Malls of a Certain Age the Shopping Mall: A Look Back (Columns) (Viewpoint Essay‪)‬

IN THE 1980S AND '90S, enclosed malls were the supermodels of American commerce: youthful, gorgeous, and incredibly seductive, the people's choice for Best Place to Spend Disposable Income on Candlesticks. In 2011 they're America's retail cougars, doing everything they can to stay sexy while competing with younger, fresher shopping paradigms. In Cleveland the Galleria at Erieview now features a tomato garden in its food court--or as the mall describes it, with a touch of hopeful pathos, a "resource center for sustainability education." Others resort to more radical facelifts and tummy tucks. Nearly 40 percent of the square footage in the Highland Mall in Austin, Texas, is now owned by Austin Community College. The Tri-County Mall in Oliver Springs, Tennessee, is now home to the Beech Park Baptist Church. It has been five years since a new enclosed mall opened in the United States. Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm, estimates that 10 percent of the nation's 1,006 malls are on the verge of failure. The genre's last great hope, the Meadowlands Xanadu Mall in New Jersey, sits unfinished after eight years of development, a poignant, 2.4-million-square-foot monument to cost overruns, a bad economy, and investors' waning faith in the idea that the best way to beguile shoppers is to stuff movie theaters, bowling alleys, and as many Hot Topics and Capezios as you can fit into a massive, windowless container.