Shopping mall

A strip mall in Cornelius, Oregon

They are sometimes known as convenience centers. They are less than 30,000 square feet (2,800 m²) of gross leasable space.[2]

A neighborhood shopping center catering to Vietnamese Americans in Little Saigon, Philadelphia

Neighborhood centers are small-scale shopping centers serving the local neighborhood. They typically have a supermarket and/or large drugstore as an anchor. Neighborhood centers usually have a retail area of 30,000 to 150,000 square feet (2,800 to 13,900 m²), and serve a primary area in a 3-mile (4.8 km) radius.[2]

In the U.K. and Europe such a center, if larger than 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) would usually be termed a small retail park.

A community mall in Klaukkala, Uusimaa, Finland

Community malls are larger than neighborhood centers, and offer a wider range of goods. They usually feature two anchor stores which are larger than that of a neighborhood center's, e.g. a discount department store. They may also follow a strip configuration, or may be L- or U-shaped. Community centers usually feature a retail area of 100,000 to 350,000 square feet (9,300 to 32,500 m²) and serve a primary area of 3 to 6 miles (4.8 to 9.7 km).[2]

RioMar Shopping in Recife, Brazil, with a gross leasable area of 101,000 m² (1,090,000 sq ft)[6]

A regional mall is, per the International Council of Shopping Centers, in the United States, a shopping mall which is designed to service a larger area than a conventional shopping mall. As such, it is typically larger with 400,000 sq ft (37,000 m²) to 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m²) gross leasable area with at least two anchor stores and offers a wider selection of stores. Given their wider service area, these malls tend to have higher-end stores that need a larger area in order for their services to be profitable but may have discount department stores. Regional malls are also found as tourist attractions in vacation areas.[7]

Westfield Carousel, in a suburb of Perth, Australia, with a gross leasable area of 82,874 m² (892,050 sq ft)

A super regional mall is, per the International Council of Shopping Centers, in the US a shopping mall with over 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m²) of gross leasable area, three or more anchors, mass merchant, more variety, fashion apparel, and serves as the dominant shopping venue for the region (25 miles or 40 km) in which it is located.[7]

Fashion or specialty centers feature apparel shops and boutiques and cater to customers with higher incomes. They usually have a retail area ranging from 80,000 to 250,000 square feet (7,400 to 23,200 m²) and serve an area of 5 to 15 miles (8.0 to 24.1 km).[2]

Power centers, in North America, are open-air or, in central cities, enclosed, vertical shopping centers that almost exclusively feature several big-box retailers as their anchors. They usually have a retail area of 250,000 to 600,000 square feet (23,000 to 56,000 m²) and a primary trade area of 5 to 10 miles (8.0 to 16.1 km).[2]

A retail park , in the United Kingdom and Europe, is a type of shopping centre found on the fringes of most large towns and cities in the United Kingdom, and some (but not all) other European countries. In Europe, any shopping center with mostly "retail warehouse units" (UK terminology; in the US the term is "big-box stores"/superstores), 5000 sqm or larger is a retail park, according to the leading real estate company Cushman & Wakefield.[5] This would be considered in North America either a power center or a neighborhood shopping center, depending on the size.

Terminal 21 in Bangkok

Theme or festival centers have distinct unifying themes that are followed by their individual shops as well as their architecture. They are usually located in urban areas and cater to tourists. They typically feature a retail area of 80,000 to 250,000 square feet (7,400 to 23,200 m²).[2]

An outlet mall (or outlet center) is a type of shopping mall in which manufacturers sell their products directly to the public through their own stores. Other stores in outlet malls are operated by retailers selling returned goods and discontinued products, often at heavily reduced prices. Outlet stores were found as early as 1936, but the first multi-store outlet mall, Vanity Fair, located in Reading, Pennsylvania, did not open until 1974. Belz Enterprises opened the first enclosed factory outlet mall in 1979, in Lakeland, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis.[8]

A shopping arcade is a type of shopping precinct that developed earlier and in which the connecting walkways are not owned by a single proprietor and may be in the open air or covered by a ground-floor loggia. Many early shopping arcades such as the Burlington Arcade in London, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, and numerous arcades in Paris are famous and still trading. However, many smaller arcades have been demolished, replaced with large centers or malls, often accessible primarily by vehicle.

In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the suburb and automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping center was created away from downtown.[14] Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square, Lake Forest, Illinois (1916), and Country Club Plaza, Kansas City, Missouri (1924).[15]

Dayton Arcade in the 1920s

Early examples of "stores under one roof" include the nine-building shopping arcade Dayton Arcade in Dayton, Ohio (1902–1904), primarily built to rehouse the public food markets in more sanitary conditions, but which added retail clothing and household goods stores.[16] The Lake View Store, opened July 1916, was a collection of stores under one roof aimed at the workers in the company town of Morgan Park, in Duluth, Minnesota.

The Bank Block in Grandview Heights, Ohio (1928) was an early strip mall or neighborhood center of 30 shops built along Grandview Avenue, with parking in the back for 400 cars. Uniquely for the time, it had multiple national grocery store tenants Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, and the A&P Tea Company.[17] The Park and Shop (1930) in Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C. was an early strip mall or neighborhood center with parking in the front. It was anchored by Piggly Wiggly and built in an L shape.[18]

Other notable, large early centers with strips of independent stores, adjacent parking lots, but no department store anchors, include the 55-acre (220,000 m²) Country Club Plaza (1923) in Kansas City, Missouri, Highland Park Village (1931) in Dallas; and River Oaks Shopping Center (1937) in Houston.

The suburban shopping center concept evolved further in the United States after World War II (see table above) with larger open-air shopping centers anchored by major department stores. These included the 20-store Bellevue Shopping Square near Seattle, opened 1946, anchored by a single-level Frederick & Nelson department store; and the larger 550,000-square-foot (51,000 m²) Broadway-Crenshaw Center in Los Angeles built in 1947, anchored by a five-story Broadway and a May Company California.[19]

Two of the largest shopping centers at the time were both in the San Fernando Valley, a suburban area of Los Angeles. They each consisted of one core open-air center and surrounding retail properties with various other owners, which would later hasten their decline as there wasn't a single owner, but rather a merchants' association, which was unable to react quickly to competition in later decades.[20] Valley Plaza opened August 12, 1951. In the mid-1950s, it claimed to be the largest shopping center on the West Coast of the United States and the third-largest in the country.[21] The first part of the Panorama City Shopping Center opened as on October 10, 1955,[22] and would grow until the mid-1960s, it claimed to be the first shopping center with four major department store anchors,[23] even though the "center" was in fact a marketing association for multiple adjacent properties.

Northland Center near Detroit, built 1954, was the first of 4 centers that Victor Gruen built for Hudson's (Eastland Center, Southland Center, and Westland Center were the others) At launch, Northland Center was the world's largest shopping center.[24]

The enclosed shopping mall did not appear until the mid-1950s. One of the earliest examples was the Valley Fair Shopping Center in Appleton, Wisconsin,[25] which opened in March 1955. Valley Fair featured a number of modern features including central heating and cooling, a large outdoor parking area, semi-detached anchor stores, and restaurants. Later that year the world's first fully enclosed shopping mall was opened in Luleå, in northern Sweden (architect: Ralph Erskine) and was named Shopping; the region now claims the highest shopping center density in Europe.[26]

The idea of a regionally-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen.[27] This new generation of regional-size shopping centers began with the Gruen-designed Southdale Center, which opened in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina, Minnesota, United States in October 1956. For pioneering the soon-to-be enormously popular mall concept in this form, Gruen has been called the "most influential architect of the twentieth century" by Malcolm Gladwell.[28]

The first retail complex to be promoted as a "mall" was Paramus, New Jersey's Bergen Mall. The center, which opened with an open-air format in 1957, was enclosed in 1973. Aside from Southdale Center, significant early enclosed shopping malls were Harundale Mall (1958), in Glen Burnie, Maryland, Big Town Mall (1959), in Mesquite, Texas, Chris-Town Mall (1961), in Phoenix, Arizona, and Randhurst Center (1962), in Mount Prospect, Illinois.

Other early malls moved retailing away from the dense, commercial downtowns into the largely residential suburbs. This formula (enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile) became a popular way to build retail across the world. Gruen himself came to abhor this effect of his new design; he decried the creation of enormous "land wasting seas of parking" and the spread of suburban sprawl.[29][30]

In the United States, developers such as A. Alfred Taubman of Taubman Centers extended the concept further in 1980, with terrazzo tiles at the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey, indoor fountains, and two levels allowing a shopper to make a circuit of all the stores. Taubman believed carpeting increased friction, slowing down customers, so it was removed. Fading daylight through glass panels was supplemented by gradually increased electric lighting, making it seem like the afternoon was lasting longer, which encouraged shoppers to linger.[31][32]

Panoramic view of the SM Mall of Asia, the fourth largest mall in the Philippines

Lifestyle center located in Woodbury, Minnesota

Don Mills Convenience Centre (now Shops at Don Mills) opened in 1955, in Toronto, Ontario. The first fully enclosed shopping mall in Canada was Wellington Square. It was designed for Eaton's by John Graham, Jr. as an enclosed mall with a department store anchor and subterranean parking which opened in downtown London, Ontario, on August 11, 1960. After several renovations, it remains open today as Citi Plaza.[33]

In the 1970s in Canada, the Ontario government created the Ontario Downtown Renewal Programme, which helped finance the building of several downtown malls across Ontario such as Eaton Centre. The program was created to reverse the tide of small business leaving downtowns for larger sites surrounding the city. In the first quarter of 2012 shopping mall private investment hit an all-time low under 0.1 percent.[34]

In the UK, Chrisp Street Market was the first pedestrian shopping area built with a road at the shop fronts. The first mall-type shopping precinct in Great Britain was built in the downtown area of Birmingham. Known as Bull Ring Centre (now Bull Ring, Birmingham), it was officially dedicated in May 1964. A notable example is the Halton Lea Shopping Centre (originally known as Shopping City) in Runcorn, which opened in 1972 and was conceived as the center point for the new town's development. Another early example is the Brent Cross Centre, Britain's first out-of-town shopping mall and located on the northern outskirts of London, which was opened in March 1976.

Chermside Drive-In Shopping Centre started trading to the public in 1957, in Brisbane, Australia.

Belz Factory Outlet Mall, an abandoned shopping mall in Allen, Texas, United States

In the United States, in the mid-1990s, malls were still being constructed at a rate of 140 a year.[35] But in 2001, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study found that underperforming and vacant malls, known as "greyfield" and "dead mall" estates, were an emerging problem. In 2007, a year before the Great Recession, no new malls were built in America, for the first time in 50 years.[36] City Creek Center Mall in Salt Lake City, which opened in March 2012, was the first to be built since the recession.[15]

In recent years, the number of dead malls increased significantly in the early twenty first century because the economic health of malls across the United States has been in decline, with high vacancy rates in these malls. From 2006 to 2010, the percentage of malls that are considered to be "dying" by real estate experts (have a vacancy rate of at least 40%), unhealthy (20–40%), or in trouble (10–20%) all increased greatly, and these high vacancy rates only partially decreased from 2010 to 2014.[37] In 2014, nearly 3% of all malls in the United States were considered to be "dying" (40% or higher vacancy rates) and nearly one-fifth of all malls had vacancy rates considered "troubling" (10% or higher). Some real estate experts say the "fundamental problem" is a glut of malls in many parts of the country creating a market that is "extremely over-retailed".[37]

In the United States, owners are making drastic moves to convert struggling malls. This includes converting malls into apartments, offices and industrial space. Other owners have taken the approach to turning large chunks of malls into parks and playgrounds. In Austin, Texas, the 600,000 square foot Highland Mall will be a campus for Austin Community College.[38]

In parts of Canada, it is now rare for new shopping malls to be built. The Vaughan Mills Shopping Centre, opened in 2004, Crossiron Mills, opened in 2009, and Tsawwassen Mills Mall in 2016, are the only malls built in Canada since 1992. Outdoor outlet malls or big box shopping areas known as power centers are now favored, although the traditional enclosed shopping mall is still in demand by those seeking weather-protected, all-under-one-roof shopping. In addition, the enclosed interconnections between downtown multi story shopping malls continue to grow in the Underground city of Montreal (32 kilometres of passageway),[39] the PATH system of Toronto (27 km (17 mi) of passageway)[40] and the Plus15 system of Calgary (16 km (9.9 mi) of overhead passageway).[41]

This trend is also evident in Australia, where city renewal and gentrification projects have focused on expanding pedestrian-only shopping districts of city centres rather than building more shopping centres.

Faced with the exploding popularity of buying online, shopping malls are emptying and are seeking new solutions to generate traffic. In the US, for example, roughly 200 out of 1,300 malls across the country are going out of business.[42] To combat this trend, developers are trying to turn malls into leisure centers that include attractions such as parks, movie theaters, gyms, and even fishing lakes.[43] Others, such as the European commercial real-estate giant Unibail-Rodamco, are modernizing their approach by promoting brand interaction and enhanced architectural appeal. A recent example that integrates both approaches is the So Ouest mall outside of Paris that was designed to resemble elegant, Louis XV-style apartments and includes 17,000 square metres (180,000 sq ft) of green space.[44] The Australian mall company Westfield launched an online mall (and later a mobile app) with 150 stores, 3,000 brands and over 1 million products.[45] Online shopping has increased its share of total retail sales since 2008. In Q3 2008, it comprised 3.6% of retail purchases and this increased to 7.4% by Q3 2015.[38]

COVID-19 impacted the shopping center industry significantly. Most malls were forced closed by government regulations to prevent the spread of the virus in crowded indoor spaces. This forced the malls to reinvent the model as they began to reopen. These changes included temperature checks at entrances, welcome kits with masks and sanitizers, screening of the staff members, more frequent sanitization, and occupancy controls. Some of the changes were imposed by public health, such as occupancy restriction of 30% in the UAE, while other changes were done voluntarily by mall operators.[46]

The former Camp Snoopy Amusement park before it was Nickelodeon Universe at the center of the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, the third-largest shopping mall in the United States

The size of the largest shopping centers and malls at any given time continued to increase throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. With approximately 2,400,000 sq ft (220,000 m²), the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, Hawaii was one of the largest malls in the United States when it opened for business in August 1959. The Outlets at Bergen Town Center, the oldest enclosed mall in New Jersey, opened in Paramus on November 14, 1957, with Dave Garroway, host of The Today Show, serving as master of ceremonies.[47] The mall, located just outside New York City, was planned in 1955 by Allied Stores to have 100 stores and 8,600 parking spaces in a 1,500,000 sq ft (140,000 m²) mall that would include a 300,000 sq ft (28,000 m²) Stern's store and two other 150,000 sq ft (14,000 m²) department stores as part of the design. Allied's chairman B. Earl Puckett confidently announced The Outlets at Bergen Town Center as the largest of ten proposed centers, stating that there were 25 cities that could support such centers and that no more than 50 malls of this type would ever be built nationwide.[48][49]

The largest enclosed shopping mall from 1986 to 2004 was the 350,000 m² (3,800,000 sq ft) West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.[50] Currently, the largest mall in the world is the New South China Mall in Dongguan, China with a gross floor area of 892,000 m² (9,600,000 sq ft). The world's second-largest shopping mall is the Golden Resources Mall in Beijing, China with a gross floor area of 680,000 m² (7,300,000 sq ft). SM Megamall in the Philippines, is the world's third-largest at 542,980 m² (5,844,600 sq ft) of gross floor area. The fourth largest shopping mall in the world is SM City North EDSA in Quezon City, Philippines with a gross floor area of 504,900 m² (5,435,000 sq ft) and the fifth largest shopping mall is 1 Utama in Malaysia at 465,000 m² (5,010,000 sq ft) of gross floor area.

The most visited shopping mall in the world and third-largest mall in the United States is the Mall of America, located near the Twin Cities in Bloomington, Minnesota. However, several Asian malls are advertised as having more visitors, including Mal Taman Anggrek, Kelapa Gading Mall and Pluit Village, all in Jakarta, Indonesia; Berjaya Times Square in Malaysia; SM City North EDSA, SM Mall of Asia and SM Megamall, all in Metro Manila, Philippines. The largest mall in South Asia is Lucky One Mall in Karachi, Pakistan.

The Philippines has the most number of shopping malls in the top 100 largest shopping malls in the world with 22.

The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City, in Arlington, Virginia, United States

High land prices in populous cities have led to the concept of the "vertical mall," in which space allocated to retail is configured over a number of stories accessible by elevators and/or escalators (usually both) linking the different levels of the mall. The challenge of this type of mall is to overcome the natural tendency of shoppers to move horizontally and encourage shoppers to move upwards and downwards.[51] The concept of a vertical mall was originally conceived in the late 1960s by the Mafco Company, former shopping center development division of Marshall Field & Co. The Water Tower Place skyscraper, Chicago, Illinois, was built in 1975 by Urban Retail Properties. It contains a hotel, luxury condominiums, and office space and sits atop a block-long base containing an eight-level atrium-style retail mall that fronts on the Magnificent Mile.

Vertical malls are common in densely populated conurbations such as Hong Kong, Jakarta, and Bangkok. Times Square in Hong Kong is a principal example.[51]

A vertical mall may also be built where the geography prevents building outward or there are other restrictions on construction, such as historical buildings or significant archeology. The Darwin Shopping Centre and associated malls in Shrewsbury, UK, are built on the side of a steep hill, around the former town walls;[52] consequently the shopping center is split over seven floors vertically – two locations horizontally – connected by elevators, escalators and bridge walkways. Some establishments incorporate such designs into their layout, such as Shrewsbury's former McDonald's, split into four stories with multiple mezzanines which featured medieval castle vaults – complete with arrowslits – in the basement dining rooms.

A common feature of shopping malls is a food court: this typically consists of a number of fast food vendors of various types, surrounding a shared seating area.

When the shopping mall format was developed by Victor Gruen in the mid-1950s, signing larger department stores was necessary for the financial stability of the projects, and to draw retail traffic that would result in visits to the smaller stores in the mall as well. These larger stores are termed anchor store or draw tenant. In physical configuration, anchor stores are normally located as far from each other as possible to maximize the amount of traffic from one anchor to another.

In places around the world, the term shopping centre is used, especially in Europe, Australia, and South America. Mall is a term used predominantly in North America.

In North America, Persian Gulf countries, and India, the term shopping mall is usually applied to enclosed retail structures (and is generally abbreviated to simply mall), while shopping center/centre usually refers to open-air retail complexes; both types of facilities usually have large parking lots, face major traffic arterials, and have few pedestrian connections to surrounding neighbourhoods.[53][53] Outside of North America, "shopping precinct" and "shopping arcade" are also used. In Canada, "shopping centre" is often used officially (as in Square One Shopping Centre), but conversationally, "mall" is mostly used.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, both open-air and enclosed centers are commonly referred to as shopping centres. Mall primarily refers to either a shopping mall – a place where a collection of shops all adjoin a pedestrian area – or an exclusively pedestrianized street that allows shoppers to walk without interference from vehicle traffic.

The majority of British shopping centres are located in city centres, usually found in old and historic shopping districts and surrounded by subsidiary open air shopping streets. Large examples include West Quay in Southampton; Manchester Arndale; Bullring Birmingham; Liverpool One; Trinity Leeds; Buchanan Galleries in Glasgow; and Eldon Square in Newcastle upon Tyne. In addition to the inner city shopping centres, large UK conurbations will also have large out-of-town "regional malls" such as the Metrocentre in Gateshead; Meadowhall Centre, Sheffield serving South Yorkshire; the Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester; White Rose Centre in Leeds; the Merry Hill Centre near Dudley; and Bluewater in Kent. These centres were built in the 1980s and 1990s, but planning regulations prohibit the construction of any more. Out-of-town shopping developments in the UK are now focused on retail parks, which consist of groups of warehouse style shops with individual entrances from outdoors. Planning policy prioritizes the development of existing town centres, although with patchy success. Westfield Stratford City, in Stratford (London), is the largest shopping centre in Europe with over 330 shops, 50 restaurants and an 11 screen cinema and Westfield London is the largest inner-city shopping center in Europe. Bullring, Birmingham is the busiest shopping centre in the UK welcoming over 36.5 million shoppers in its opening year.[54] There are a reported 222 malls in Europe. In 2014, these malls had combined sales of $12.47 billion.[55] This represented a 10% bump in revenues from the prior year.[55]

In Russia, on the other hand, as of 2013 a large number of new malls had been built near major cities, notably the MEGA malls such as Mega Belaya Dacha mall near Moscow. In large part they were financed by international investors and were popular with shoppers from the emerging middle class.[56]