Long gone are the days families would spend Saturdays at the shopping mall, lounging near the fountain with an Orange Julius or flitting from Thom McAn to Cavages to Waldenbooks.
Edie Lee creates a variety of paintings of artifacts and pop culture figures at Cool Ass Art in Eastern Hills Mall.
Most of the stores shoppers remember visiting in malls aren’t there anymore. If they haven’t gone out of business, they have headed for greener pastures in strip malls or other non-enclosed locations.
Sure, malls still have their stalwarts such as Spencer’s Gifts, Hot Topic and Bath and Body Works. And Walden Galleria and Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls USA are in a league of their own.
But you’ll have as much of a chance of finding a psychic or a wrestling match – or even a church – in today’s malls as you would a food court or a shoe store.
As online shopping slowed foot traffic to a crawl and Covid-19 put the nail in its coffin, the Boulevard, Eastern Hills and McKinley malls have had to get creative to fill a growing amount of vacant space and lure people in. Even the Walden Galleria is branching out into more of a shopping and entertainment mix.
Empty storefronts are the reason why malls are adapting. And it is still an uphill struggle. Around 44% of the space in the McKinley Mall remains vacant.
With fewer shoppers, malls have cut their hours. They have also had to be less strict about requiring shops to stay open during all mall hours – which means you might be hard-pressed to find more than a…
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