As a child of the Cold War, I grew up surrounded by ideas, experiences, and institutions that I presumed were signs of permanent progress, among which was the indoor mall. In fact, I have a distinct memory of the time when malls moved from outdoor shopping centers to become indoor commercial palaces.
They seemed glorious: bustling, air-conditioned, packed with seasonal thematics and shows, with restaurants and retail shops galore. When my father was looking for a venue for his newly formed community orchestra to perform, the mall readily accepted the gig. As a young kid playing trombone in that group, I recall hundreds in the audience. That was wonderful.
The kids would gather there because it was a safe place for them. Parents loved it for this reason.
So after years of odd jobs, when it came time for me to really commit to a profession, if such is possible at 17 years old, I went straight to the mall and to the men’s clothing store in particular. I set up shop there and honed my skills as a salesman, a fashion adviser, and a curator of the perfect fit.
The indoor mall was wonderful because you would get a slew of customers who were there just to browse and not necessarily buy. This was completely different from a regular storefront, where everyone who walked in the door had a definite intention to shop for what you offer. The mall invited everyone in just to satisfy innate curiosity, and therein was the sales opportunity.
I learned early on never to judge customers by appearances. The best-dressed people rarely made high-dollar purchases. And sometimes, the sales tickets that were the largest came from people who sauntered into the store wearing jeans and muddy work boots. This provided an important lesson in class associations, discrimination, and life itself.
I ended up working in several stores in the same mall. The workers there formed a kind of community of friendship, as maintenance crews interacted with fry cooks who were friends with the salespeople, and students working summer jobs developed mentor relationships with longtime professionals. Looking back, it all seemed like a utopia of sorts.
A terrifying image that won’t leave my mind comes from June 2020, when I visited my mother in Texas. I was curious about the town mall, which had long been a center of commerce and community. As at many malls in the country, groups of older people had daily gathered for exercise there. I wondered how COVID-19 pandemic controls would affect the place.
What I saw was startling, even horrifying. The movie theater was closed. All the large stores were closed too. The parking lot was empty, so I was the only one parked there. The doors weren’t locked, so the mall seemed to be open, but inside was darkness and closure. Nothing was open. There were a handful of merchants with booths that were still trying to make a go of it even in this environment, but there were no customers. The few stragglers around were heavily masked and dressed like medieval penitents.
If there had been a soundtrack—there was no music playing at all—it would have been from a horror film. The sights that day utterly crushed my spirit. I knew for sure that the terrifying virus was destined to sweep through the whole population but with medically significant effects only on the aged and infirm, which is to say hardly anyone who would otherwise be at the mall. And yet the controls and the public mania had led to the destruction of this once-vibrant core of community life.
Eventually, the mall did open (I revisited a year later), but many of those stores never came back. The lost revenue was too much, and the loans from government weren’t nearly enough to make up for lost commercial business. That particular mall is still open, incredibly, and probably because of the limited competition in the adjacent towns. But many malls are closing.
In the 1980s, there were 2,500 indoor malls in the United States. Those are closing now. The latest numbers show that there are about 700 that have survived, and predictions are that in 10 years, there will be only 150 remaining.
If this were the free market at work, there would be no reason for alarm. Things come and things go. The market specializes in creative destruction. The demise of one kind of shopping venue and experience is nothing to regret.
But is this really the market at work? Therein lies the critical question. For a large part of 2020 and 2021, malls were forcibly shut by state and local governments around the country at the directive of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal bureaucracy saw this brutal recommendation as the right path to disease mitigation. When they finally reopened, it was only with mask mandates. The Biden administration tried to force vaccines on every worker in major companies in corporate America.
These venues didn’t really have a full go at competing in the marketplace until 2023. That’s nearly three years of mandatory throttling. It’s no wonder that they’re deeply in trouble today. This was a killing by government, not by the market. Meanwhile, online shopping venues thrived, and so did big-box stores such as Walmart and Home Depot that didn’t shut down because they were called essential.
When governments at all levels call a business model nonessential, it’s no wonder that it finds itself in trouble today. Rather than evidence of a vibrant and changing commercial marketplace, the death of the indoor mall traces to government attacks that have severely harmed not just indoor malls but also small businesses all over the country, truly millions of them. This was a forced transfer of wealth. Was it intentional or accidental?
To top it off, the recessionary environment of the lockdown period from March 2020 onward has never really left us. Growth rates of 1 and 2 percent are within the range of probable statistical error, and every sign we have today points to a long-term continuation of the same. The commercial vibrancy that was once widespread throughout the country has been diminished dramatically. If you live in Florida, perhaps you don’t feel it, and I’m happy for you. But if you live anywhere in New England or the West Coast, you know the look and feel of decline.
The demise of the indoor mall isn’t a welcome sign for American enterprise. It’s yet another indication of deep and systemic problems. So yes, I have romantic nostalgia for the indoor mall, a mighty achievement of capitalist luxury with a beautiful ethos: Everyone is invited to participate in the greatness of commercial culture. Something about the growing amount of closures makes them seem a bad omen for the future.
