Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Guess what, Mengo, what's that? Well, all right, I know
Speaker 1: you love shopping malls, so I'm sure you've noticed these people,
Speaker 1: but you know the people who like to exercise by
Speaker 1: walking back and forth through the mall. Sure, mall walkers.
Speaker 1: It's like half the country's grandparents at least, and as
Speaker 1: you mentioned, it's especially popular with senior citizens. But they're
Speaker 1: actually not the only ones doing this. There was this
Speaker 1: two thousand fifteen report from the CDC that shows that
Speaker 1: shopping malls are now the second most popular place to
Speaker 1: go for a walk, just behind neighborhoods. How weird is this?
Speaker 1: It's weird, But why is the CDC doing reports on
Speaker 1: mall walking? Well, this isn't a small report either. It's
Speaker 1: actually fifty six pages long and I'm reading every word
Speaker 1: of it is just riveting. But to be fair, taking
Speaker 1: walks is a way to prevent certain diseases. And the
Speaker 1: CDC is actually the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Speaker 1: And I bet you forgot that silent p at the
Speaker 1: end of the CDC. There's one funny thing that I learned.
Speaker 1: It actually turns out that most mall walkers don't actually
Speaker 1: shop at the mall. At most they might buy a
Speaker 1: coffee at the food court or something like that. But
Speaker 1: according to the CDC report, they really just want the camaraderie,
Speaker 1: you know, to spend some time strolling and socializing. And
Speaker 1: that actually puts mall walkers right in line with the
Speaker 1: original idea for shopping malls. So the architect who designed
Speaker 1: the first mall in America's name is Victor Gruen. He
Speaker 1: actually envisioned the mall as a place to quote find
Speaker 1: opportunities for social life and recreation in a protected pedestrian environment.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. So by that measure, despite not buying anything,
Speaker 1: mall walkers are really the only ones doing mall's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know about from the mall manager's perspective, but
Speaker 1: definitely from Gruin's. And he clearly had more in mind
Speaker 1: for shopping malls than what they would ultimately become. But
Speaker 1: what exactly did he envision, why didn't it work out?
Speaker 1: And most importantly, is there still a chance that his
Speaker 1: high hopes for shopping malls could still be fulfilled? Those
Speaker 1: are just a few of the questions we'll try to
Speaker 1: answer today. So let's dive in a their podcast. Listeners,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and it's
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend mangesh Hot Ticketer
Speaker 1: and on the other side of that soundproof glass, just
Speaker 1: tucking into a feast of food Court staples. That's our
Speaker 1: friend and producer Tristan McNeil. I gotta be honest, I'm
Speaker 1: a little jealous of what I'm seeing over here. I know,
Speaker 1: Mrs Fields. There's a cinnamon bun from Cinnabon, a pretzel
Speaker 1: from Anti Ads, and a huge orange Julius to wash
Speaker 1: it all. Man, it's like a trip to the mall
Speaker 1: in food form. But from what it sounds like, that
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly Victor grew his vision of them all. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. But to understand what his vision
Speaker 1: did entail, we should first talk about who Gruin was
Speaker 1: and where he came from. So he was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh three in Vienna, Austria. He grew up in
Speaker 1: a middle class Jewish family, fell in love with the
Speaker 1: city's thriving art scene, and this was at a pretty
Speaker 1: young age. So in the nineteen twenties he spent many
Speaker 1: of his evenings performing satirical theater at various cafes, and
Speaker 1: then during the day he studied architecture and this was
Speaker 1: at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, so it was
Speaker 1: actually the same school that had rejected Adolf Hitler just
Speaker 1: a few years earlier. Just a little fun factor growing,
Speaker 1: I feel like too good for Hitler should be on
Speaker 1: all their t shirts. Well. Unfortunately, though, the Academy wasn't
Speaker 1: the only point of overlap between Victor Gruin's life and
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler. So when Nazi Germany annexed Austria back in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, grew And knew it was time to
Speaker 1: leave his country behind, and weirdly, he left the same
Speaker 1: week as Sigmund Freud. I keep throwing in these little
Speaker 1: side facts about all these people that I like them. Well,
Speaker 1: leaving was easier said than done, so Grewin turned to
Speaker 1: one of his theater buddies for help with the escape,
Speaker 1: and it's actually kind of remarkable. His friend, dressed up
Speaker 1: as a Nazi stormtrooper, escorted Grewin and his wife to
Speaker 1: the airport and then made sure they were allowed to
Speaker 1: board a plane to Zurich. So from there the couple
Speaker 1: made their way to England, where they found passage on
Speaker 1: his ocean liner and traveled over to New York City.
Speaker 1: So Growin later looked back on this journey and he
Speaker 1: said that he had arrived quote with an architect's degree,
Speaker 1: eight dollars and no English. Pretty tough. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's an incredible story. So how do you make it work? Well?
Speaker 1: He once again turned to the art scene. He joins
Speaker 1: up with some other German immigrants and together they formed
Speaker 1: what they called the Refugee Artist Group, where Grewin did
Speaker 1: set design. So the group caught the attention of some
Speaker 1: big names in the music business. This included Al Jolson
Speaker 1: Irving Berlin, and they ended up helping them with their
Speaker 1: songs and all of that help actually paid off. So
Speaker 1: the next summer the group was a the Stage, an
Speaker 1: original Broadway show, and this actually ran for eleven weeks straight,
Speaker 1: which is just remarkable to think about this guy arriving
Speaker 1: with eight dollars and howevery much longer later, the guy's
Speaker 1: putting on a Broadway show that's running for eleven weeks.
Speaker 1: It's not bad, you know. So so things were going
Speaker 1: well for Grwin, but his architecture career had you know,
Speaker 1: suffered since coming to America. Then one afternoon in midtown,
Speaker 1: grew In bumped into an old friend of his from Vienna,
Speaker 1: was this guy named Ludwig Letterer. So Ludwig wanted to
Speaker 1: open this leather good store on Fifth Avenue, and he
Speaker 1: asked Grewing to help him design it, and so Grewin agreed,
Speaker 1: and what he ultimately came up with with something of
Speaker 1: a game changer for American store design. So rather than
Speaker 1: build the entrance flush, you know, with the street like
Speaker 1: all the other shops in the area, Grewin actually made
Speaker 1: this recess like arcade style entryway with the tall glass
Speaker 1: cases on either side to sort of draw in the customers.
Speaker 1: So once they came inside, these guests were just dazzled
Speaker 1: by these faux marble floors, a green glass ceiling, a
Speaker 1: slew of bright spotlights that sort of reflected these display cases,
Speaker 1: and you know, the result was a store that felt
Speaker 1: decidedly modern and unlike anything else on Fifth Avenue or
Speaker 1: really American retail in general. So it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to imagine now, but customers and critics ate up this
Speaker 1: new design, and as a result of this, Gruin was
Speaker 1: swamped with job offers. I mean he was going to
Speaker 1: these upscale design stores all around the city and beyond
Speaker 1: getting these offers. So obviously designing these high end boutiques
Speaker 1: and then going to big, boxy shopping malls seems like
Speaker 1: quite a leap, and not exactly an upward one. Maybe so,
Speaker 1: But keep in mind that Gruin was commissioned to design
Speaker 1: the country's first indoor shopping mall in nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: and it opened in nineteen fifty six. So prior to that,
Speaker 1: malls as we know them really didn't exist, so there
Speaker 1: wasn't any stigma that we might associate with them today.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the revolutionary part about what Grewing
Speaker 1: came up with. Like, what was the shopping scene like
Speaker 1: in America pre mall? Well, it was, you know, mainly
Speaker 1: mail order catalogs and department stores for the most part.
Speaker 1: Outdoor shopping centers started to catch on in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: but they were basically just strip malls as we think
Speaker 1: of them now, like a bunch of different stores stuck
Speaker 1: together and just happened to share a parking lot. So
Speaker 1: Gruen's big idea was to put all of these stores
Speaker 1: and walkways under one roof, and then you'd have the
Speaker 1: addition of central air and heating to make this complex
Speaker 1: sustainable year round. And that last part was especially important
Speaker 1: given the location of Gruen's first mall. This was the
Speaker 1: Southdale Shopping Center and Adena, Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: where the winters are obviously frigid. Exactly, I don't think
Speaker 1: people would want to be walking around in those parking
Speaker 1: lots in the cold of winter, and so the project
Speaker 1: grew unsigned on for was meant to address the residents
Speaker 1: demand for a temperate place to be able to shop,
Speaker 1: and one where they wouldn't have to brave the cold
Speaker 1: if they wanted to visit a different store after they've
Speaker 1: gone to the first one. Yeah, that makes a ton
Speaker 1: of sense. So what about this bigger idea he had
Speaker 1: of them all being kind of the social hub. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of that was just in how he arranged
Speaker 1: the interior. So just as an example, most shopping centers
Speaker 1: of the era were on a single level. So you know,
Speaker 1: you think about the number of stores in Southdale, it
Speaker 1: was actually meant to house seventy two stores plus these
Speaker 1: two big anchor department stores. So making your way from
Speaker 1: one end to the other would have felt, you know,
Speaker 1: like forever just to get there, so instead Grewing opted
Speaker 1: for this two story design. They were linked by escalators,
Speaker 1: of course, and now we're all envisioning kind of the
Speaker 1: modern shopping center. So not only did this break up
Speaker 1: that monotony and make for a much easier trip back
Speaker 1: to the car, but it also ensured that people would
Speaker 1: circulate better, have more opportunities to socialize. But probably the
Speaker 1: most prominent example of his people first design is what
Speaker 1: he put in the middle of it. It was kind
Speaker 1: of an indoor garden court, I guess they called it,
Speaker 1: complete with the skylight, a goldfish pond, towering live trees, balconies,
Speaker 1: hanging plants, like all of this other stuff, including a
Speaker 1: bustling cafe. There was even a twenty one ft tall
Speaker 1: cage filled with brightly colored exotic birds. And so it
Speaker 1: was basically Gruin's ode to the European piazzas that he
Speaker 1: had grown up within Vienna, and he wanted to bring
Speaker 1: some of that old world European charm to the American
Speaker 1: shopping scene, which he kind of saws characterized by urban
Speaker 1: sprawl and tacky design. So you fast forward a few
Speaker 1: years later where in nineteen sixty at this point, and
Speaker 1: Gruen wrote a book in which he outlined his hope
Speaker 1: and belief that the malls could really be more like
Speaker 1: a town square. And you know Greek Agora's of the Past,
Speaker 1: which is not exactly what we think of malls today, right,
Speaker 1: definitely not so. When Southdale opened in October of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, it was met with this glowing praise from shoppers,
Speaker 1: as well as dram list from every publication from Newsweek
Speaker 1: to the New York Times, the Women's Wear Daily. In fact,
Speaker 1: my favorite review though, comes from Time, which heralded Gruin's
Speaker 1: mall as quote, the pleasure dome with parking. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just it's such a great quote. But with all
Speaker 1: that said, there was at least one person who absolutely
Speaker 1: detested the Southdale Shopping Mall, and that was none other
Speaker 1: than the legendary architect Frank Lloyd. Right. So, a month
Speaker 1: after the mall opened, and you know, it's gotten all
Speaker 1: this national press, right made the pilgrimage to Minnesota to
Speaker 1: see it for himself, and he was not impressed at all.
Speaker 1: So after his visit, right Penn the scathing article for
Speaker 1: the Star Tribune writing, quote, what is this a railroad
Speaker 1: station or a bus station? You've got a garden court
Speaker 1: that has all the evils of the village street and
Speaker 1: none of its charm. I love that the way he
Speaker 1: really criticized it was by calling it a railroad station.
Speaker 1: You really really burned them with that. So I'm guessing
Speaker 1: even in the minorities, since you know, every mall seems
Speaker 1: to have cred most of his design from Gruin's, I mean,
Speaker 1: somebody must have liked these, right, oh absolutely. I mean
Speaker 1: the design was such a success that it became really
Speaker 1: the de facto blueprint for indoor malls throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. And Gruin embraced all the love
Speaker 1: at first, and for about a decade after the south
Speaker 1: Dale Mall opened, he gave speeches, he wrote books about
Speaker 1: his creation, and really kind of pondered what he hoped
Speaker 1: it would do for American society. But sadly though Gruin's
Speaker 1: view of his work soured in the nineties, sixties and
Speaker 1: in the seventies, is more malls began to dominate the landscape.
Speaker 1: I mean they popped up everywhere, and worst of all,
Speaker 1: these copycat malls were built with tweak designs aimed at
Speaker 1: maximizing profit rather than, you know, more fostering that sense
Speaker 1: of community. So he even started to see malls that
Speaker 1: he designed himself in a new light. So when he
Speaker 1: visited some later in life, he wrote of the quote
Speaker 1: severe emotional old shock, heat experience, and the ugliness and
Speaker 1: discomfort of the land wasting parking lot that sprang up
Speaker 1: around me. So it definitely changed the way he thought
Speaker 1: about them, and it was a bit disillusioned, and he
Speaker 1: decided to move home to Vienna. But when he got there,
Speaker 1: he was actually heartbroken to discover that the new shopping
Speaker 1: mall had been built just south of the old Vienna
Speaker 1: and that it was driving independent shops out of business.
Speaker 1: And as Malcolm Gladwell put it in a piece for
Speaker 1: The New York Or, quote Victor Gruin invented the shopping
Speaker 1: mall in order to make America more like Vienna. He
Speaker 1: ended up making Vienna more like America. That's awful, But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a little confused it. It It sounds like
Speaker 1: Grewin really hated those giant mall parking lots, so were
Speaker 1: though something that was added later and and not a
Speaker 1: part of his original design. Yeah, that's actually pretty right.
Speaker 1: I mean, Gruin's mall designs included a much more modest
Speaker 1: parking lot than the endless stretches of asphalt that we're
Speaker 1: used to associating with malls today. And in fact, when
Speaker 1: Gruin first drew the plans for Southdale, he placed it
Speaker 1: in the center of this four hundred and sixty three
Speaker 1: acre plot, and to fill all that surrounding space, he
Speaker 1: drew up designs for apartment buildings and schools and a
Speaker 1: park and actually even a man made lake. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: none of that ever came to pass, and instead the
Speaker 1: space was used to make this massive parking lot. And
Speaker 1: of course future malls followed suit, and very few of
Speaker 1: them ever adapted Gruen's multi use approach to these developments.
Speaker 1: That that is a shame. You know. The whole story
Speaker 1: kind of reminds me of what happened with the inventor
Speaker 1: of the TV file of Farnsworth. You know, he was
Speaker 1: another guy who saw his invention grow up in a
Speaker 1: way he wasn't expecting and grew to kind of hate
Speaker 1: it over time. Yeah, it is weird to kind of
Speaker 1: resent the thing that's held up as the biggest achievement
Speaker 1: of your life right for both these and in Gruen's case,
Speaker 1: he actually took his distaste even further than Farnsworth by
Speaker 1: completely disowning his creation. So, two years before his death,
Speaker 1: which was in nineteen eighty, grew And gave a speech
Speaker 1: in London and he washed his hands of malls entirely.
Speaker 1: Here's what he told the crowd. I'm often called the
Speaker 1: father of the shopping mall. I would like to take
Speaker 1: this opportunity to disclaim paternity once and for all. I
Speaker 1: refuse to pay alimony to those bastard developments. They destroyed
Speaker 1: our city. Okay, well, and now that we've unspoiled the
Speaker 1: long and sad history behind the birth of shopping malls,
Speaker 1: where do you say we stepped inside of one and
Speaker 1: take a closer look at some of the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes tricks that developers used to keep the customer shopping.
Speaker 1: Sounds good, but before we get to that, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. You're listening to part Time Genius and
Speaker 1: we're talking about all the sort of devious design tricks
Speaker 1: that shopping malls used to empty our wallets. But to
Speaker 1: be clear, none of the stuff we're about to talk
Speaker 1: about came from Victor Gruin, as you can probably guess
Speaker 1: by now, he was fundamentally opposed to any design always
Speaker 1: aimed at manipulating customers into spending more money. I think
Speaker 1: he would have felt like he was betraying that sense
Speaker 1: of community that he was hoping to instill in these malls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's another dark layer to the story because despite
Speaker 1: his principled approach to design, Grown still wound up having
Speaker 1: a shady mall tactic named after him. So, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you get disoriented in a mall or a big store,
Speaker 1: like you're just walking through this giant maze and you
Speaker 1: kind of lose track of where you are in the
Speaker 1: building or how long you've been there. That's known as
Speaker 1: Gruin transfer, and Grown would have hated the name, but
Speaker 1: the effect is a real thing, and stores actually put
Speaker 1: a lot of effort and thought into how to best
Speaker 1: trigger this reaction in their customers. So Victor Gruen might
Speaker 1: have wanted malls that we're easy to navigate, but future
Speaker 1: designers learned that confused shoppers actually spend more money, and
Speaker 1: that's why so many malls have these maze like layouts
Speaker 1: with difficult to find exits, and while you're wandering around.
Speaker 1: Other carefully designed, coordinated features kind of do their part
Speaker 1: to keep you feeling up, eat and engage. You can
Speaker 1: think about things like music that's relaxing and played through
Speaker 1: the pipe speakers or um eye catching entrance displays. And
Speaker 1: the more time you spend in this mall days, the
Speaker 1: more likely you are to make impulse buyes. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: an article on New Scientists describes it as being quote
Speaker 1: confused into a state of unplanned consumption. I call this
Speaker 1: the Ikea effect. I think, and and and all. This
Speaker 1: makes sense, And I get why they called it after Gruin,
Speaker 1: but you know, because he helped build these malls. But
Speaker 1: actually help me out with that last part, the word transfer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what's actually being transferred is the desire to have
Speaker 1: a specific item. So you go to the mall to
Speaker 1: buy a sweater, and it's only a sweater that you're
Speaker 1: looking for, But if the designers play their cards right,
Speaker 1: you will be so dazzled by the time you get
Speaker 1: to the store that your desire for a sweater will
Speaker 1: already have been transferred to a bunch of different items
Speaker 1: that you never planned on buying. Okay, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: but I mean I'm still curious if grew and didn't
Speaker 1: come up with the different sales tricks that we find
Speaker 1: in malls now than who is responsible for that? Like
Speaker 1: it was just mall architects who followed him or what
Speaker 1: I mean, that's where some of the ideas came from
Speaker 1: and new methods were added over the years, certainly, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the common features and malls actually originated
Speaker 1: with one of Gruen's contemporaries, This Fellows storefront designer. His
Speaker 1: name was A. Alfred Todman, and he goes on to
Speaker 1: be a huge mall mogul. In the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: Todman followed Gruen's lead by building his own indoor shopping
Speaker 1: mall in California, and over the next fifty years or so,
Speaker 1: he just kept on building. So he actually passes away
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen at the age of but his
Speaker 1: company is still going strong with twenty four malls spread
Speaker 1: across eleven different states plus Puerto Rico, South Korea, and China,
Speaker 1: and each of them incorporate special designs, all developed by
Speaker 1: Todman over the years. Alright, so can can you give
Speaker 1: me some examples of what these designs are? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: mean this is gonna sound a little hyperbolic, which I
Speaker 1: guess the kind of is. But a lot of Todman's
Speaker 1: innovations were sort of like perversions of what Gruin had designed. So,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked about grew and wanting this two
Speaker 1: level mall. It was so that people could circulate easier
Speaker 1: and bump into more people. But Tobman kind of took
Speaker 1: that trick and moved the escalators to the ends of
Speaker 1: the buildings, so you wouldn't meet up in the center,
Speaker 1: but rather you'd have to make the full loop around
Speaker 1: the mall and buy more as a result, And Tobin's
Speaker 1: mall has also applied the circulation theory to the exteriors.
Speaker 1: He was actually the first to put a circular road
Speaker 1: around them all and add a bunch of extra entrances
Speaker 1: so that shoppers could easily get to any part of
Speaker 1: the building. Oh, it's interesting. And that bit about the
Speaker 1: moving of the escalators, I mean, it's such a good
Speaker 1: example of how a simple tweak can change the focus
Speaker 1: from you know, customer comfort to something that really more
Speaker 1: benefits the sellers. And I'm curious, did you find any
Speaker 1: other cases like that? Yeah? So another good example is
Speaker 1: what Tobman did with the lighting. So he kept all
Speaker 1: the skylights from Gruen's design, but he made them recess
Speaker 1: so the sunlight would never directly affect the storefronts. And
Speaker 1: he also added these tiny lights around the skylights so
Speaker 1: that when the sun started to go down, customers wouldn't
Speaker 1: take the shift in lighting as this queue that it
Speaker 1: was time to leave. And uh, speaking of visibility, Topman
Speaker 1: insisted on using transparent handrails in his malls so that
Speaker 1: you could always see the stores around you, regardless of
Speaker 1: what level you were at. I mean, apparently it was
Speaker 1: he was trying to battle something called threshold resistance, which
Speaker 1: I guess refers to both the physical and psychological barriers
Speaker 1: that might prevent a customer from entering a store, Like
Speaker 1: they could block your view and keep you from seeing
Speaker 1: a store in the upper level that you might otherwise
Speaker 1: go inside. I guess that that's part of it. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, speaking of psychology, we were talking about music earlier,
Speaker 1: and I have to mention this weird fact that came
Speaker 1: across this week. So, according to a two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: report from Stanford, all the malls in America put together
Speaker 1: consume more than a gig a lot of electricity every
Speaker 1: month just from playing that awful background music that's supposed
Speaker 1: to make you shop more. And when you do the
Speaker 1: math on this, that energy usage comes out to three
Speaker 1: thousand metric tons of C O two added to the
Speaker 1: atmosphere each year just from this open music. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess not only as an annoying and manipulative it's
Speaker 1: also contributing to climate change. Well. To be fair, human
Speaker 1: society admits around thirty giga tons of greenhouse gases per year,
Speaker 1: so it's not like three thousand tons from the mall
Speaker 1: is doing that much damage. But I just thought that
Speaker 1: that was interesting. And you know, of course, once you
Speaker 1: factor in all the energy that malls used to heat,
Speaker 1: cool and light these massive interiors around the clock, their
Speaker 1: contribution actually starts to look a bit more significant when
Speaker 1: you put it in, you know, as a whole. I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I Actually, Gabe was telling me about this
Speaker 1: one mall he was in Kentucky where there were only
Speaker 1: like two or three actual stores, and the entire complex
Speaker 1: still open like every other one had been shuttered. But
Speaker 1: the A C. The lights, the escalators, the music, you know,
Speaker 1: all of that was still going on throughout the building.
Speaker 1: And that's actually not a one off thing. There are
Speaker 1: hundreds of malls like that across the country. I feel
Speaker 1: like you see them on YouTube a lot, like Urban
Speaker 1: Explorers will will go and take videos of them. But
Speaker 1: a lot of these dead malls, as they're called, are
Speaker 1: actually just limping along kind of on life support, like
Speaker 1: the one he saw in Kentucky. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: we should probably talk a little bit about why that
Speaker 1: is in the state of malls you know today, But
Speaker 1: let's take one more quick break and then we'll get
Speaker 1: back to that. Welcome back to part time genius. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's been sixty three years since the country got
Speaker 1: its first indoor shopping mall, and during that time as
Speaker 1: many as hundred more malls have been built in the US,
Speaker 1: sometimes growing up more than twice the raid of the population.
Speaker 1: And you can tell by those numbers that America's malls
Speaker 1: have actually had a great run. But I want to ask,
Speaker 1: how are they holding up in the digital age? Like,
Speaker 1: do the next sixty years look as promising as the first? Oh?
Speaker 1: Not even close. I mean it's it's not. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, thanks for that tough question. I mean,
Speaker 1: those fifteen hundred malls you mentioned, we're now down to
Speaker 1: about and you know, if you ask a lot of analysts,
Speaker 1: they project that hundreds more will close over the next
Speaker 1: decade alone. So what do you think is behind that decline?
Speaker 1: Is it just, you know, something predictable like online shopping
Speaker 1: or what is it? Alright, Well, maybe cover your ears,
Speaker 1: because predictable or not, the rise of online shopping has
Speaker 1: definitely done some serious damage to the mall industry. And
Speaker 1: that said, the demise of brick and mortar retail has
Speaker 1: been greatly exaggerated though, because according to the Atlantic, it's
Speaker 1: actually growing at a rate of three percent per year.
Speaker 1: Even e commerce space companies like Amazon and Apple, they've
Speaker 1: doubled down on the physical retail game, which is something
Speaker 1: they definitely wouldn't be doing if brick and mortar retail
Speaker 1: was truly on its way out. So why are malls
Speaker 1: closing then? Why is it so desperate? Well, to put
Speaker 1: it simply, our country devotes way way too much space
Speaker 1: to retail stores. So forty eight square feet per person,
Speaker 1: to be exact, that is twice as much retail space
Speaker 1: per capita than any other country in the world. And
Speaker 1: a lot more than that in some cases, four times
Speaker 1: more than Japan and France, six times more than England,
Speaker 1: nine times more than Italy, eleven times more than Germany.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep going. I've got fifty seven more
Speaker 1: of these. But a retail analyst told CNBC that America
Speaker 1: is quote the most overstored place in the world, and
Speaker 1: when you look at the numbers, it's hard to disagree
Speaker 1: with us. So obviously this isn't a new development. We've
Speaker 1: been hearing about urban sprawl for years now, and it
Speaker 1: was a big part of why I grewin turned his
Speaker 1: back on malls entirely in the seventies. So why is
Speaker 1: the rug being pulled out now? Like, did it just
Speaker 1: take a while for the effects of all that retail
Speaker 1: expansion to manifest? Yeah, I mean again, the arrival of
Speaker 1: online shopping was kind of the tipping point in in
Speaker 1: all of this, and being able to shop at home
Speaker 1: really shine a spotlight on just how out of control
Speaker 1: retail construction had grown. So suddenly you had all these
Speaker 1: empty stores, malls without customers. So we may have just
Speaker 1: started seeing the effects recently, but the so called retail
Speaker 1: upon elipse has actually been a long time coming. I mean,
Speaker 1: the big question now is what to do with all
Speaker 1: the unneeded malls that we already have. And in most cases,
Speaker 1: tearing down a failed mall is considered too expensive to
Speaker 1: be a real option. But leaving them there to just decay,
Speaker 1: like that's not an appealing strategy either, Right, Well, it's
Speaker 1: not like all the remaining malls are going to close.
Speaker 1: From what I've read this week, the three hundred or
Speaker 1: so of the top earning malls like they're gonna be
Speaker 1: fine in long term. And those are the fanciest, top
Speaker 1: tier malls that sit in wealthy areas and still bring
Speaker 1: in a lot of money. But the other eight hundred
Speaker 1: or so lower tier malls, you know, you might have
Speaker 1: to get creative with, like if if they want to
Speaker 1: avoid being those sort of YouTube spectacles that that that
Speaker 1: we were talking about earlier. Yeah, and you know, from
Speaker 1: what I've seen, that's exactly what a lot of them
Speaker 1: are doing. Some of them is just being straight up repurposed,
Speaker 1: either as apartment complexes, churches, or schools. I even read
Speaker 1: about one old mall that's been transformed into this enormous
Speaker 1: indoor paintball park, which that could kind of sound, yeah,
Speaker 1: but plenty of other malls are being inverted into what
Speaker 1: are called lifestyle centers, So that's kind of a more
Speaker 1: hip or more upscale take on a mall, with specialty
Speaker 1: stores like Creighton Barrel or Pottery Barn in place of
Speaker 1: the more traditional department store anchors like a Sears or
Speaker 1: a Macy's. So they also focus more on entertainment options
Speaker 1: than regular malls do. So in addition to stores and restaurants,
Speaker 1: you might find life music venues, a bowling alley, fine
Speaker 1: art galleries. Sometimes it built in movie theater, and a
Speaker 1: lot of these lifestyle centers are open air too, with
Speaker 1: like these facades that make stores look like row houses,
Speaker 1: so you get some of that main street field to them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've been to a few of those before that.
Speaker 1: There was one being built in Dirham years ago, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, like, you don't have to build a
Speaker 1: mall that looks like an old tobacco warehouse when you've
Speaker 1: got these old tobacco warehouses just around the corner. But
Speaker 1: exactly what I do like about this Manufacturer downtown field
Speaker 1: is that it's kind of a throwback to what Victor
Speaker 1: Gruen wanted for malls. In the fifties, like he wanted
Speaker 1: to bring a touch of culture and character to the
Speaker 1: suburbs by just giving people a nice place to gather
Speaker 1: and socialize and of course shop as well. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's right, And actually in the book I quoted earlier,
Speaker 1: grew and wrote that quote. By affording opportunities for social
Speaker 1: life and recreation in a protected, potestrian environment, by incorporating
Speaker 1: civic and educational facilities, shopping centers can fill an existing void.
Speaker 1: That's while the classed up look of a lifestyle center
Speaker 1: might seem like the first time malls have come close
Speaker 1: to delivering on that promise, I'd actually argue that even
Speaker 1: the crasses most commercial malls still did manage to fill
Speaker 1: an important void for a lot of people. So what
Speaker 1: do you mean by that, Well, think back to when
Speaker 1: malls were at their peak of the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 1: even the early nineties. So back then there was really
Speaker 1: some social benefit to going to the mall. You think
Speaker 1: about rural and suburban areas, there just weren't enough people
Speaker 1: to have the kind of daily interactions that you know
Speaker 1: so commonplace in cities. So in that sense, malls were
Speaker 1: a way to get people into close for proximity to
Speaker 1: one another really more prompted this meaningful chance encounters for
Speaker 1: people who might not have met otherwise. And you know,
Speaker 1: aside from accessibility to humans, there's also accessibility to products
Speaker 1: that malls provided. If you think back in the dark
Speaker 1: days before the internet, just so scared to even think about,
Speaker 1: you know, someone in a place like Minnesota, they would
Speaker 1: have very limited selection of clothing and books and music
Speaker 1: to choose from, and and any kind of international products
Speaker 1: would have been next to impossible. But with these malls
Speaker 1: coming along, you know, suddenly products from all over the
Speaker 1: country and all over the world really were available under
Speaker 1: one gigantic roof, which is a good point. And speaking
Speaker 1: of mall on nostalgia and how different it is from
Speaker 1: a world where we're getting marketed to from our phones
Speaker 1: and our computers and just non stuff. I have a
Speaker 1: quote here that I wanted to share from an author
Speaker 1: named Ian bo Ghost and and he wrote a great
Speaker 1: article for The Atlantic that kind of served as an
Speaker 1: elegy for shopping mall culture. And this is what he writes, quote, America,
Speaker 1: days of hating them all are numbered? When it gets
Speaker 1: replaced by Apple town squares, Walmart, supercenters and the online
Speaker 1: offline slurry of an ever rising Amazon. We will miss
Speaker 1: those zoos of capitalism, those prisons of commerce where consumerism
Speaker 1: roared and swelled but inevitably remained contained. I guess you
Speaker 1: don't know what you've got till it's gone. Well, we
Speaker 1: can't do it on the past forever. So what do
Speaker 1: you say we head into the fact off and share
Speaker 1: a few of the crazier mall stories we found this week.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. All right, I'll get us started.
Speaker 1: Let's see. Well, remember how I said that America has
Speaker 1: twice as much retail space per person compared to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. Well, our record is even worse
Speaker 1: when it comes to parking spaces. In total, the United
Speaker 1: States has roughly two billion parking spots and only about
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty million cars to park in them.
Speaker 1: That evens out to eight parking spots for every car
Speaker 1: in the country. And one of the biggest contributors to
Speaker 1: this over supply of parking is, of course, the giant
Speaker 1: parking lot that circles the thousand plus shopping malls that
Speaker 1: we have been talking about today. In fact, there are
Speaker 1: more than twelve and a half thousand at the Mall
Speaker 1: of America alone, which is so weird. Anyway, there's one
Speaker 1: person who always comes out ahead at malls, no matter
Speaker 1: what the circumstances, and that is Santa Claus. So according
Speaker 1: to a magazine you might be familiar with mental floss.
Speaker 1: Being a mall Santa is a salaried position and can
Speaker 1: net first timers around ten thousand dollars per six weeks season,
Speaker 1: and if you're a Santa with a little bit more
Speaker 1: experience under your belt, you might actually be able to
Speaker 1: earn closer to thirty thousand dollars per season. Of course,
Speaker 1: any would be Santa's listening should keep in mind most
Speaker 1: malls typically required their Santa's to have natural beards, so
Speaker 1: no false is allowed. Okay, all right, well here is
Speaker 1: a kind of a weird one. So malls may be
Speaker 1: on the decline in the US, but the business is
Speaker 1: still booming in many Asian countries, particularly in China. The
Speaker 1: only problem is that a lot of the men there
Speaker 1: don't seem to enjoy shopping nearly as much as their
Speaker 1: wives do. So to get around this, some Chinese malls
Speaker 1: have begun offering complimentary lounges specifically for board husbands who
Speaker 1: would have rather stayed home. The name for these facilities
Speaker 1: literally translates to husband cloak room, which I kind of love.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they offer way more amenities than the
Speaker 1: average code check. I mean this varies from all the mall,
Speaker 1: but the lounges typically include you know, these comforts like WiFi, snacks,
Speaker 1: big TVs, and of course comfortable chairs. I love that,
Speaker 1: And I love the idea of like a wife dropping
Speaker 1: off their husband and claiming a tag and then like,
Speaker 1: maybe we're getting to come get them at the end
Speaker 1: of the day exactly. So this is a pretty odd fact.
Speaker 1: Six malls in southern California now feature funeral home chios
Speaker 1: where shoppers can pick out coffins are earned and plan
Speaker 1: their own funerals. Apparently they even have a cremation earned
Speaker 1: with the l A Dodgers logo on it. So so far,
Speaker 1: the funeral industry seems to view this whole thing is
Speaker 1: a major win in terms of reaching the audience where
Speaker 1: they're at. There's this one director of International Cemetery Creation
Speaker 1: and Funeral Association who said, quote, nobody gets up on
Speaker 1: a Saturday morning and says, gee, it's a nice day.
Speaker 1: I wonder if I can go out and get myself
Speaker 1: a burial plot. But if they're surrounded by happy, lively
Speaker 1: people and maybe clutching a bag of Mrs Field's cookies,
Speaker 1: the thought is they'll feel differently. I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: I agree with that, but it is pretty interesting and
Speaker 1: I guess there's a reason they're doing it. But all right,
Speaker 1: with the risk of seeming obsessed here, I'm going to
Speaker 1: steer us back to the exciting world of mall parking lots,
Speaker 1: but for good reason. Here because I want to share
Speaker 1: a tip that I came across for how to easily
Speaker 1: find an open space. According to mathematician Joe Pagano, all
Speaker 1: you need to do is find in how close to
Speaker 1: the mall entrance, get about twenty full spaces in your sight,
Speaker 1: and then just stop and wait six minutes. I love
Speaker 1: the idea of just stopping like that's not gonna upset
Speaker 1: anyone behind you, But why six that's According to Joe,
Speaker 1: the average shopper spends a hundred and twenty minutes in
Speaker 1: the mall. So if you divide a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: minutes by the twenties spaces, you've zeroed in on then
Speaker 1: you get six minutes, and that's how long it should
Speaker 1: take for a shopper to return to one of those spaces.
Speaker 1: So if you follow Joe's method, that should be the
Speaker 1: max amount of time you'll spend hunting for a spot. Well,
Speaker 1: I do like that one, and I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: try it out the next time I'm craving and range. Julius,
Speaker 1: I I think you end up with the trophy for
Speaker 1: this round. Nicely done, well, thank you so much. All Right, well,
Speaker 1: I think that does it for today's Part Time Genius
Speaker 1: from Gabe, Tristan Manguesh and me. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: We'll be back soon with another episode. Part Time Genius
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
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