Malls Are Dying

 Bruce Shawkey

East Towne Mall in the early '70s
One of the things I really enjoyed as a teenager in the '70s was going to the mall, in my case, the East Towne Mall, Madison. Opened in 1971, it had four "anchor" stores (J.C. Penny, Sears, Gimbels, and Prange's) and numerous smaller stores, including a Burger King, an arcade, and a McCrory's drug store with a lunch counter. Even a movie theater with two auditoriums. Many a time as a senior in high school with a freshly minted drivers' license, me and my buddies would cruise on over to East Towne during our lunch break and have a "Whopper-Fry-Coke" at the Burger King (costing $1.50 by the way), followed with a game or two of Foosball and/or pinball at the arcade next door. Video games were just coming into vogue, including "Pong" and little later "Pac Man."

I even had a part-time job at J.C. Penny as a shoe salesman at the young age of 17 through a work/study program at my high school.

Around Christmas time, you could hardly find a parking place at the mall.

Today, East Towne is all but deserted, following a nation-wide trend, as noted in a recent posting on Google News:

Sadly, a trend that was once popular for millennials (and baby boomers, too!) in their adolescent years, the popularity of hanging out at the mall is nearly over. Economics writer Nelson D. Schwartz argues in “The Economics (And Nostalgia) of Dead Malls” that it’s not just changing social trends that explain the decline of malls, but also rising financial insecurity and the deafening growth of income inequality across the country.

The convenience of online shopping and, importantly, online communities has altered the social aspect of mall ventures. Income inequality has allowed high-end malls to thrive, while low and middle class-centered stores like Sears and J.C. Penney falter. Now, failing infrastructure and minimum wage workers are the only things inside a mall — and occasionally, a last minute shopper who can’t utilize Amazon Prime for a gift.

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