Shopping malls are dying, but is it inevitable?

SALT LAKE CITY — U.S. shopping malls are slowly dying, but is there a path to survival through an experience? Instead of a making a purchase, could dining at a restaurant or watching a movie at a theater inside of a mall reverse the demise of the mall?

Maybe a roller coaster like the one Mall of America features in Bloomington, Minnesota.

Macy’s said earlier this year that it would move to shutter 150 “unproductive locations” through 2026.

Smith Entertainment Group, owner of the Utah Jazz and the new NHL acquisition Utah Hockey Club, announced last week that it had purchased The Shops at South Town in Sandy and will build an on-site training and practice facility to open for the 2025-26 hockey season.

Brennan Platt, Economics Professor at Brigham Young University, discussed the financial well-being of malls today and the pathway to a future. He said the beginning of the decline for malls was the rise of internet shopping.

“The more that we’ve gotten comfortable with that, the less we’ve needed to go to one location that has this huge variety of things, either within the department store or even across the small retailers at the mall,” said Platt.

What is the future of shopping malls?

The strategy for shopping malls today is finding that replacement for an anchor store, the big draw customers came for in a bygone time.

“Something like this installation of hockey practice facilities. That’s a big draw. It’s something that will bring people there and that spills over to support the other stores that are there because now you have foot traffic of people returning to that location rather than just doing their shopping online,” said Platt.

The roller coaster inside Mall of America, he said, is a precursor of what malls today are seeking to achieve: an experience. An earlier example is incorporating movie theaters into the shopping at the mall.

“Of course movie theaters have had their own competitive pressure, too. But having that replaced by things like axe throwing or the spas and things like that in the retail spots has given a reason to be there besides just the shopping, a reason that you can’t do online,” Platt said.

Related: Smith Entertainment Group acquires South Town Mall in Sandy City