Dead Mall Syndrome

Dead Mall Syndrome is when a new and better mall is built that causes people to abandon the mall they are at to go to the new mall. This creates a downturn as those who have money to spend are no longer spending it at the old malls, so there is a loss in revenue.

At first these malls are usually able to retain some customers. Usually black people (sometimes old white people). This is because the mall still has a bus stop that runs through there, while the new mall does not yet.

Whites often blame black people for the destruction of a mall (white people did this to the dead mall that is about a 15 min drive from me). But the truth is blacks are the ones that temporarily keep the mall surfacing above water.

But more and more store continue to pull out due to low revenue...and when the new malls make it possible to access via public transportation (which is vital for any mall business that wants to flourish), the blacks who don't have transportation abandon the mall.

The only ones who are left at the dead mall are the very poor and the very lazy, people who pretty much jut loiter and buy nothing.

The bus stop gets removed which cuts off the line of any potential customers as no one with cars is going to shop at a dead mall.

Soon very few stores exist in the mall.

Now when news springs up of the mall being destroyed or finally closed, former shoppers get upset and up in arms about it. They start reminiscing about how much they loved the mall.

They tend to blame the blacks who were last there before the mall would shut down as destroying the mall. But the truth is, the mall's destruction is at the fault of all frequent shoppers who abandoned it for the new mall.

In my city, there was a new grand mall that was built, it was the nail in the coffin to the mall near me as it was already going downhill. The new mall also did the same to another mall, and to the galleria. It is possible other malls could be affected. But in the case of the mall near me, the last people there were black, but in the case of the other mall, the last people were young blacks and old white women.

When I told my mom the mall was slated to be closed, it made her cry. As much as I missed its glory that I remembered as a child, I couldn't help but ask her where she and many other customers were when the mall started collapsing?

What is the mall supposed to do? Just stay there for nostaligic purposes? Supposedly the Walmart around the corner want to build a new Walmart there. But right now the future of the mall is unknown, some say the people who now own it may try to restore it to its former glory as an outdoors mall (a concept dropped in the 1980s). If they want to revive it, they would have to make it better than the new mall and they would have to restore the bus stop.

But there has been a murder (possibly multiple in its history), which is enough to discourage anyone from ever wanting to go there, even if they arrested the person.

Most mall problems should only have problems with teens causing a mayhem (all the malls in my city and neighboring towns implemented rules saying teens under 17 had to have parents after certain hours, something that mall security never really maintained).

Often there are signs that a mall is going dead even before a new mall is built.

One sign is to pay attention to the stores and attractions that close down. At the mall near me, even before 2003 (the year the new mall opened), stores like JC Penney had left, the game arcade even left. And the movie theater kept undergoing renovations and finally it closed down.

But usually its the advent of a new mall that does it in for dead malls that put them on a path to which they can never be recovered.

Super malls have the power to take down multiple malls. This new mall had everything that none of the malls and the galleria had. It was much bigger too.

In the end, the Dead Mall Syndrome can be blamed on the people. They want bigger and better, they get tired of the old fast and when something new comes along they abandon the old...its only a matter of time til the last people their abandon it for the new too (they abandon primarily cause there is very few places to shop at).