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Comment by macintux | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, but I’m not sure I buy it.

I certainly don’t think Simon is preparing for this massive economic shift; I think they’re reacting to an existing trend.

> America's largest mall operator, Simon Property Group, is converting anchor stores into medical centers and wellness spaces. They're doing this because they recognize the writing on the wall.

Malls have been dying for years, and COVID felt like the nail in the coffin.

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In October of 2023, when Walmart CEO told Bloomberg [0] that ozempic was partially responsible for sales declining, other shares including Coca-Cola [1] started to fall as well....

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20231006122607/https://www.bnnbl...

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/coca-cola-and-pepsicos-sto...

I think this is the appropriate response — it’s clear that lack of appetite control is driving purchases a nontrivial amount of the time for junk foods — companies that depend on that revenue have never really had a challenge until now

The large scale economic evidence in the article is as easily attributed to population growth and aging.

Malls around DC are crazier than ever. But I am not sure if people are spending money or not.

There are different classes of mall. In general those class A malls targeted at higher income stores and shoppers have been more resilient over the past decade than middle or lower. (Nordstrom vs Macy’s vs. Kmart)

I was last in NoVA in 2019 and shopped at the Sears at Landmark. It was the last store. Crazy=yes.

It's straight up miserable to be in mclean/tysons between october and february. Truly it is america's asshole. And yes, people conspicuously consume more than ever. I think this is likely not true of most malls, though, the shopping culture here is just nuts.

Because in a lot of places there is nothing else fun to do. There is in particular nothing to do for teenagers. They aren’t welcome at most places and the mall is about the only place where you can go and (a) not be run out of there and (b) not have your parents worried that you are getting up to no good. So teenagers grow up in the malls and as adults are habitually going back.

The Indianapolis metropolitan region used to have 4 major shopping malls, all owned at one time by Simon.

One was completely shut down in 2022 after years of decline, another lost all but one anchor and was auctioned off for unpaid property taxes.

COVID? I felt it was horror subgenre of the backrooms. which popularized the idea of liminal spaces, that sealed it's fate.

There were a lot of different things happening but COVID certainly cut out some straggling malls.

In general this was a correction. The US ranked first in 2018 for retail sq ft per capita at 23. To put this in context, the next highest country, Canada, had 16 sq ft per person, and most developed countries sit around 3-4 sq ft per person. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1058852/retail-space-per...

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