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Comment by codingdave | Hacker News Reader

It could be a whole new flavor for YC or other incubators - don't come to SF and fight to find housing... come to the new Coding Mall - offices are in the East Wing, apartment in the West Wing, demos and sales kiosks in the former Sears, VC offices in the former JC Penney, and everyone meets up in the food court (which is still running, btw, to keep everyone fed) for informal discussions.

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I was in Cleveland over the weekend and got a quick tour from the director of small business development. They turned one of their Arcades (malls) into a small business incubator. It made for a quirky shopping experience. There was a peanut cookie shop next to a handmade bow-tie store. Parts of it felt like walking through Etsy. The tour concluded with several business that had spun off into their own locations. It seemed like a great use of a historic space that from the sound of it was full of run down tourist trap stores.

Which mall was this? Randall? Parmatown? Tower City? Arcade sounds like one of the old downtown ones....

It's probably the 5th Street Arcades https://www.5thstreetarcades.com/

It's really a fantastic space, and it was basically empty just a few short years ago.

That said, its model is not necessarily a solution to suburban mall decay, as it was already part of a dense downtown with a growing residential population and a captive workday population that often uses the arcades as a walkway between Euclid and Prospect.

Many malls will never recover as the US simply has too much retail square footage. Along with that, they're not so great with property tax efficiency, where historic main street districts easily outperform them. There's a Strong Towns article out there somewhere about the subject (probably this one: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/23/bon-ton-gone)

It is facinating how the shopping mall model from 70/80s has been on a decline for the last 20 years: https://www.economist.com/node/10278717

I think it is this one: http://www.flashstarts.com/ Looks like it is near Tower City

I'm not sure I'd want to live in an old mall, but I could see them being purposed for office space. Parking is already taken care of, and most have bus routes already in place. The existing food court would be ready for new tenants. Other types of tenants could fill where other retail (e.g. clothing, toys) once occupied, such as a gym/fitness company, FedEx/UPS offices, office supply stores, etc.

Yep, never understood why they don’t convert malls into office spaces. Then again, in the Bay Area (at least South Bay) there are TONS of empty office buildings for rent. I’m guessing that they all just want too much. Maybe it’s a zoning thing with the malls? Seems like they could do it with the one in Cupertino. For being Silicon Valley, sometimes this place really fails to impress with innovations like that. Instead, we have scooter startups.

Sometimes malls are converted to office space. According to the documentary, Making of Riven, Cyan repurposed a strip mall as office space while they were waiting for the construction of a real office. They originally started out in some guy's garage after finishing Myst and crammed 12 people in there, then moved into the strip mall -- which they said was "like heaven" by comparison, but they didn't just stay in the strip mall because it was still too small for all the staff they wanted to bring on.

Some malls just make everything bigger spaces and have them accessible from the outside - basically converting to a hybrid shopping center / mall.

In Indianapolis, one defunct mall was turned into datacenter space [0]... so you could have it all in one place.

[0] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/10/30/lifel...

Rackspace's HQ in San Antonio, Texas was an old mall.

https://blog.rackspace.com/get-an-inside-look-at-the-rackspa...

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rac...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzXDRBp68W4

Unfortunately, converting that mall has has done nothing for the local area. It's minimal jobs and still a blighted area. birds eye view: https://binged.it/2y6nRsi

crazy guys video, it still mostly looks like this: https://youtu.be/xkHcWDNn_4Q

Arcology!

I'm so glad we opted for the William Gibson distopian future. A Mad Max apolocalyptic hellscape would have been terrible for my skin.

Except instead of a bunch of bright lights and shady characters, there’s a Bowlmor, Coldstone, and a kind of neat eye glasses store. No offices or living spaces YET, but “luxury” (overpriced) apartments and townhouses are just down the street.

Zoning makes this prohibitive in most of America unfortunately

Zoning is a matter of negotiation with the city council. If you are going to bring literally dozens of new employers and hundreds of jobs to a struggling smaller town, and revitalize their old mall, I can just about guarantee they will cooperate, including developing a new zone just for the project if needed.

It's not that easy. Having highly restrictive zoning that makes this sort of thing a big pain in the but is going to be a fairly good indicator of whether or not the government has a "we tell you what to do, you don't negotiate with us" type of attitude.

I'd be surprised if it's not that easy in most jurisdictions. Failing/empty malls are a huge waste of space and an eyesore. I can't imagine a city council not jumping at the opportunity to turn one around even if it meant leasing some of it as office space.

If you're dealing with a struggling smaller town, as codingdave said, and they take that attitude, well, there's another struggling smaller town right next door...

Finland tends to have very restrictive zoning, but they still managed to turn old public hospital stone throw away from city center to startup office space (https://maria.io/). I'm sure there are some local governments where they don't want something like that (likely with attitude similar to "we don't want any changes"), but generally speaking things that bring jobs & capital are very welcome almost everywhere.

They could go the Uber route and completely ignore all laws and regulations and get away with it somehow.

Welcome to the "office". Your workday will consist of 7 hours 59 minutes of accounting spreadsheets, and 1 minute of rearranging these gumballs on display next to the entrance. If anyone asks, you work at a gumball store :)

Perfect match for WeWork

Love too live in the VC mall, "The Company Town, But Tech!™".

Yeah convenient as having your residence, work, and some shopping in one building would be, it's got paid-in-scrip written all over it. Also where do you meet new people? Where do you go on dates? Malls are rarely walkable from other places.

See: any big-tech corporate campus

See Rackspace’s offices.

I would move into such place.

Living in such place I would be plagued by zombie attack nightmares...

Not to worry. The real zombies are the people who used to shop there. Now they’re at home, clicking on the apps you’ll build for them.

Just hire Ving Rhames to provide security. Problem solved.

Station F with apartments?

That’s a great idea.

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