SAD

Glad you wore your mask!

Lord & Taylor filed for bankruptcy a couple of days ago, Ded. Sad times!

I feel so bad for bricks and mortar retail. So many will not recover from this and where will all of those employees work now?

I think even before this pandemic, mall's were waning. I know I’d rather do more destination shopping of a store or two and not have to walk through a mall.

I agree about Lord and a Taylor. I have to shop in the petite section and it has not had anything worth buying.

I think the internet has taken the place of the malls. I buy online from necessity. I would much rather go to a store, but and be done.

Malls need to figure out some use other than endless stores of same old, same old. Somewhere I remember a mall was being repurposed to medical suites, or senior living, or something like that.

Interesting! I haven't been to a mall.

I shop at Safeway, Home Depot or Lowes. I stopped at the ARC Thrift store Monday. Hadn't been there in months! It was packed with back-to-school shoppers. Furniture is a hot commodity. It was going out the door at full-price.

Nickel, I read about a mall that has become apartments. They all still had store fronts.

This mall is enormous. Even when people were saying malls are dying, this one was expanding. It was usually pretty busy back in the the olden days ( last March). The stores range from designer stores like Carolina Herrera, high end department stores like Neiman Marcus to stores for the more ordinary man ( or more likely woman) such as Dicks Sporting Goods and Macy’s. It has every chain store you can imagine. It’s the second largest mall in the US.

I’ve learned which stores I like and the closest entrance. I just don’t have the stamina to trek around. One time I walked from one end to the other and back and it was three miles. Of course that is winding around all the walkways.

Anyway, i hope it somehow is revived. Not sure if this L&T is on the list of stores to close. Sadly the one closest to me, a free standing store, is closing.

I haven't really shopped other than online. Our last trip for our window visit with my mother, we pulled into Chucks Market for things for home when we left her (had taken coolers and ice). I was having a great time - dizzy with delight at all the varied produce, fruits and vegetables, berries. A deli, some very nice meats. Great bakery! There was a gift shop! And how I wanted to go in and browse around pretty things that I really didn't need, but DH was a little tense with the numbers in the store....I wouldn't say crowded but briskly busy. So I skipped the browsing, still happy with the food I'd bought.

My SIL had been encouraging me to stop there on our trips. She said her mother had fed their family almost exclusively from Chucks in California before organic was a 'thing'. I found it somewhat like a Whole Foods but a bit easier on the budget, and will stop again. We have nothing comparable locally.

I haven't been close to a mall or clothing store, jewelry store. Groceries, Costco, Home Depot has been just about it other than online.

We have one nice furniture store in the area. That owner has said his business brisk and profitable. Maybe with so many spending more time at home, they are upgrading their furnishings? He told my BIL that since their reopening after closing as non-essential, a better June and July than he has ever seen in his years of business.

Most of the malls here have closed and are being replaced by long strings of store fronts or groups of shops set hodgepodge across a parking lot in islands. One thing I miss is being able to go to one during our bad weather months and being able to walk with worrying about being run down when someone turns the corner in their car.

I find malls inconvenient. Especially in the winter. Not only do you have to lug your coat around, but also all of your shopping bags. I want a shopping cart.

"I feel so bad for bricks and mortar retail. So many will not recover from this and where will all of those employees work now?"

In the mid-90s, I was on a business trip to a formerly Communist/Eastern European country that was struggling like the others to adjust to being in the economic Free World and to democracy. One evening, I was sitting at a bar and struck up a conversation with a 20-something local. I asked him how things were going, how people were doing, what the economy and the job market were like, etc.. He said he was fine, he'd just finished university when the government changed and he had been able to go to a graduate business program that provided an education and orientation to free market business. He got a good job with a multinational company looking for reformed/unbrainwashed or re-educated locals and he was doing well. On the other hand, he said, there was a generation of people who'd been trained and worked as functionaries in the Communist government machinery who were probably too old and too brainwashed to be retrained and who would probably spend the rest of their working years unemployed or underemployed. There was a term for such people, I forget what it was. His view was future generations would be fine but some of these folks stuck in the transition would have trouble.

I expect there will be a major decrease in what has been a large number of low paying retail jobs that relatively unskilled and uneducated people were able to have. Not unlike what's happened in the Rust Belt where the overpaid factory jobs have been lost and nothing has come in to replace them. People stuck in the transition suffer years in economic conditions worse than they expected they would have but younger people have a chance to grow up and be prepared for jobs opportunities that are real and available.

We've had too many malls, too many shopping centers. They'll continue to close and not be replaced. I was never a fan of them and avoided them as much as possible with online and, years ago, mail order shopping. Even though large centers were nearby. Many people will have hard times as a result but in the long term we'll be better off for it.

I never liked malls but did shop them out of necessity. I was born and raised in NYC. There were no malls in NYC. There were individual stores. You walked or took a cab to shop.

When we moved to the suburbs, there were malls. The stores were spread apart and you had to walk City blocks to go from one store and another. Lug shopping bags while shopping. I hated it but that's what you had.

Strip malls didn't have the stores I wanted to shop. But, some stores started to open in strip malls and I enjoyed going to them. In nice areas you could shop some of the same stores you found in the malls. Not all, but smaller stores with quality goods.

Now living in Florida, all the stores I liked to shop are in malls. Some, like Macy's or Penney's are anchor stores so you can park there and enter the stores without having to go in the mall. In NY Bloomingdales, Lord & Taylor always remained separate stores and that's where I shopped. I loved Lord & Taylor and Nordstrom. Both have filed for bankruptcy.

Where I live now only Kohls as a free standing store. Everything else is in the mall.

I do not like shopping online. I like seeing the clothes, trying them on, returning them in person. I like to shop, just not in a mall or online. I truly find shopping online horrible.

Jane

When I go to the mall it's usually to stop at one or two specific stores and then I leave. I've been to the mall that dedtired mentioned a few times and it's just too huge for me. Even with a map I've gotten turned around and end up walking forever but it does have some stores that I can't find near me.

My L&T closed last year when Le Tote bought the entire chain from Hudson and I think all 38 stores will be closing.

I haven't been inside a mall in probably 20 years.

I've always hated them. Wait, strike that. A million years ago when I was a teenager, the thing to do was hang out in the mall. I'm not sure that I even enjoyed it then, but that was the thing to do so I did it. Ha.

Marshal Field's was a mainstay in Chicago and some larger towns near Chicago. Malls killed the outlying branches in the 1960's, and the beautiful buildings were converted into condos and apartments. Field's anchored several new malls. The appeal was free parking and the ability to shop, dine, see a a movie, etc. all in one location.

I suppose many office buildings will also become residences as the people continue to work from home even after the pandemic.

Banks are going to take a beating as offices and malls close and unemployed individuals cannot pay their mortgages or rent.

The struggling malls around me have added gyms, a bowling alley ( that has closed already), planning apartments, Temp office space, hair cutting academy. I rarely go to a mall now that Sears is gone. Maybe a couple of times a year.

When I worked in the city I had an office that I loved. Didn’t like the job so much but my office had a great view of city life and was on the seventh floor of the building so you could hear the sounds of the city but not so loud that it was bothersome. I would not have minded living there.

Anither time I had an office in a converted townhouse in the city. It had been a beautiful home in its hey day. Definitely could live there! My office even had a gorgeous marble fireplace!

The malls killed Main Street but maybe now Main Street will get its revenge with smaller stores and people not sharing so much indoor space. Of course parking is almost always a challenge.

Nickel, here’s a link https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiN0cCikYrrAhXqQ98KHZmJDt0QwqsBMAV6BAgKEAo&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.popsugar.com%2Fhome%2Fphoto-gallery%2F37434301%2Fvideo%2F37434302%2FStep-inside-some-real-apartments-Arcade-Providence&usg=AOvVaw2THab_imA_UWxWn_M0A5lI

At Coconut Point, in Estero,Florida, you can live above the stores.

The malls by me have been like the walking dead for years already.

LandT just has/had the same poor quality that all of the department stores have been saddled with for some time now.

I know people hang on to the notion that this or that store and this or that label in a garment will transfer quality, but I think that notion has been discredited for some time now.

It is mostly all just not worthy junk.

That is why I still sew the few things that I need or want. And, mostly linen now days.

thanks for the link, eld. That looks like a classier mall than the typical suburban mall I'm used to!

That converted mall is a gorgeous old building but the interior reminds me of a prison with the catwalks. The area around the mall I visited is growing exponentially. I bet they could convert part of the mall into condos and sell or rent them easily. However, I wouldn’t want to live there. If I did I hope my address would be Number One Neiman Marcus or 10 Jimmy Choo.

I have never liked the large indoor malls. Now they are worse than ever since the stores and what they offer are redundant. Same layouts, same merchandise, same prices with different signage.

I do miss the smaller open air malls of the past. The type that had entrances into a courtyard with the storefronts facing inward. Some were almost like a park. You parked once and meandered, meeting friends along the way and stopping for a snack and sitting outside on a bench to chat, Many of those have been updated. Now most of the storefronts face the parking lots and people just drive from one spot to another.

Ded, we went to that mall in March on the Monday before the whole shutdown was announced on Friday. Lunch at Legal seafood after seeing our accountant. And a dash down to Sur La Table to pick up a spatula. That's about my total mall experience for a year. Happily I am of an age when it's best to get rid of the junk I already have instead of buying more, I can even buy Costco TP online when they are out of stock in the store.

I still have not gone inside a mall. I honestly don't miss the mall at all. I do need to buy some new bras. I usually buy them online and they're shipped from England (sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much less expensive than the stores here!), but they got lost in the mail. The only store that sells my odd size is Nordstroms. And that's in a mall. And they want close to $100Cdn for ONE bra. Where as I ordered two with matching undies for $167Cdn from England. May just try to reorder them..... Anyway, you don't need to know my underwear dilemma. hahaha I'm avoiding malls for as long as I can. I'm not much for shopping to begin with. I hate clothing shopping with a passion. Some stores here won't let you touch the clothes until you want to try them on. And some store won't let you try them on. Then you have to stand in line just to get into the store, so you're stuck standing outside in the mall waiting to get in. Nope. Not waiting for anything. There's nothing I need that badly.