Retail experts have long sounded the alarm on malls in the US.
But malls are not going extinct, they are merely adapting to a new environment. In fact, many have reported robust occupancy levels and bigger crowds than before the pandemic, according to a recent market analysis from Coresight Research.
I hadn’t been to a mall in a really long time until a friend of mine dragged me to one to kill some time before a thing we had going on later that night. I was surprised how busy it was, and how much it had expanded in terms of content. There were a couple of art galleries and even a little tabletop gaming store with a few people playing Catan. The only area that was kind of deserted was surprisingly the food court, which only had a bubble tea place and a sandwich place open.