Malls in OKC

[Plutonic Panda]

Oklahoma City-area malls thrive amid national reports of other malls' deaths | News OK

[venture]

The story really doesn't say much except "hey we have malls still."

Heritage Park and Shepard are gone. Crossroads might as well be. The others are all pretty stable. Looking at other cities I would say it has just been a case of over saturation of the market by malls. My hometown had 4 when I was growing up there. Three of those are gone (two completely torn down). A new lifestyle center hybrid mall was built by GGP a few years back and then another developer put in another lifestyle center in another part of the area. The one traditional mall left is where the better stores tend to go, like Apple and such.

For me...I haven't stepped foot in a mall for a couple years. No real need. If I need anything I have Amazon and it is delivered free in a couple days.

It will be interesting to see how things progress in the area with more retail going in. I'm definitely interested to see how much of a hit Sooner takes once the lifestyle center gets going at UNP in a couple years.

[Urbanized]

The story really doesn't say much except "hey we have malls still"...

That by itself makes OKC a bit of an outlier though. I think one reason traditional, enclosed malls still do well here is due to the fact that so far we've missed out on the national trend toward lifestyle centers. They haven't seen the same level of competition from newer, hipper places that malls in other cities have been subjected to. In that regard, having thriving malls is actually probably a bit of a backhanded compliment to the retail climate here.

[Snowman]

That by itself makes OKC a bit of an outlier though. I think one reason traditional, enclosed malls still do well here is due to the fact that so far we've missed out on the national trend toward lifestyle centers. They haven't seen the same level of competition from newer, hipper places that malls in other cities have been subjected to. In that regard, having thriving malls is actually probably a bit of a backhanded compliment to the retail climate here.

There are still tons of traditional malls around the country, at least partially I think some of it is our market went through an earlier correction on how many malls were trying to be regional players due to the oil bust. There was still a lot of developers and cities subsidizing malls well after that around the country till the great recession made all the players more careful.

[Mel]

I thinl I might have said this before but it gives us old folks somewhere out of this heat to walk.

[turnpup]

I thinl I might have said this before but it gives us old folks somewhere out of this heat to walk.

Yep, sometimes when I go to Northpark I feel like I'm disturbing the walkers by having the gall to be strolling and looking in the shops! It's hard to stay out of their way.

[Mel]

Northpark has some serious high speed walkers there. With a mean look in their eyes.

[ctchandler]

Mel,
I have hated malls for years, but now have found myself in a situation where they are invaluable. And like you, I'm a little older, and I am also on a scooter, so constant unloading/loading it on the car (I do have an electric lift), is a little tedious. I can go to Quail Springs and do everything I need, then load my scooter on my car and go home. And, like Venture, I do shop a good bit online but it doesn't always pay.
C. T.

I thinl I might have said this before but it gives us old folks somewhere out of this heat to walk.

[Plutonic Panda]

Northpark has some serious high speed walkers there. With a mean look in their eyes.

I can't get any slack anywhere now a days

[ljbab728]

I can't get any slack anywhere now a days

Obviously that mall is needing some flyovers for the fast walkers.

[josh]

There are still tons of traditional malls around the country, at least partially I think some of it is our market went through an earlier correction on how many malls were trying to be regional players due to the oil bust. There was still a lot of developers and cities subsidizing malls well after that around the country till the great recession made all the players more careful.

The last mall to "close" in San Antonio was McCreless Mall back in 2007, but I put the word closed in quotation marks because the enclosed mall was razed so a larger open air shopping center could be built, it is now called McCreless Market.

San Antonio still has five enclosed malls.

Of the four enclosed malls that have closed in the last 15-20 years, three have been redeveloped into new shopping centers and one was converted into the headquarters for Rackspace.

[Zorba]

That by itself makes OKC a bit of an outlier though. I think one reason traditional, enclosed malls still do well here is due to the fact that so far we've missed out on the national trend toward lifestyle centers. They haven't seen the same level of competition from newer, hipper places that malls in other cities have been subjected to. In that regard, having thriving malls is actually probably a bit of a backhanded compliment to the retail climate here.

I've traveled all around the US and can't think of any major US city that doesn't have malls, although I don't go seek them out I see them all the time. The DFW area still has a ton of huge malls.

[Plutonic Panda]

The last mall to "close" in San Antonio was McCreless Mall back in 2007, but I put the word closed in quotation marks because the enclosed mall was razed so a larger open air shopping center could be built, it is now called McCreless Market.

San Antonio still has five enclosed malls.

Of the four enclosed malls that have closed in the last 15-20 years, three have been redeveloped into new shopping centers and one was converted into the headquarters for Rackspace.

How many upscale?

[josh]

The last mall to "close" in San Antonio was McCreless Mall back in 2007, but I put the word closed in quotation marks because the enclosed mall was razed so a larger open air shopping center could be built, it is now called McCreless Market.

San Antonio still has five enclosed malls.

Of the four enclosed malls that have closed in the last 15-20 years, three have been redeveloped into new shopping centers and one was converted into the headquarters for Rackspace.

Wasn't able to edit this but I was incorrect. There are six enclosed malls still in San Antonio, not five: Rivercenter Mall, Ingram Mall, Northstar Mall, Rolling Oaks Mall, South Park Mall, Wonderland of the Americas Mall.

Four enclosed malls have closed: Windsor Park Mall, Central Park Mall, Westlakes Mall, McCreless Mall.

[josh]

How many upscale?

Of the six enclosed malls left, one. Northstar Mall. Then there's the Shops at La Cantera, which has a mall configuration but is open air and then there's phase II of the mall that has a main street type design. Phase I opened in 2005 and phase II opened in 2010.

[Urbanized]

I've traveled all around the US and can't think of any major US city that doesn't have malls, although I don't go seek them out I see them all the time. The DFW area still has a ton of huge malls.

Where did I say that other cities don't have enclosed malls? Most of them have multiple malls. But of course many if not most of those are struggling. I mentioned that the national trend has been to move away from them. Malls all over the country are dealing with high vacancy rates, bankruptcies, and customer trends toward dis counters, lifestyle centers, outlet malls and Internet buying. This has been a trend for more than a decade. Go google it for yourself if you doubt this. It's not hard to find dozens of stories about this in credible news, academic and retail industry publications.

Traditional enclosed malls are not being built at all, anywhere, and the lucky ones are the ones that are maintaining decent business, with few if any around the country in true growth mode. A couple of OKC malls have been curiously immune, especially Penn Square, which is as busy now as it has ever been. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but a few years ago it was the best-performing mall per square foot in Simon's entire portfolio, and Simon itself is the best-performing mall owner in the country.

[bombermwc]

Personally, I still prefer the indoor traditional mall. I hate all the sprawled out strip mall bullcrap that makes it impossible to walk between stores. Throw kids in the mix and it's just a nightmare. At least with indoor malls, you can go regardless of the weather and even just walk around some and it not be a traumatic event.

[Plutonic Panda]

Personally, I still prefer the indoor traditional mall. I hate all the sprawled out strip mall bullcrap that makes it impossible to walk between stores. Throw kids in the mix and it's just a nightmare. At least with indoor malls, you can go regardless of the weather and even just walk around some and it not be a traumatic event.

agreed.

[josh]

Personally, I still prefer the indoor traditional mall. I hate all the sprawled out strip mall bullcrap that makes it impossible to walk between stores. Throw kids in the mix and it's just a nightmare. At least with indoor malls, you can go regardless of the weather and even just walk around some and it not be a traumatic event.

What about an open air mall?

I prefer the environment of the Shops at La Cantera over the environment of North Star Mall even though they're both upscale shopping centers.

[hoya]

I go to the mall once a year, at Christmas. That's because I don't think about what I'm going to buy until like 3 days before.

[td25er]

I'm waiting for the obligatory shot at Edmond in this thread....

[SoonerDave]

Anyone thinking traditional, enclosed malls are totally dead anachronisms of the past haven't been to the greater Dallas area lately. Was there this past weekend, and visited two different malls - one in Arlington, and the other in Dallas (Galleria). These places were packed, stores were busy, and in fact the Arlington mall was open well past 10PM and still busy when we left (excepting Starbucks, grrrrr). I'll concede that last weekend was Texas' tax-free back-to-school weekend, but that notwithstanding, these places aren't in danger of folding anytime soon. The Galleria recently completed an expansion and it was clear new construction had been completed fairly recently in Arlington, or so it appeared.

Bit of side-advice: There's an outlet mall on the outskirts of Plano along I-75, and they had the most horrendous traffic management for the tax-free weekend you could imagine. Without going into too much detail, imagine an outlet mall laid out like roughly a square, with two-way entrance/exit traffic at the center of each face, and an inner ring of traffic feeding the lots and the exit/entrance traffic. Under normal loads this surely works fine, but on Saturday, it was a nightmare of snarls. Every intersection was a four-way snarl of stopped traffic with only rental security guards holding "STOP" signs at various corners. It wouldn't have taken a brain surgeon to realize they needed to make all of two entrances one way, the others all exits...but I digress...

[Richard at Remax]

Bit of side-advice: There's an outlet mall on the outskirts of Plano along I-75, and they had the most horrendous traffic management for the tax-free weekend you could imagine. Without going into too much detail, imagine an outlet mall laid out like roughly a square, with two-way entrance/exit traffic at the center of each face, and an inner ring of traffic feeding the lots and the exit/entrance traffic. Under normal loads this surely works fine, but on Saturday, it was a nightmare of snarls. Every intersection was a four-way snarl of stopped traffic with only rental security guards holding "STOP" signs at various corners. It wouldn't have taken a brain surgeon to realize they needed to make all of two entrances one way, the others all exits...but I digress...

my friend was the store manager at the gap at this location for a long time. it was always woeful navigating it and felt like no one knew how to drive

[mkjeeves]

The local outlet mall is sure getting some traffic. Yep, not enclosed but laid out similar and a real wonder in 100 degree and everything else temps.

[tfvc.org]

It really shows how lazy people are that they would rather go to a store, walk to their car, drive 100 feet, go to another store, drive another 100 feet to go to another store instead of walking that few hundred feet around a mall.