Do we still need shopping malls?
Opinions about Connecticut malls are as easy to find as, well, parking spaces at them.
I asked my wife Friday night if she could conjure a favorite mall and we were suddenly comparing features at ones in Seattle, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Hong Kong and Paris (she waxed poetic about the coupole that gives Galeries Lafayette the grandeur of an opera house. I remembered the models dressed as Wonder Woman. So much for glass ceilings).
At some point we reminded ourselves that fetishizing about malls is like having a favorite bank. In any language, it’s really just about the commerce.
The real question in Connecticut in 2023 is, do we still need shopping malls?
Their value is falling faster than the prices of solar lawn lights shaped like gnomes at Christmas Tree Shops, which are shuttering for good. Enjoy Christmas in July, for Christmas in August ain’t happening.
Five of Connecticut’s 10 largest malls have been sold in less than five years. Simon Property Group, the McDonald’s of mall owners, was bleeding so much coin from Crystal Mall in Waterford that they sold it for $13 million. That might get you a bungalow in New Canaan.
The Stamford Town Center was built for about $50 million in 1982. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about University of Pennsylvania student Josh Sherman’s critique of the mall (“rundown and dated”) and thoughts about reimagining it. I hadn’t even asked. He also didn’t ask for my history lesson about how the developers managed the dubious achievement of creating the only interruption of Route One between Florida and Maine.
Josh’s dad, lawyer Mark Sherman, emailed me after it was published to chortle over how Josh’s great-grandmother was the wonder woman who made the mall happen 40 years ago, when she was chair of Stamford’s Urban Redevelopment Commission (hence, one of the entranceways is named Edith Sherman Drive). Mark was looking forward to teasing Josh. I was the one blushing for not making the connection.
Rumors that the sky is falling over center courts in malls are old news. Back in 1999, my first conversation with thenMayor Dan Malloy occurred as we grabbed lunch after I became the Stamford Advocate’s city editor. Malloy established quickly that he favored staff members who knew his city well. I established my creds as a wiseass (“Should we eat at Curley’s?” I asked, pointing to the diner whose owner was condemning Malloy for the city’s failed attempt to move it under eminent domain).
When Malloy learned I’d grown up in New Rochelle, he assessed his recent visit to New Roc City, the rebranding and reinvention of the mall formerly known as “The Mall.” Yes, the old name lacked imagination, but at least it was transparent. The SoNo Collection … Danbury Fair … Brass Mill Center … Westfarms … Enfield Square — they all have an identity crisis. Danbury Fair didn’t even follow its tradition of hosting a carnival this summer in tribute to its former identity as fairgrounds, and few seemed to notice. Waterbury’s mayor bemoans that the 25-year-old Brass Mill Center has been losing money for the last decade.
In 1999, New Roc City seemed like a surrender to the reality that malls weren’t going to thrive in the new century. Designed in part by a Greenwich architect, it offered twin skating rinks, an IMAX theater and the Space Shot, which thrust riders 185 feet high to millisecond views of Long Island Sound. A faux skyline looked like the old David Letterman backdrop, with blinking models of Manhattan skyscrapers and bridges. Putting a fake skyline in a real city is like planting cardboard McIntosh trees in a Litchfield County apple farm.
What New Roc did not have was retail. In the intervening 24 years, it has subtracted and added a lot of features, including bowling, go-karts, glowin-the-dark golf, billiards, jujitsu, etc., but you still can’t pick up a solar gnome there. They even wedged in a college (Monroe) cafeteria, because a mall’s gotta eat.
Expect similar changes in Connecticut’s malls in the coming years. I like that some towns are finally recognizing the need to ask the people what they want. Enfield surveyed residents, and Trumbull is pouring $350,000 into a study to rescue its biggest taxpayer. The early chapters of the study are promising, though consultants lose points for
bolding and underscoring
ideas. At least they (mostly) resist exclamation points.
Every mall studies what its peers are doing, like a 12-year-old checking out who’s wearing the Nike Air Force 1s Shadow.
Stamford’s mall is hosting a comedy club, like a warmup for other acts to follow. Stamford has also turned the former Saks Off 5th site into 28 pickleball courts. Danbury already has a virtual golf center, and is adding bowling (I like bowling, but I doubt it even inspired much excitement when it was invented. “This would be a lot more fun if it required duotoned shoes,” the ancient Egyptians surely pondered). Axe-throwing and indoor polo (in Fairfield County) is inevitable.
I’m not sure you can call any game a sport anymore if it’s played in a mall (as the Hartford Whalers proved). But we all knew at the peak of the pandemic that malls were in peril. Thus the aspirations to a live-work-play model. My vote would be for malls to go all-in and snag people who are tired of working from home but dread returning to the office. Lure them with an app that can pipe in the scent of kiosk pretzels. Make desks and napping stations out of discarded pieces from the Lego Store. Buy some bargain showers from Bed, Bath & Beyond closeout sales. Work-bowl-pretzel-workpickleball-work-showernap-work-drink-throw axes.
Or just use the space for affordable housing and a supermarket. No risk, all reward.
What doesn’t seem to be high on anyone’s shopping list is more retail. Maybe we’re just sick of buying stuff.
Hold that thought, I just got an alert on the status of my Amazon delivery (I wish I were joking).