Business Insider India has updated its Privacy and Cookie policy. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the better experience on our website. If you continue without changing your settings, we\'ll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on the Business Insider India website. However, you can change your cookie setting at any time by clicking on our Cookie Policy at any time. You can also see our Privacy Policy.
American malls are dying out and, as the online retail industry grows, the future of brick-and-mortar establishments continues to hang in the balance.
Retail complexes all over the US are being clobbered by store closures sweeping the country. In the past decade, online retailers like Amazon have flourished, while stores and shopping malls continue to close their doors or report a decrease in foot traffic.
On multiple occasions, Amazon has bought up former shopping malls and converted them into their own fulfillment centers, adding another level of intrigue to the decline of in-store retail in favor of online retailers.
At the start of the 2008 recession, 90 million square feet of retail space had closed. Then, retail closures steadily returned to the status quo in 2010. However, by 2016, the number of retail closures began increasing rapidly again, and as of August 2018, the U.S. hit a 10-year high in the amount of retail square footage officially closed down.
Advertisement
Retailers have announced more than 8,600 closings so far in 2019 and, according to a report done by Credit Suisse in 2017, between 20% to 25% of malls will close by 2022.
A national retail apocalypse has crippled US malls as anchor stores such as Macy's and Sears, which take up large retail spaces and drive foot traffic, have shuttered stores and left malls with enormous gaps to fill. For many malls, this is an impossible task.
Take a look at some of these haunting photos below that show how badly America's malls have been hit over the last decade.
In September 2017, Amazon announced plans to build a 1.7-million-square-foot fulfillment center in its place. That fulfillment center has since opened.
Photographer Seph Lawless has become famous for his photos of abandoned malls. In 2016, he captured Chicago's Lincoln Mall, which closed in January 2015.
In 2013, the mall's owner told The Chicago Tribune that the mall was losing $2 million a year. The same year, a court-ordered receiver was appointed to force the location to pay taxes and fines, as well as make necessary repairs.
The mall reportedly failed to make these changes, which included creating new exits to comply with fire codes and replacing electrical and air-conditioning systems.
The mall was finally demolished in 2017 to make way for a golf and entertainment complex. The developer also hopes to build a new hotel, health club, and specialty grocer in the area.
The inside of the mall was crumbling and covered with snow, left exposed to the Ohio elements.
In June 2016, the city deemed it unsafe for locals, issued warnings for people to stay away, and increased police presence after it gained a reputation for being a crime hotspot.
Multiple deaths occurred on the property after the mall was abandoned. Perhaps most horrifyingly, the body of a likely murder victim was found in the woods behind the building.
In 2016, the Rolling Acres Mall was demolished. In 2018, Amazon purchased the property for $600,000 from the city of Akron with plans to build a new 700,000-square-foot fulfillment center.
Hawthorne Plaza in Los Angeles, California, closed its doors in 1999. In July 2011, Chris Cognac took these photos while performing a security check with workers working on partial demolition inside.
Since the mall closed, it has been used as an appropriately spooky spot for filming some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters, including "Gone Girl," "The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift," and "Minority Report."
Today, it is just a shell that's covered in graffiti and crumbling away.
In 2016, drone enthusiasts transformed the space into a drone-racing track, where people could race their remote-control drones around the building while it was lit up in fluorescent lights.
However, these pop-ups were short-lived. Later that year, the city of Hawthorne agreed to demolish the building and replace it with a $500 million open-air development, but that still hasn't happened.
