Found a stat that claimed 60% of all US malls from the 1980s are already gone or repurposed

I was poking around on the DeadMalls.com site last Tuesday, one of those late night deep dives you do when you can't sleep. They had a report from some urban planning group that said out of roughly 2,500 enclosed malls built between 1970 and 2000, over 1,500 have either closed entirely or been converted into offices, churches, or apartments. That number blew my mind because I always thought malls just gradually faded away, not that they got completely gutted and turned into something else. I mean, there's a former Sears in my town that's now a indoor trampoline park. Has anyone else run into a specific stat like that that just made you stop and think about how quickly things change?

2 comments

2 Comments

charles_green24d ago

Yeah that stat about 1,500 malls being gone or repurposed is wild. I heard a podcast where they said some of those old mall parking lots are being turned into solar farms now, which just shows how fast things can shift.

stella_lee24d ago

Wait, is that actually happening on a big scale or just a few one-off projects getting attention? I feel like we hear about one or two creative mall conversions online and suddenly everyone acts like it's this huge trend. Tbh, most of those empty lots just sit there for years rotting before anyone does anything useful with them.