The new American shopping mall is less Macy's, more church, bowling, bookstore

I'm in love with how the foreclosed-upon, near-dead, anchorless Lloyd Center mall in Portland OR has been chaotically and ad-hoc reclaimed for weird retail, art installations and semi-performance participatory art

The city keeps trying and failing to figure out ways to destroy the mall, previously for a boondoggle MLB expansion stadium, currently for a LiveNation venue that's slowly spawning a protest movement against non-local venue management. In turn, the mall's rents have dropped such that the artists who used to haunt Central Eastside warehouses have started renting spaces for pop-up galleries and interactive installations, and niche crafters (an off-brand lightsaber store, for instance, and a pinball arcade) have moved in longer-term. There's an 80s-themed exercise group who revived mall-walking. Something like 60 small businesses taking advantage of the low rents.

had the pleasure of attending Crowd Supply’s Teardown 2025 conference and it was in the old Gap in the Lloyd Center. kind of surreal but incredibly fun place to have a small conference!

I don't have links handy but afaik this was the original idea of early malls, like an enclosed town center that could handle various needs.

> more church

Do you also have cemeteries in the shopping mall ?