Are Twin Cities area malls having yet another resurgence?

“People may forget what they buy, but they remember how they feel — and we strive to deliver a truly unique experience,” Jill Renslow, MOA’s chief business development and marketing officer, said in a statement.

As mall stores have closed over the past decade, MOA has embraced a range of non-traditional tenants from laser tag to the Great Big Game Show.

“Those malls who emphasize experiential shopping, offering dining, entertainment and fun social opportunities and experiences, they have become and will continue to be more attractive to consumers,” said Hye-Young Kim, a retail and consumer studies professor and director of the Center for Retail Design and Innovation at the University of Minnesota.

New ownership groups at the struggling Maplewood Mall and Burnsville Center, which continued to lose shoppers over the summer, are also trying to diversify tenants, bringing in more small businesses and experiential concepts as well as community events.

For malls to be successful, they will have to continue to invest and possibly add higher-end amenities or focus on how to make shopping more convenient or stores more curated, said Mazumder of Publicis Sapient. American malls should take cues from futuristic retail complexes in other countries like China where technology is heavily incorporated with features like interactive displays.