Mauling a Mall 0
I used to visit Granite Run Mall from time to time. It was a bit out of our normal stamping grounds, but it was not a bad mall, though it seems to be quite out of fashion these days.
The best way to turn around the struggling mall, according to its owners, is to demolish it.
What was once a classic suburban mall will be reborn as something more classically urban.
Outdoor courtyards will replace the traditional mall structure as it becomes a town center with retail stores, restaurants, and luxury apartments.
There is no town for it to be a center of. There is just an intersection in the suburbs.
We have one of those faux “town centers” created at an intersection right here in Virginia Beach. It is sterile wasteland of cookie-cutter chain restaurants, over-priced ersatz boutiques, and sky-high-costing condos and apartments with all the gritty urban flavor of, well, a suburban shopping mall.
To have a “downtown,” you must first have a town that knows how to get down.
“Town Centers” are “developed.” Downtowns are.
Afterthought:
You can bet that the developers will make out okay. They’ll be long gone when the vacuous emptiness of their effort becomes apparent.
