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Comment by methodin | Hacker News Reader

I would have assumed malls were already on the out prior to COVID - I assume this is just accelerating the timeline? I think every mall the knew of growing up and in college is no more except for the largest (Kind of Prussia). Did your Malls usage also include stripmalls?

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FWIW, Franklin/Philadelphia Mills, Neshaminy, Moorestown, Plymouth Meeting, Cherry Hill & Deptford malls are all still open & have some overlap with shoppers in KOP's area.

There's nothing wrong with not knowing a lot of malls, but come on, you have to qualify your statement a little bit, because your comment doesn't make sense to me as someone who can drive to KOP and at least a half dozen of the other malls I've been to when I was younger.

I should have qualified that KOP was the largest mall I knew of which is why I called it out. I did forget about Springfield mall which is still alive I assume. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promenade_at_Granite_Run is turning into a classic shopping center which was my closest mall growing up. In Pittsburgh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_III_Mall is getting turn down, Ross Park Mall is declining and Robinson Town Center was half empty the last time I was there ~5 years ago. I can't speak to malls I didn't frequent.

Although "still open" isn't exactly saying much either on your end - how many stores are empty? Are they on the decline?

"Still open" was your criteria, not mine (as in when you said the other malls were "no more").

Fair enough, though I would say if these stores are on a spectrum tilting towards "barely open" or "on the decline" that it doesn't provide a useful counter-argument for the overall sentiment which is that malls are and have been dying. That being said I haven't been to any of the ones you've listed in my adult life so would have no idea their status.

I will concede that there are thriving malls in existence in the same way that stores that closed in one area of the country thrive in others. Not sure what that says towards malls as a whole but imagine it would trend to being viable in only a subset of the country.

Have a look at the chart a the bottom article. Looks it was going down about 5% per quarter during last year.

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