Omaha Forums

This guy has a urban exploration YouTube channel. One of his regular features is to tour dead shopping malls. Some of you may find it interesting.

Dead Mall Series:

[youtube][/youtube]

Having a better idea of what kills a mall now, it would be really interesting to see if somebody somewhere could build a new indoor mall. Or, maybe indoor malls are totally a thing of the past and just a few made it through the fire.

Yeah I don't see many being built going forward. Anchor stores are struggling, and even the retailers inside are too. I think the last new enclosed mall in the area will have been Jordan Creek in West Des Moines.

Omaha would be fine with Westroads only. I think the only two that will survive in KC are Oak Park for the Ks side and Independence Center on the Mo side.

Greg

Greg S wrote:Yeah I don't see many being built going forward. Anchor stores are struggling, and even the retailers inside are too. I think the last new enclosed mall in the area will have been Jordan Creek in West Des Moines.

Omaha would be fine with Westroads only. I think the only two that will survive in KC are Oak Park for the Ks side and Independence Center on the Mo side.

Greg

As women continue to move to task list shopping like men have done since the 80's and kids are less self-transporting and have less ability/incentive to turn into mall rats, I think you are correct. Physical malls are annoying. If you need a shirt and then some dog food, you can go to strip mall stores much more efficiently.

By referencing the '80s, do you mean like the 1180s AD or 480s BC or something? Have men ever been anything other than list shoppers? Get in, get your item and get the heck out.

guy4omaha wrote:By referencing the '80s, do you mean like the 1180s AD or 480s BC or something? Have men ever been anything other than list shoppers? Get in, get your item and get the heck out.

Fair point, I do think we have had generations of men, like my dad's who were used to going from place to place looking for the best version of an item.

That looks like oakview kinda

Man, a whole mall would be a hard thing to preserve but I think in a few decades after more of these are torn down, the American indoor shopping mall of the '80s and '90s will be romanticized a bit and there will be a push to preserve the ones that remain given how engrained they were in our culture. Familiarity breeds contempt while rarity wins admiration. I think they'll be admired in the same way we now admire some tacky '60s motels a la Palm Springs or shitty dive bars a la Austin.

^This one can probably die though.