I didn't grow up in the Great Mall Era.
When I was a kid, going shopping meant getting on the bus and going "down city" (which is what we called downtown in Worcester) and shopping at Denholm's, Barnard's, Filene's, and Marcus (for shoes). Worcester's downtown in that era was lively and full of stores, everything from S.S. Kresge's (where, when my father took us to the dentist - always on a Saturday - we stopped to pick up a bog of Scotch Jam cookies) - to department stores like Denholm's, to nice men's shops, to jewelers, to Ephraim's bookstore, to fancy women's stores like Richard Healy's, where my father one year got my mother a mink pillbox hat for Christmas. (The Kennedy era, of course!)
Worcester's downtown also had coffee shops, restaurants, and movie theaters. It was absolutely the sort of downtown that people of a certain age look back on so fondly, and which was ripped to shreds by malls.
There were no malls in Worcester when I was a kid.
We had a few of what were called shopping centers or plazas. (I don't know whether shopping plaza is/was universal coinage, or local to New England. It seems about right to be a New England-ism. New England, after all, being a place where a corner market is called a "spa" and the porch hanging off of a three decker is a "piazza.")
Anyway, there was Lincoln Plaza, on the other side of the city from where we lived, where we occasionally trekked to for R.H. White's. And a few little clusters of stores in what would now be called a strip mall. One that we frequented had Mr. B's Shoes and a Hit or Miss.
And then, of course, the Webster Square Plaza in my neighborhood. Walking distance! How exciting when it opened. Just to give you a sense of its grandeur, the anchor store was a Zayre's, a cheapo, now defunct discount store which my parents considered junk, except for things like beachballs and hula hoops. There was also a Woolworth's where we could buy Nancy Drew and Bobbsey Twin books for fifty cents, and five-and-dime Christmas gifts for the family. And Woolworth's had a soda fountain where you could enjoy your vanilla coke and the ten-cent bag of greasy red-skinned peanuts you'd gotten at the candy counter, which is something that I did on splosh occasions with my friends Bernadette and Susan when we were in fifth and sixth grade.
But no malls, so hanging around the mall (or even shopping at one) wasn't a thing.
The first malls in Worcester - The Galleria Mall (downtown) and the eponymous Auburn Mall (not surprisingly, in the suburban town of Auburn) - opened in 1971, the year I graduated from college and had a foot and the very long leg attached to it already out the door.
I was, of course, aware of malls, as on our rare excursions into Boston, we would pass Shoppers' World on Route 9 in Framingham on our way home.
From the outside, Shoppers' World looked nothing like this garden of earthly delights. I suspect it really didn't look like this idealized version from the inside either. I had no way of knowing. The one and only time I went there I was well into adulthood and was surprised to find that the brick façade on Jordan Marsh was just that: a façade. A peeling façade of cheesy brickface.
But when I was a kid zipping by, that Jordan Marsh, which looked like a flying saucer, was completely enticing, and I longed to see what was inside.
But somewhere between my childhood and "real" adulthood, malls were everywhere. High end malls. Low end malls. In between malls. And crazy-arse malls like the Mall of America in Minnesota, which features an indoor amusement park. (On a business trip, I once got to ride on the Ferris wheel, in full business drag and carrying a briefcase.)
And then, having killed off downtowns everywhere, malls themselves started dying, leaving behind depressing and blighted hellscapes where kids hung around eating Auntie Anne's Pretzels and gloomy old folks wearing white orthopedic walking shoes trudged around in circles. And apparently the mall scene is getting even worse:
Quintessential mall stores from Macy’s to Kay Jewelers to Gap are plotting out a post-Covid future — and traditional shopping centers won’t play as much of a role in it.
Signet Jewelers Ltd., which owns chains such as Kay and Zales, said this past week it will expand in off-mall locations while continuing to pull back from the old-school gallerias where it has long had a major presence. The company also plans to add more kiosks in underserved markets.
The move brings “an opportunity for a better economic model,” Joan Hilson, Signet’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “The foot traffic for off-mall locations is better than what we’re seeing in the mall, certainly in this time. It’s really important, and we see that shift continuing.”
Some of the malls are being replaced by "so-called lifestyle centers — open-air markets with dining and other activities." Even if they're not "so-called lifestyle centers" - and I refuse to believe that anything containing a Walmart is a "lifestyle center," "so-called" or not - shopping centers now more typically include a bunch of sprawling big box stores surrounded by parking lots studded with a bunch of other stuff. Like, I guess, Zale's.Retailers are abandoning enclosed malls in growing numbers as the rise of online shopping transforms the industry — a trend that has accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. Almost a third of retail CFOs are planning to scale back their mall presence, according to a recent survey from consulting firm BDO USA. (Source: Boston Globe)
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