PICS: American Malls Are Literally Rotting Away As More Shut Down

Jim Satney March 10, 2017

Almost one-third of all shopping malls are set to close soon. The number of distressed retailers are at their highest numbers since the last major recession. In fact, the numbers have more than tripled.

As you can imagine, this has been bad news for malls.

Now, since Trump’s Presidency, the stock market has been up and that’s definitely good news. The potential for rising interest rates and lower taxes might also serve us well. However, the current economic position remains dire.

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A new article in Time Magazine has strummed the chords of fear into our souls.

About one-third of malls in the U.S. will shut their doors in the coming years, retail analyst Jan Kniffen told CNBC Thursday. His prediction comes in the wake of Macy’s reporting its worst consecutive same-store sales decline since the financial crisis.

Macy’s and its fellow retailers in American malls are challenged by an oversupply of retail space as customers migrate toward online shopping, as well as fast fashion retailers like H&M and off-price stores such as T.J. Maxx. As a result, about 400 of the country’s 1,100 enclosed malls will fail in the upcoming years. Of those that remain, he predicts that about 250 will thrive and the rest will continue to struggle.

According to one recent report, 310 shopping malls in America are in imminent danger of losing an anchor store:

Dozens of malls have closed in the last 10 years, and many more are at risk of shutting down as retailers like Macy’s, JCPenney, and Sears — also known as anchor stores — shutter hundreds of stores to staunch the bleeding from falling sales.

The commercial-real-estate firm CoStar estimates that nearly a quarter of malls in the US, or roughly 310 of the nation’s 1,300 shopping malls, are at high risk of losing an anchor store.

Many of us spent our childhoods wandering about malls. To see them in such despair is a bit heartbreaking. Many of them now are infected with weeds and are falling apart. Even the parking lots are now breaking up under the heat of constant sun that is no longer guarded by parked cars. The interiors are no longer a place for happy consumers eating pop cycles.

You might want to just stop viewing this article now….the following is sure going to hurt.