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Cities are cash strapped due to low density sprawl, of which malls are just one kind.

Somehow a small city I used to live in managed to do it. The mall declined to the point that all that was left were the anchor stores and a few other internal stores when they decided to demolish it.

They left the major anchor stores (Target, Von Maur, Hobby Lobby), turned most of the center of the mall into parking lots, and put up a few multi-store strips around it, and it went from empty to having thriving businesses that have mostly all remained the past 16 years.

This guy has more details and took some pictures of the mall just before they closed it:

http://www.labelscar.com/illinois/college-hills-mall

alistairSH5y ago

The city would only pay for redevelopment if it owned the land underneath and that land was unsellable. And if that's the case, the city has bigger problems than the mall (something like Detroit, where, for many years, there was simply nobody there to buy/use/redevelop).

Provide the right financial incentives and a developer should be able to do it on terms favorable to the city (vs getting little/no revenue from a derelict mall complex).

atat70245y ago

Us. The money will come from us.

Or RoboCop. You choose.

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