NYT Article: recycling shopping centers [was: article about de-malling]

[JNA]

This was in the Sunday NY Times Week in Review section column Reading File.

HEADLINE: Recycling Shopping Malls

HIGHLIGHTS:

Tim Folger, writing on shopping malls in the latest issue of OnEarth, an independent publication of the Natural Resources Defense Council:

Quietly and unexpectedly, a dominant species in our country has become endangered. Some say Mallus americanis — the American shopping mall — is a victim of its own success, a classic example of a life-form exceeding an ecosystem’s finite carrying capacity. Others argue that pure Darwinian competition is responsible.

Even the very force that gave birth to malls — urban sprawl — has turned on its offspring. “But those prime sites have run out. Retail is always cannibalizing; the next mall is always farther out and will rob market share from the one that is closer in.”

Orginal Article is at: http://www.onearth.org/article/the-d...ing-of-america

The sequence discribed as happened here, how about in your fair community ?
We have yet to see the type of redevelopment mentioned.

[RPfresh]

It'd be interesting to see an indoor mall turned into a high-density indoor neighborhood, with apartments replacing shops; not that I'd sink money into it, but...

[Seana]

Thank you for posting the article link and your questions. You gave me the "push" I needed to research the future of the prominent malls in my locale.

I started with Nassau County, Long Island, because that's the location of Roosevelt Field Mall .

As it turns out, Nassau may be an anomaly: developers are still interested in building luxury malls there. The developers are meeting with fierce opposition from the Towns within the County and with civic groups, but the courts appear to ruling more favor of the developers.

The latest Nassau luxury mall in the news is in Syosset, located in the Northeast Nassau "Gold Coast":

After seven years of battling the Town of Oyster Bay in court, the developer of the proposed luxury mall in Syosset gained a victory this week when a judge ordered the town to issue a permit for the project and approve its site plan - and slammed the town for using delay tactics.

In a decision released yesterday, Acting State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Arlen Spinner said the town had resorted to redefining facts, concealing issues and making personal attacks to delay Taubman Centers Inc.'s plan to build an 860,000-square-foot mall in Syosset.
. . .

The 39-acre property on the north side of the Long Island Expressway at Exit 43 was the site of the former Cerro Wire and Cable Co., which Michigan-based Taubman purchased from Tribune Co., Newsday's parent, in 2004. The plans call for a $500-million development that would include Barneys New York, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom as anchor stores.

In his decision, Spinner ordered Taubman to submit a site plan for the company's revision, which calls for a smaller, 750,000- square-foot development; and for the town to review it "with all due haste" and the parties to meet in court for status conferences about every 90 days.

Sy Gruza and Garrett Gray, Melville-based attorneys for the developers, said they anticipated that the town would appeal the decision.
. . .

Full text of article is at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedi...0,156528.story
Newsday op-ed piece on the subject:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/...0,727773.story


My next areas of mall research:
- The future of Nassau County's "lower-end" malls
- Queens County (New York City), which is adjacent to Nassau County.

[cyke]

Call me cynical, though this is some encouraging news i'm still not buying these developments as anything reflective of a trend.

The "demallification" effect may be true for land rich cities where expansion into the next market is possible. For a lot of places, especially the built out ones where redevelopment is the order of the day and undeveloped land is hard to come by, malls continue to and will be a center of the suburban experience. Its not something that is heartening, but definitely makes for some food for thought.