Empty malls tell real story of great American disaster

Like Roosevelt before him, Barack Obama will be forced to lurch to the left to save the country from wider economic desolation

FIRST POSTED MARCH 13, 2009

In town after town across America these days one can physically see the economic mantras of an entire generation turning to boarded-up wasteland before one's eyes. Shopping malls, which changed the American landscape within the course of a generation, are dying week by week.

Take the Bayshore Mall in my own town of Eureka, northern California - a covered, pedestrian arcade opened in the 1980s, owned by the Utah-based General Growth Company. Located on the edge of Humboldt Bay, though facing the opposite direction towards Highway 101, our mall was an optimistic place in the early days.

People dressed up to go there. A friend of mine who opened a coffee stall wore a tie, purchasing it from Ralph Lauren which opened an outlet. Every pretty girl in Humboldt county wanted to work there, to see and to be seen. People drove for three hours through the Yolly Bolly Wilderness all the way from Redding in the Central Valley to savor its glories. There were stylish concerts in its ample food court.

In the past 40 years some 200 cities built pedestrian malls. Only 30 remain

Today the Bayshore Mall molders, embodying the misfortunes of General Growth - the second largest mall owner in the US - whose stock trades now for 55 cents, down from $44 last May. General Growth has now ousted its CEO, John Bucksbaum, (who is related to Ann Bucksbaum, wife of the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman, world's wealthiest pundit).

In 2006, the value of General Growth Properties was estimated at about $2.7bn. Last October 8, Business Week headlined an article 'General Growth Properties Staggers Under Debt Load'. That debt load was $27bn.

Some major retailers, like Ralph Lauren's Polo, have long since fled from Bayshore Mall. Walk east along one of the arcades and you come to a wall of plywood, behind which lies the desolation that was Mervyns, a clothing chain which has now filed for bankruptcy.

Shopping malls, which changed the American landscape within the course of a generation, are dying week by week

Shopping mall going out of business in America

The little stores nearby have a somber mien, like people compelled to live in the chill shadow of a funeral home. The food court, serviced by six or seven fast food businesses, is becoming a sanctuary for the poor who sit in the warmth with modest snacks and while away the hours.

Across the past 40 years some 200 cities built pedestrian malls. Today, only 30 remain. Drive around any town and one can see strip malls in similar decline, their parking lots nearly empty, boarded stores in the retail frontage like a mouth losing its teeth, as the lights of Circuit City go out and Linens 'n Things, Zales, Ann Taylor and Sharper Image retrench or collapse entirely.

Out of crisis comes opportunity, one that’s been discussed for some years by movements such as the New Urbanists and crusaders for