While malls haven't quite crawled into the grave yet, they're far from the cultural mecca they used to be.
Anyone over 40 remembers going to the mall as an event, potentially a place where you hung out with friends on the weekends before you turned 18. We'd wander through Waldenbooks looking for the next great Stephen King book, go browse through Gadzooks or Spencer's for fun, and end up at Orange Julius for a smoothie break in the food court.
Today most of those stores are gone from our local malls, and while some perfectly good ones have taken their place, the mall has lost that cultural sparkle it had back then.
While many have speculated on the reasons why this happened, one obvious one towers above them all: the advent of online shopping, and most specifically, Amazon (AMZN). First, you could get what you needed without driving to the mall at all. Then, once Amazon came on the scene with Prime, you could get what you needed really, really fast.
When the pandemic hit, it took down many a mall that was limping to get by in the first place. So many malls died that people began to document their downfalls, and it seemed as if covid might be the thing to push malls off life support for good.
The Silver Lining of the Pandemic For Malls
However, covid did bring one good thing when it came to any form of social activity: it forced people to give it up and therefore miss it. By the time vaccines got into full swing and people felt comfortable enough to go out in public masked, the idea of going to the mall felt not only appealing, but delightful.
However, now malls face a new foe as inflation woes and recessions fears loom large. When back to school time rolls around, usually they see a boost -- but that's not the case this year.
According to a new report from Placer.ai, visits across all mall types were down in June and July, including indoor, open-air, and outlet malls. The trend is continuing into August as well.
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Department stores took the biggest hit of all, with overall August visits down 11.3% from 2021, while open-air malls took the smallest hit with 2.3% less visits than the year before.
While this looks grim for the future of malls at first, all is not lost according to the report.
"On the week beginning August 22nd, indoor malls and open-air lifestyle centers had their strongest week compared to 2021 since the week beginning June 27th, with visits to open-air lifestyle centers up 3.0% YoY. Outlet Centers – which saw visits down just 0.5% that week – showed its strongest YoY performance since the week beginning April 18th," it reads.
Some of that traffic may have been driven by back to school shoppers, but Placer.ai thinks it's the beginning of an uptick for the shopping centers.
"The sector could be en route to a recovery from the unique effects of the economic headwinds that have limited retail performance in 2022," the report says. "The timing, ahead of a critical holiday retail season, could mean that malls and their tenants end 2022 on a high."
