Retail shopping malls have been on life support for at least a decade as they try to diversify into entertainment destinations, office parks and in some cases, bulldozed and turned into residential areas. Looks like the Sears Announcement has a few people worried.
In my personal opinion? Fuck malls. They brought a bit of this on themselves. When you discourage teens from using your service or coming to your establishment don't come out and whine that those same people, now in their 40's and with families, avoid you. There are two big malls in town that are worth acknowledging their existence. The one in the wealthy side of town is booming. The one in the blue collar area advertises senior services, mall walker programs, and other senior related programs. This is not a bad thing if you can build a sustainable business model around it. But, your customer base is not going to be around long due to the limits of human lifetimes. And they are not welcoming to younger kids so those kids won't have a good nostalgia tingle when it comes to their time to choose where to shop.
I do not own any brick and mortar retail stocks. None. Starting to look like that was a good long-term decision.
I currently work in a mall... ...well, it used to be a mall. I sit in a cubicle in what was the men's department in a Montgomery Ward store decades ago. Now it houses one of our datacenters and some office space. Other tenants in "the mall" include an urgent care facility, a university department (I think they ran out of room on campus) and a small marketing company. The rest of the space is a revolving door of other businesses... There have been a few for-profit universities, call centers, etc. I think that physically speaking, there can be life after retail, but it needs to be managed correctly.
It's the consumerism side of malls that drove me away. When I'm shopping for something, I'm only shopping for those specific needs. Being forced to walk past a dozen other stores to get to the one I want is inconvenient verging on actively annoying. I'd rather shop online or visit a single store than deal with a mall. The mall format may work for others, but it doesn't for me.
The malls around me in Northern New Jersey are always packed. It helps that we are close to New York city and that a lot of northern New Jersey is densely populated. Also that our sales tax has been lower than NYC and the surrounding area's sales tax. I think that draws people to our malls as well. Here are funny thoughts on malls/strip malls in general. I just grew up around them.
The malls I know with megaplexes and IMAX screens seen to do well. But the straight retail malls are hurting. An Apple store has a captured customer base that has nowhere else to go, so I can see that generating foot traffic in an otherwise retail mall.
Retail aside, the physical structure of malls would seem to make them an ideal place for some kind of hub. Maybe they could be host to mom and pop shops, small lawyer and business consulting offices, maybe government organizations like military recruitment or family services, etc. They have the potential to become something new, but what that would look like exactly, I don't really know.