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Comment by Loughla | Hacker News Reader

I've spent the last 5 years arguing with one of the colleges that I consult with about just that. They are trying to grow their adult education/community education (think GED, ESL, and 'interest classes' like woodworking, cooking, etc).

I have said for at least 5 years they need to rent (cheap) the space in the nearly defunct mall. It's right in the middle of town, with multiple bus routes. It's within walking distance of the community housing where elderly/low income folks live. It's perfect.

But they won't go for it because "the optic of us living in a retail space is not good". That's a quote from one of the administrators.

I don't get it. Community/junior colleges could absolutely saturate that kind of space with community based and educational events.

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Community colleges in my area have been taking over and converting old and dying malls slowly.

The real issue is the issue everyone has these days. The rent is too high. What business does enough to justify giving the mall it's cut?

If you attract enough people your rent will be less. Attract people means someone comes to go to you and then visits other stores. If you can get husbands to go shopping with their wives (the sexism implied here is at least part based on reality, though I make no claim this example is the right thing to focus on)

and why is the rent so high? because land costs are too high (this can be addressed, simply open up more land to be developed until the price drops to near zero). as for building costs? these can come down too, with the right regulations/ and lack thereof, we can make it legal for lower cost options to arise.

Just opening up more land for development is not an easy solution.

Environmental problems aside, America's car culture is rather incompatible with this solution. Endless suburban expansion is what lead to the enormous traffic problems currently being faced in Los Angeles and Houston. My home state is well on its way to having this same unsolvable problem by the end of the decade.

If land is too cheap it will be bought and fenced off for speculative purposes. You must force people to actually use the land you have given them. An empty lot barely pays any property tax because there is no property on it.

Austin Community College has done this and it's amazing.

https://www.austincc.edu/campuses/highland-campus

I think there's a big difference between being in the mall, and acquiring a mall and gutting it. I didn't see the shopping center it was before, but the ACC building is really nice and looks like it was completely renovated from what it was previously.

Growing up middle class in the 80s and 90s in a midsized city about an hour north of Austin, Highland Mall was a prime destination for the back to school shopping trip. The presence of Banana Republic made it rather upscale to us hicks from Bell County, though The Gap was the real scene of teen girl vs mom drama.

I was mostly interested in it for the ice rink, though. An indoor ice rink was an exciting novelty in Central Texas at the time, and that was the only public one between San Antonio and Dallas when I was a kid.

That's correct. The space that ACC acquired previously looked exactly like a typical mall, and was probably built in the 60s or 70s.

I went to this mall for a New Year’s party when it was in the process of closing. Didn’t seem any different from any other of its age.

Sounds like they need to see new optics. How about a field trip to malls that have been converted?

Fight the good fight! Other comments are validating you, so keep on wearing 'em down.

They are probably right about the optics. Who would want to take, say, craft classes inside a dying building symbolizing the cons of modern life.

Personally, and for many family friends who live where I grew up, near a smallish mall that has been dead for over a decade: tons of people. We'd all love to see the space being used, rather than rotting slowly. There was a lot of community activity when it temporarily reopened for a few events and as an indoor walking space (in between events) several years ago.

edit: bulldozing it and putting something else in that place would also be fine, but that costs a fair bit. and really, even just having a big indoor walking space was quite popular, there were several meetups using it, lots of elderly walkers and readers, etc. it was nowhere near as popular as a Walmart of course, but it transformed into a pseudo-public space for a while and it made me realize that "indoor parks" are kinda not a thing, but maybe they should be. particularly in places with a lot of rain or cold.

that, and a big rotting building in the middle of town is rather unambiguously worse optics for the area than even small use. it inevitably gets covered in graffiti and damage, and even minor use prevents that a lot.

> it made me realize that "indoor parks" are kinda not a thing, but maybe they should be. particularly in places with a lot of rain or cold

Or heat.

A colocation space took over one of ours for a data center. It's nice inside, but the outside is still a dump, probably worse then before. It's an eyesore and there is no investment in the community or the area around the data center.

That's interesting. It makes sense of course -- the data center isn't selling to customers who come in via foot traffic, so why beautify the outside? A data center seems a bit interesting from a zoning point of view for that reason -- not incentivized to beautify; but not as bad as industrial, not a ton of possibly dangerous waste products...

I guess a not-actively-damaging source of tax revenue is always welcome in a town.

> so why beautify the outside?

Private investors could certainly choose to take a small hit to their return and take pride in how their investment looks from the outside. There's value in that.

Sure! It just isn't a core business need, unlike in the case of a mall.

The building isn't dying. The businesses that once occupied it are.

If you move into it, and have an active student body there every day, then it's not dead anymore, right? It's thriving with activity.

The people wanting to take craft classes are probably not going to ruminate over whether the classroom they're in was once a Foot Locker. I mean, as long as you aren't lazy about converting the space (i.e. take down the old signage and ditch the black and white stripes).

Look at the sibling comment to yours. There's a short video about Austin's CC. The place looks great!

Someone who is on a bus route that goes to the mall (typically, lots of routes will go to the mall, there may be a transit center there as well), or wants to take a class but not deal with the expense and congestion of college parking lots. Mall parking lots can be congested too, but when the mall is struggling to get tenants, their parking lots are mostly empty and easy to use.

Presumably, they'd fix it up so it's not a dying building -- and it wouldn't symbolize the cons of modern life anymore. It would symbolize building a future in more ways than one.

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