Shopping Malls Were Dying Before COVID-19. Imagine Them Post-Pandemic
The Great American Mall. Most of us know it as the gleaming postmodern shopping temple of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, pillared by mighty department stores, where worshippers laid their wallets on the altar and prayed to the gods of capitalism. But amidst the retail apocalypse of the past decade, those malls have been slowly disappearing—a cultural death now hastened by the global pandemic. The COVID-19 economic crisis has curtailed consumer spending, and department stores are among the most devastated. The goal is simply to stay solvent, as Macy’s, J.C. Penney, Lord & Taylor, Nordstrom, and Neiman Marcus are all reportedly on the edge of bankruptcy (Sears already filed in 2018). And as real estate research firm Green Street Advisors explained to CNBC, if department stores start closing up shop, it could doom the malls they vacate as well. Read more at Fast Company.
I love [sarcasm] how all the articles about store closings rarely mention the ever-increasing wealth inequality that has greatly diminished the “middle class”, in other words the ability of most Americans to have the money to make discretionary purchases at the same scale possible 20-30 years ago. The economic crises have only exposed and worsened that.