
leading to several more mega-malls
being built across the 50 states.
But mega-malls' gargantuan size
coupled with an unsustainable rate of construction
would lead to the collapse of the mall itself.
Although thousands of malls
of all different shapes and sizes
were built in the latter half of the 20th century,
the basic mall layout had remained the same since 1956.
Two large department stores at either end,
connected by smaller shops in between.
The bookending department stores are known as anchor stores
and serve as the main attractions for the rest of the mall.
With so many malls being built
in close proximity to one another,
the newer malls would often poach the department stores
from the older ones nearby.
Stores like Macy's or Sears would relocate to bigger,
more popular roller-coaster-riding mall locations.
And the older malls, without their anchors,
would be left to drift away and drown.
As the 2000s progressed, consumer habits
shifted away from the department store altogether.
Macy's, for instance,
has been steadily closing stores since 2005,
most of them in malls.
Department-store-sized vacancies are difficult to refill,
and with other, better malls often nearby,
there's little that can be done to save a failing mall,
which is why hundreds of malls
have already been pronounced dead.
The "dead mall" has even become its own aesthetic,
capturing the imaginations
of several internet photographers and filmmakers.
A 2017 Credit Suisse report estimated
that one in four US malls would close by 2022.
As foot traffic declined, developers believed
the future of the mall to be less about shopping
and more about the extravagant experiences
offered by the biggest mega-malls:
bowling alleys, laser tag, go-karts, and other activities
that could only be found outside the house.
Investors were hopeful that this would be achieved
with the creation of the American Dream mega-mall
in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Opened in 2019, this behemoth houses not only a theme park,
but also a water park, an ice rink,
and an indoor skiing complex.
But in a world of social distancing,
even America's most spectacular malls are floundering.
As of June 2020, the Mall of America was unable
to meet its billion-dollar mortgage payments
for the second straight month.
And the American Dream had laid off 100 employees.
Will malls ever recover
their mainstay status in American culture?
Or will we look to new types of third places
in our post-pandemic future?
Only time will tell, but one thing is certain:
There is plenty of space for something new.
We reached out to the Mall of America
and the American Dream mega-mall
but received no response.