1283) The Dead Malls in the USA

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• published: 18 Jul 2014
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4) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen: It used to be when a sign at the mall read EVERYTHING MUST GO. These days it could mean the entire mall is shutting down. These are the _______________of a dying culture: the American shopping mall. "This was a working fountain, wasn't it? Many, many years ago?" It definitely was. I remember Worlds had been here and they brought the skating place." Audrey Caligiuri grew up outside of Toledo, "The mall was always the place to go," and like many of her generation, she spent much of her teenage years __________ ____ at the Mall. "It was always busy. I mean, you couldn't even get parking spots a lot here. I probably spent most of my ______________ in my high school years at JC Penney's and Petrie's." Audrey wasn't alone - everyone wanted to go to the mall. For half a century the mall was the Mecca of our booming consumer society, a fact celebrated in many a popular movie. America's love affair with shopping malls began in 1956, when the nation's first fully-enclosed mall, Southdale, opened its doors outside Minneapolis. "This was the most exciting period in this economy. Actually, the most explosive __________ anywhere on Earth at any time during history, the early '50s through the '70s. Robert Lewis is the author of "New Rules of Retail". "In the mid-'50s Dwight Eisenhower signed the Interstate Highway Act, and they constructed 54,000 miles of interstate highway. Now, what that did immediately is it provided mobility. So they began to move into the suburbs and cities. But also, what it _______________ was the ability to construct these regional malls, and they just exploded across the country." Between 1956 and 2005, about 1,500 malls were built, including the Mall of America, in Minnesota, one of the world's biggest -- 4.2 million square feet, 520 stores, an _______________ park and even a wedding chapel. It was a Golden Age of shopping, which lasted until a new Golden Age came along - __________________ of the Internet. "All of a sudden, the consumer now has every single retail store throughout the world a key tap away" Today, malls across the U.S. are dying. No new enclosed mall has been built since 2006, and Lewis predicts fully half of all our malls will close in the next 10 years. "Why would you get in your car and drive to a mall when you can just reach in your pocket?" "That's the point" But if the mall is dead how do you explain this? On the ________________ of Atlanta we found one formerly dying mall that's thriving. Where some saw financial ruin, Jose Legaspi saw opportunity. "The color, the items -- that's what brings people from a farm into this area." In 2005 he took over a struggling, _______________ mall and transformed it into Plaza Fiesta, designed specifically to meet the needs of an exploding Hispanic population. Legaspi has turned dead space into successful Hispanic malls in several cities with large immigrant communities. Looking to expand, he discovered the Hispanic population around of Atlanta had nearly _____ between 1990 and 2000. But one thing was missing. "Part of the culture of the Hispanic community is one family. There was not a place where the families could gather. And shopping doesn't just mean shoes and clothing or eating at a restaurant; but it's also a place where they can listen to music, sit down, relax, and spend some time with the family." Plaza Fiesta has 280 stores, but there's also a doctor's office, and a dentist. There are hairdressers, money-______________ services - everything you might find in a Mexican village. There's even a bus station to bring customers in; the mall had more than 4 million visitors last year. "It's more than one-stop shopping, it's a one-stop experience?" "It's a one-stop experience, absolutely." The strategy here: paying attention to a changing America, and give customers something they can't get at their computer. It may also the key to reinvention at other malls, in other places, says Robert Lewis. "If some of these malls are going to have a second life, what are the keys?" "Experience, entertainment. If we're going to __________ them __________ from their smartphone and shopping on the Internet, you've got to give them a reason to spend the time to go and make the effort to go there. And the only way they're gonna do that is if there's a fun thing going on." "And an experience you can't get online, exactly."