Tracking the retail economy
As many malls in Northeast decline, one Connecticut man is documenting them on his YouTube channel
It’s holiday season at the Enfield Square mall. A massive wreath hangs in the center of a small plaza in front of a closed Sears. The security service booth is dark. A few shoppers amble past vacant storefronts.
“The last time I went to this mall was about nine months ago,” a man narrates as he walks into the mall past a closed Ruby Tuesday. He lists a series of closings and notes that there have been talks of the mall getting a new owner.
As he talks, he mentioned the current owner, which has malls in other locations in the state — some of which also have several vacancies. Over the next 20 minutes, the man gives a history of the mall, and discusses recent issues.
In 2023, a hole in the roof of a former Macy’s caused the fire suppression system to come offline. The town took action against the mall owners Namdar Realty, in 2022, putting a lien on the mall to recoup the costs of demolishing and disposing of a partially-collapsed faulty roof.
This is a standard video for Tom Grady. The unassuming Hartford man has made a hobby of documenting local malls on his YouTube Channel, Fleabitten Adventures. He’s been running the channel since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
The channel has over 12,000 subscribers, but more notably Grady’s mall, fleamarket and “last look” tours of closing department stores can rack up surprising view counts. His tour of the last Kmart in New Jersey brought in about 161,000 watches. As many malls across the northeast struggle with changing shopper habits, the fascination with them remains steady.
“I think that malls were a cultural, societal, social experience for us,” said Patrice Luoma, a professor of entrepreneurship and strategy at Quinnipiac University. “We loved the mall. We embraced the mall. The mall was where we went.”
Retail History
Grady considers himself something between an amateur documentarian and retail historian. He goes to malls all over the region to document how they are doing.
“I always went to malls as a kid, so they’re nostalgic to me,” said Grady. When he returned to malls as an adult, they seemed like they were declining in terms of their success. “I was just trying to see what the malls are like today and how they compare to what I remember.”
Sometimes, like with the Crystal Mall in Waterford or Enfield Square mall, he pronounces them “dead.” A dead mall, according to a 2015 New York Times article, is a mall that is 40 percent or more vacancies. If the mall is 20 to 40 percent vacant, that’s a sign
of declining mall health.
“Out of all the malls in Connecticut I can think of only two or three that are doing OK,” he said. “So I better get out there now and document them before they’re gone.”
Grady, a middle-aged man with a GoPro camera, tries to fly under the radar. He describes himself as “conflict adverse.” He doesn’t want to be hassled by security or given special treatment. His videos are minimally edited cinema verité walks through retail spaces and has nothing to do with his day job. Grady describes it as “corporate” and Hartford-based but doesn’t want to provide additional details.
On a recent visit to The Shoppes at Buckland Hills in Manchester, Grady said that he was trying to document as many malls as he can before they’re gone.
“It’s crazy how fast they’re closing,” said Grady. He explained his plans to take an overnight trip to New Jersey to film the Monmouth Mall before it is partially demolished and redeveloped. He doesn’t want it to slip through the cracks. Later in the tour he explained why.
“My true hometown mall was Farmington Valley Mall,” Grady said. “It closed 25 years ago and there’s not a single photo of it online. Like, nothing. It just doesn’t exist anymore.”
As he toured Buckland Hills, Grady pointed out an entire hall of stores that had once been a local department store, D&L. Grady has been visiting since the mall opened and watched the renovations on his many trips backand-forth to UConn. As he passed a small storefront full of flashing lights, he stopped.
“There’s the ever-present Wow Arcade… This is the only one I’ve seen with an attached toy store,” he said.
Other new mall trends Grady sees are, gyms, climbing walls, government services, urgent care clinics and housing. Grady is skeptical about the future of malls.
“Things like that will move into a mall and you have to ask, is it really a mall anymore?” Grady said.
Luoma said she had seen many malls in the region adopting more entertainment, restaurant and “experiences.” In-person shopping still had appeal for things like furniture and clothing, and she had also noticed furniture stores, like Ikea, moving into malls. Jordan’s Furniture just opened at Westfarms mall. High-end shopping centers still saw major foot traffic. But declining incomes among younger demographics had led to large-scale changes in spending patterns, Louma said.
“Shopping is less of a leisure activity today,” said Luoma. “People want to spend more money on experiences rather than stuff. You’re buying Taylor Swift tickets, concert tickets, sports tickets. You’re not buying stuff at the mall.”
Haunted by dead malls
Grady isn’t the only person documenting malls in various states. There’s an entire subculture online dedicated to amateur retail archeology. DeadMalls.com catalogs malls, their deaths, demolitions and changes. Labelscar documented the “scars” of signs removed from storefronts. Urban explores venture into long-closed malls to film still-lit signs, feral mall plants and occasionally fountains full of abandoned goldfish.
Grady, an older man who films his mall walks, is a bit of an anomaly in the dead mall scene.
Vicki Howard, retail historian and author of From Main Street to the Mall said that most of the people involved in the dead mall subculture were younger, in their teens and 20s.
“You have a generation discovering, maybe through Stranger Things, what mall life was like in the 80s,” said Howard, referring to the popular Netflix TV series. “What’s driving this is nostalgia, nostalgia for a particular type of commercial culture.”
She explained that this nostalgia was bound up in a sense of loss, both for local particularity and social spaces. The first mall was commissioned by a local department store in Edina, a suburb of Minneapolis, Howard explained. The mall’s inventor, Victor Gruen, was a socialist, Jewish refugee architect from Vienna who escaped the rise of Nazis to become a successful retail designer on 5th Avenue.
Gruen had designed the mall to replicate the pedestrian boulevards of Vienna, with fountains, plants, places to sit and eat. The parking lot was surrounded by a massive park with an artificial lake. The idea was to create “blight proof ” centers for the community.
Howard explained that following the success of Gruen’s first mall they grew exponentially, fueled by white flight, permissive tax codes and post-war prosperity. To Gruen’s eventual dismay, malls would be surrounded not by neighborhoods but by retail sprawl.
Howard said that eventually, the hyper-growth of malls created homogenous environments, similar stores at many malls, few social spaces or amenities. Recessions, and the rise of online shopping helped kill many of Gruen’s creations, she explained.
Louma said that she thought that many malls were dying due to a confluence of factors. She cited online shopping, high housing costs, demographic shifts and the inconvenience of simply getting to a mall as contributors to mall decline.
“They can’t spend their time socializing there because the mall doesnt want them there,” said Louma. “Or they just don’t care about spending time at the mall anymore... If you look at the cultural aspects of how we’re spending our time and spending our money those are the most important things about the success or failure of malls.”
Grady, for his part, doesn’t want those memories to be lost to history. He hopes that he can provide a service to future historians by documenting malls as they go through another phase of collapse and transition.
“Maybe I’m too grandiose in my dreams,” said Grady who said it would be nice if someone found his videos useful fifty years from now. “it would be nice to seem like I’m doing something, maybe not important but worthwhile.”