In his 1985 book The Malling Of America, Bill Kowinski chronicled how the “Main Streets” of the United States had been replaced as shopping destinations by enclosed malls. If you’re old like me, you remember going from store to store with an Orange Julius in one hand and a Sbarro pizza slice in the other, both purchased from the food court on the way to the Nautica outlet. Today these American touchstones are steadily disappearing from the retail landscape.
Disappearing as operating businesses, that is; the structures themselves remain intact for many otherwise dead malls, desolate concrete edifices with giant, empty warehouse-sized former “anchor” stores that occasionally reanimate as Spirit Halloween stores or some other seasonal operation. In many cases, the cost to demolish a dead mall is more than anyone wants to pay, leaving the abandoned hulks as monuments to the era before the internet and Amazon.
In the mid-nineties, new malls were still being constructed at a rate of around 140 new ones a year, yet it declined to the point that in 2007 there was not one new enclosed mall built anywhere in the US. The rapid decline was from a combination of the rise in online shopping and the prominence of localized “big box” stores (instead of the traditional department stores that bookended most malls like Sears and J.C. Penney). Honestly, economic decline in some areas had caused the closure of some malls much earlier. The infamous Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois opened in 1966 and closed in only twelve years in 1978 later due primarily to loss of business from rising crime rates in the Chicago suburb. After being used as the set for The Blues Brothers mall chase a year later, the damaged mall remained an eyesore for over three decades before the rotting remains were mercifully torn down. Here you can see the Bluesmobile (1974 Dodge Monaco with Police Package and 440 Magnum V8) tearing up the mall in 1979, followed by the mold-filled ruins in 2009 prior to demolition:
Today, malls are closing regardless of the affluence of the surroundings. Every town seems to have at least one, and we’re likely to see mall demolition now happening at the rate of the openings thirty years ago.
What else can we do with them? The other day Thomas Hundal suggested the Red Lobster car dealership idea I explored, and further conversation came up with solutions for these vacant shopping giants.
Naturally, these involve cars.
They’re Lowering The Property Value! Ban Them!
The vast number of people see cars as a transportation appliance, but we Autopians see motorized vehicles as a source of fun and excitement, and we’re always looking for ways to connect with others of our tribe; this website you’re reading now was made for that exact reason. Still, reading about cars is not the same as playing with them.
Unsurprisingly, most neighborhoods are not crazy about people racing around them in cars, or even gathering en masse in parking lots. Other villages will issue you unfriendly citations (as in a legal ticket, not the GM X-Car) for working on them in your yard or driveway – ask David, he’ll tell you – or even in the parking lot of an auto parts store.
Even if you’re blessedly free from the aforementioned hassles, a peril of being a car person is suboptimal storage for more than one or two machines. Cars are generally weatherproof, but that doesn’t mean we want them sitting outside for most of the time. If you don’t have enough garage space, a place to store your fleet will likely be some miles away. Oh, and you can’t work on the car in the rented storage space, thank you.
Enter the dead mall.
Malling Of The Automobile Enthusiast
Can you really turn a mall into a car paradise? There’s a lot of examples out there of indoor automotive fun that we could put together to build such a place.
In my part of the woods, you can buy a “garage mahal” to keep your toys; it’s a bit like a large storage facility that encourages you to hang out and work there instead of kicking you out at the sight of a wrench. You can deck it out any way you want with lifts, workshops, and hangout “caves” to your heart’s desire.
Here’s another one. In Pennsylvania there’s a place that began life as a clothing outlet mall in 1985, eventually changing to a massive furniture retailer before finally closing its doors in 2011. After sitting abandoned for a time, it reopened in 2018 as an indoor “Classic Car Mall” filled with collectible rides for sale or on consignment.
It wasn’t a massive shopping mall, but the website claims the 336,000 square foot building (8 acres) has space for 1,400 vehicles. I’m not sure how the old “stores” are organized but I would think they could be divided by different car categories of car type.
On the other side of the pond, a few of our Autopian staff members have visited Motorworld hotels. If you’re a gearhead, these places are an assault on the senses, but a good assault.
Located in several cities across Germany, Motorworlds are typically built in old warehouses or abandoned industrial facilities. There are event spaces and display areas, but the most dramatic feature at the Munich location is the multi-story “glass box” garages that car owners can rent for storage and let others ogle their ride; you can even list your car for sale here.
Here’s another abandoned-real-estate-to-car-recreation conversion. Near my house, there’s a building that’s been turned into an indoor go-carting racing center called K1 Speed. What used to be warehouse space now covered in two tracks for electric carts; the space in front that used to be offices is a two-story bar and restaurant overlooking the tracks.
If you think you can’t have a fast and exciting race in a space this size, I urge you to visit one of their 93 locations across the country. My wife’s company rented out the space for a party with unlimited racing, and my neck and whole body hurt for days afterward.
Which of these ideas should be used for repurposing a dying mall? How about all of them! Malls were all about variety, and if we replaced the old Hot Topics and Chess Kings with a mix of these automotive ventures it could finally be the car mecca we’ve all been waiting for.
A New Kind Of Mall Rat: Us
Let’s take a look at a hypothetical “dead mall” to convert to what we might call a US branch of that German Motorworld franchise. Almost any mall could be made to work, but I’ll start with a single-story example featuring three former “anchor” stores at each end. Maybe one might even be an old Sears location:
Those “anchor” stores are usually massive spaces, and something like a former Montgomery Ward’s or Macy’s would be great for indoor karting. Our own Thomas even said liability-be-damned and suggested moving in an acre or two or real dirt and having an indoor electric motocross course as well. Man, I’d love to have a bar or restaurant overlooking this mayhem, just like K1 Speed does. Hell, we could even put in some RC tracks.
Another one of the big former stores on the end would be ideal for the glass garages employed by MotorWorld to store and display cars. This wouldn’t have a restaurant but you could sure as hell have a space in the center for catered events or even weddings.
What about the long corridors connecting the large “anchors” that used to house the smaller retailers like Spencer’s Gifts and Finish Line shoes? A few spaces will have car memorabilia or die-cast car stores, and an auto parts retailer like AutoZone could take up residence in a few adjoining ones.
The wide hallways have enough space to allow cars for sale to be parked. Rent a space or sell your car on consignment, taking advantage of the indoor traffic that might be coming in off the street to grab a coffee or a quick bite at a restaurant in one of the halls. This is like a Disneyland for gearheads; you’ll get stuck walking around in awe and need food and drink at some point. Naturally, the go-cart and motocross track would have bars and restaurants, but there would be additional places to eat in the old mall area itself. Maybe part of the old “food court” could be repurposed, even if Cinnabon won’t return.
The vast majority of these empty stores would be sold or rented out as “garage mahals”. In this single-floor layout, each approximately 25 by 60 foot space would have a garage door on back to give owners access to the outside; each one would have a bathroom and plumbing to allow for mini kitchens or bars. Owners could add workshop space, “man cave” loft areas, and the glass former “shop windows” to the hallway would let you show off your rides to people walking by (and let them watch you cuss as you attempt repairs, if you don’t close the blinds). Most of these spaces are big enough for at least three cars so you could share the space (and the rent) with your car owner friends (or rent a double space). Trick it out any way you want, even with a sign outside in the corridor.
A few of the former store “garage spaces ” I’d want to reserve for hourly or daily rental to let those without a personal garage work on their car indoors.
Thomas even suggested that startup companies or new Asian car makers that need dealerships might set up shop in the old storefronts one of these auto malls instead of trying to construct their own buildings. Hell, if they’re EVs they could freaking drive in the mall. New Vinfasts are in early this year!!
The giant parking lot surrounding most malls isn’t really needed, but fencing off a certain section (and offering 24-hour security) would allow for outdoor car, boat, or motorhome storage. Autocrosses? Outdoor go-cart racing? Acres of paved surface just waiting to be used. We can only hope that the building or parking lot has an old Sears or Montgomery Ward’s auto center still there with the lifts in place.
Which Car Tribe Will Control The Food Court?
You like the idea, right? How can you not? The question is if the idea is viable financially. Places like K1 Speed and Motorworld appear to be profitable enough to stay in business, but there’s a big catch: how much is the land worth? I’d love to see the nearly-dead Northbrook Court Mall (where Robert Downey Jr. pours a drink on the nerds in Weird Science) near me become such a place, but the homes adjacent to the mall are selling for nearly seven figures. I know that developers are already revving up the bulldozers, and this is freaking Illinois. California? Forget it.
My rough guesstimate is that this MotorWorld mall conversion would work in outlying suburban locations or towns close to a major metropolis; those single-level outlet malls come to mind. Classic Auto Mall, for example, is around 30 miles from suburban Philly, and a little further from Harrisburg, which is just about perfect. Would you be willing to drive half an hour to a place where you can hang out with your “car people” friends, work on your ride in air-conditioned or heated comfort, grab a burger, buy some auto parts (or borrow tools from the guys next door), check out other classic cars for sale, and maybe even enjoy a real race or two?
That was rhetorical question. Yeah, I’m preaching to the choir here, aren’t I?
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I work in commercial real estate development and am an architect. I can tell you all the reasons this isn’t possible. I’ll try to cliff notes:
1. Malls aren’t owned by one entity. 2. Different occupancy / use codes prevent conversion except to other retail (a car showroom is retail, a hobby garage is not). 3. Most malls are large enough to trigger regional (1+ year) planning review before zoning. 4. Retail leases live in a fantasyland of value where they require $50+/ square foot rent. Far higher than any other. And this they tolerate a huge level of vacancy. 5. The store units are far deeper than you imagine. >50-75’ so very in efficient in conversion to any other use. 6. Most malls have severe skin and MEP problems. They were designed in an era where there was no cooling and no real electrical loads. 6. No one, especially boomers, wants anything but the mall, so they fight you for YEARS on any conversion. They want their SEARS back. And can’t understand that the malls can’t just be “revitalized”.
Dang.
What’s that whistling sound I hear!??!
All the air suddenly rushing out of our ideas
Wah-Wah-waaahh.
If car showrooms are considered “retail,” is the entire dealership? If so, could these been converted to mega-malls? The 2-3 anchors are converted to the multi-unit repair shops (All GM stuff in one box, maybe Porsche/Audi/VW in another, etc.) and then the spurs/arms of the mall itself are converted to indoor (A/C’d) dealer lots and the central hub being a food-court of sorts?
If there’s an upstairs, do they support the load of cars? If so, more showroom/lot space. If not, don’t know what the second floors are used for… maybe places like 4 wheel parts, Auto zone, Pep Boys, Tire-rack warehouse, etc?
If this qualifies, particularly down here in SW FL for A/C purposes (or anywhere up north where the weather generally sucks for half the year), I could envision spending days all in one place shopping available cars in relative comfort.
Of course, the manufacturers will cry and whine “we want our own stand-alone facility” and the dealers who typically own their land aren’t going to be happy about trying to move single-use structures to another tenant.
Guess knock ’em down or turn-’em into density housing since pretty much everywhere could use that?
One huge section of the mall near me converted to a We-Work-type workshare space but that’s likely a lot easier to stomach. Honestly I am sure they got a good deal just to fill the space.
I am a boomer. Malls suck. Sears is dead. Let’s dance on its grave.
2 years ago, Toyota filmed a video for the GR86 in and around the dead mall in my town. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVNnpWk9IkA The mall is still dead. I smell the burning rubber of an opportunity.
Man i remember when that mall opened.
Check out Bicester Heritage in the UK (home of my business Historit car storage), also look at Caffine & Machine, also UK.
Automotive venues and centralised sites that draw businesses together for collective benefit really work if done well.
*Chefs Kiss*
Needs to also encourage permanent parts resellers, like flea market/car show style, in a few of those old retail locations. Just adds another draw. Imagine a flea market full on, where you can rent a small booth inside a larger store, just to keep all your unneeded parts flowing out the door and bringing in cash.
Now that I’ve scanned through the comments, how about a retiree village for car nerds? Storefronts become apartment spaces, food court for…you know…eating. One of the anchor locations is for health care on site, take another anchor location and have scooter (hoveround, whatever they call those things they all ride around the grocery store) racing for the oldsters! Tell me this isn’t pure genius…
Old Joke but still very funny:
In the 80’s/90’s my sister and her friends lived at the mall in their teens. Now they are adults with money to spend.
If cars were sold by COLOR they would all love to shop at malls. All RED/PINK cars at one mall. BLACK/GRAY cars at another. WHITE/BEIGE at another…you get the idea.
Please tell me you haven’t trademarked the “Roll Bar and Grille”. If I was to ever open a bar, that’s the perfect name!
I say turn the malls into dealerships. You could keep a massive amount of inventory indoors, and you’d have tons of outdoor parking for even more inventory space.
Just keep some restaurants like Sbarro there (I really think Sbarro could make a comeback as a takeout/drivethru pizza place, if I had one in my area I’d get pizza from there at least twice a week, probably more).
It would be interesting to relocate all auto dealers in the city in a central location with scads of parking and tons of showroom, service and parts space. So much more convenient to cross shop without having to drive from place to place. Banks could have offices right there for loan approvals, the DMV and Tax authorities could be located there, too, helping to streamline the car buying/titling process. What a luxury to be able to select, finance, title and tag your new car all in a single day at the same site.
Still be plenty of event spaces, too. Probably enough to also include private garages. We need to eradicate the so-called “auto miles” model of dealer dispersal that dominates today. These are unsightly, a poor use of land, and increase traffic congestion on major thoroughfares.
Your ideas are good, too. Anything to rid the world of empty buildings.
Your idea is fantastic, but it is predicated on the idea that dealers have any interest in streamlining the cross-shopping and financing processes. Their whole business model is based on keeping you under their roof and wearing you down. The easier it gets to source multiple offers and do direct side-by-side comparisons with competitors’ products, the more their profits go down. If there were multiple banks offering financing, you would have far less incentive to accept the dealer’s financing package. The whole dealer business model is based on the idea that two different people with the same credit could buy the exact same model with the all the same options on the same day and one pays several thousand dollars more than the other because they didn’t have all the same information or didn’t hold out long enough. A true multi-outlet experience (i.e. not just a single owner with several brands) would be a dealer’s nightmare.
This is already a thing in some cities – it’s called “Auto Row”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_row
yeah, I was gonna say, economies of scale in the auto business have been around forever.
I have yet to read this article, but it has been done! Syracuse has Drivers village, I shopped at this mall in the 80’s, its been completely remade into a giant dealership.
ok now that i’ve read this, its more a play space for car nerds and not a dealership but still cool idea!
I like the idea but with America being sue happy, someone injuries themselves and you owe them big time for their stupidity.
The one I like is the idea of a storage area/indoor car show. As long as I don’t have to wait a week to get my car out (actual experience), Having a covered space with places for battery trickle charges and rodent control is very appealing.
My dad (who was born in the 40s) told me they used to have little DIY garages all over the place where you could rent a space with a lift and some basic tools to fix your car. It sounded great. Then he told me about this one time when he and his brother swapped out tires on an old MG and someone forgot to install all the lug nuts. The wheel gradually worked itself free on the highway and my dad describes watching the wheel slowly overtake them in the adjacent lane. Now, there’s plenty of people who make this sort of mistake in the privacy of their own driveway, but I imagine it’s exactly this kind of dumbassery that killed off the old rental garages.
We can do this, but someone – I don’t care who – will need to condition the visitors to fear and respect that escalator.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish the kid any ill will…..
Going on 20+ years now, a dead mall in my home town was repurposed for a car dealer to consolidate all of their franchises in one place. So drive around the mall’s outer ring, which also works as a test drive route, and you see all the different storefronts. Could realistically shop a Chevy, Hyundai, VW, Toyota all in one afternoon if you can break away from the sales drones. Had a giant used lot too. Think there was one large waiting area for service and such inside beyond the sales floors filling the outer spaces.
Not that we want to encourage dealerships to become stronger, but this was a pretty good idea.
You definitely gotta include the RC cars as mentioned! Especially since you can reuse the motocross track for them, or the go kart for street. And building a crawler area is fairly easy.
I taught my nephew to drive a manual transmission in an abandoned mall parking lot.
with EVs you can now teach IN the mall.
Okay, hear me out.
Take one of those old malls that’s just one big two story rectangle. So it has a central corridor that runs the entire length of the lower story and walkways that overlook it.
Indoor drag racing.
Use the anchor stores on either end as pits. Put the spectators up on the second floor. They could line the entire length of the track. Not a bad seat in the house. You’d have to put in a SERIOUS ventilation system to deal with the fumes, and you’d also need a really good fire suppression system, but you could run events year round! And the weather would always be the same at the track! Plus, since it’s inside, it wouldn’t violate noise restrictions! Even being in the middle of town!
Genius, right?!?
Don’t forget on-site Otolaryngology care.
The Chili Bowl runs indoors with way more than two cars at a time. Ventilation can’t be that big of a challenge
Not sure what level of drag racing he’s talking about here, but if he’s thinking nitro, you’re definitely gonna want some weapons-grade ventilation.
Nitro would probably cause some structural damage indoors. And with spectators on the second floor, you’d have toasted fans!
Interesting ideas, but-
Dead malls should be turned into walkable, enclosed villages. Tear down the anchors and replace them with apartment towers. Stuff the inside with “everyday” stores, like pharmacies, hair salons, insurance agents, medical offices, and of course bars/restaurants.
This is kind of what happened to the big mall where I grew up. It now has a bunch of commercial spaces and an apartment tower in addition to a much smaller retail footprint.
A map of abandoned malls would be helpful, so we can you know scout
https://www.reddit.com/r/deadmalls/comments/8z8vdm/is_there_a_map_of_dead_malls/
…or, you know, tear them down and put in housing, as there is apparently a housing crisis in the good ol’ US of A at this time…that’s a lot of affordable housing in 8 acres of usually prime location real estate. Often there is ready-made public transportation available in the area as well. I know, boring take, but there it is.
^^smart^^
Housing would be ideal, but this could still help with that–if you can get dealers to move into the mall, it’d probably be a heck of a lot cheaper to tear down their buildings and throw housing onto those lots.
But I’m with you on this; I’d love to see more affordable housing, especially with access to public transit.
I guarantee that if you set up low cost housing in these sites you’d have “dealers” moving in.
I am a fan of affordable housing, but once the term affordable is applied to housing it becomes a NIMBY issue. No amount of open space with the ability to build will ever be largely affordable housing because the people already living near by will come out aggressively against it, and pay large amounts of money to stop it. If it’s already zoned commercial, lets keep it commercial and have some fun car stuff!
Sadly, most of the malls are in areas where “affordable” housing isn’t much of a possibility. Take a look on a map of any dying mall and Zillow the surrounding homes.
They’ve turned a few dying malls into open air apartment/retail/dining places with limited success, and the apartments in one were like $2000/mo studios. Ouch.
Dead malls are in a variety of neighborhood types. Some declined because of either novelty (a new mall a few exits further out where newer housing was constructed) or the general change in retail fashion, but others were affected by suburban decay (real or perceived) with nearby residential areas still modestly priced relative to the larger area. Not every mall is in Northbrook. Residential conversion can work for malls and large community centers in less fashionable or accessible areas with encouragement from local officials (not bought off with campaign contributions or straight-up bribes) and sufficient density, although escalating construction costs, which began shooting up before the pandemic, are going to mean that anything intended for affordability will require some kind of implicit or explicit subsidy.
Localities tend to focus on revenue development will generate, or at least net revenue after the cost of services the development requires. That’s why things like large shopping centers and car dealers were preferred over housing in California after Proposition 13 – real estate assessment increases were capped at 1.5 percent unless the property sold or had substantial and permitted (heh!) improvements, but sales taxes, even without rate increases, kept up with or exceeded inflation. And new housing that isn’t age-restricted requires significant investment in road infrastructure (more now than in the postwar housing boom because each house generates more car trips than they used to, with two wage earners and lots more activities) along with the cost of public schools.
With that in mind, how much will it cost to convert a structure for this as a permanent or medium-term interim use, and what financial incentives would the locality have to approve the necessary zoning changes and approvals? The traffic infrastructure would be in place already and there wouldn’t be any added schoolchildren, so that’s something. And if the conversion is partial, co-tenancy provisions in existing leases also come into play.
Thoughtful and in depth analysis. i’m really appreciating the folks here!
The dead Redlands Mall in SoCal was just demolished to be replaced with 12 acres of “mixed-use”: retail, apartments, offices.
All of you make valid points, but many remove the human factor. There are hard working families without homes because even rent has become beyond our means. Yes, there is a greater and larger, possible non-capitalistic, effort that needs to be made, but I’d love to see some folks who don’t have another choice actually have one. it is straight up a “pie in the sky” thought, but we’ve got to start somewhere, yes?
I go to the mall to change filters far more than I do to shop. Never cared much for them even as a teen—but we still had an active cruise scene back then.
I would definitely check out an Automotive Mall within an hour of me
I’ve been thinking about this too, but differently. Just let me rent it for a few hours, with some buddies, and some drift trikes. The super smooth floors would be just incredible for drift trikes. It would be incredible.
My area has 5 malls, one booming and the other 4 looking for redevelopment ideas and one of those 4 has failed repeatedly since it was built in the 1980’s. Most of your ideas exist here in disparate locations within the circle freeway belt, so all we need to do is pull them all together into one of these failed locations!
I will invest all $7 I have and this used Ford G2 alternator
Alright, I’m in. How do we invest in this? And how much investment to ensure I have access to space in a garage bay?
Going to the mall makes my skin crawl between the crowds, having to find parking, and everything being way overpriced. I actively avoid these wretched things.
I approve of this plan; let’s see it rolled out for all shopping malls.
Plus, today you can stay at the mall all day and not like the old days when you’d have to be at Entrance A at 4:30 since mom will be there in the Cutlass and you sure as shit better not make her wait
Crowds? Having to find parking? Uh, either your local malls are doing particularly well or you haven’t been to one in about 20 years. Everything is still overpriced and the mall still smells funny though.