25 Percent Of U.S. Malls Are Expected To Shut Within 5 Years. Giving Them A New Life Won’t Be Easy

What is going to happen to America’s dead malls? That’s a million-dollar question plaguing retailers and real estate developers. With a report circulating earlier this month that the biggest U.S. mall owner Simon Property Group has been in talks with Amazon to convert some shuttered Sears and J.C. Penney department stores into fulfillment centers, many industry analysts have been pontificating on the future of malls as logistics hubs. The consensus seems to be that turning old retail space into new warehouses might not be so easy, even though it might seem like a logical solution. Demand for logistics buildings is skyrocketing as e-commerce sales balloon. But the hurdles include the need to have properties rezoned, which could be met with pushback from local municipalities. Read more at CNBC.