Developers are converting part of the 41-year-old Alderwood Mall outside of Seattle into housing.
Looking back, don’t you feel like you always knew malls would go the way of the Dodo as soon as online shopping started taking hold? I had no idea, but now I imagine I was ahead of the curve. I wonder how many people in the 1990s were already pondering what to do with empty mall real estate in future decades.
There will probably always be a need for someplace like a mall for people to gather with friends and maybe have an indoor walk when the weather is bad. Maybe retail shops for people who’d rather see items up close — or try them on before buying — will survive, but they’ll never fill all that space.
In today’s article, we learn about a conversion effort at a mall in Washington State.
In June, Patrick Sisson wrote at Bloomberg’s City Lab, “The multiple crises impacting the U.S. economy — the botched response to the coronavirus and the resulting economic fallout, and lack of spending power — have delivered a new gut punch to brick-and-mortar retail, a sector that was already reeling.
“More than half of all U.S. department stores in malls will be gone by 2021, one real estate research firm predicts, and surviving retailers may not be far behind; once-mighty brands such as Cheesecake Factory and the Gap are skipping rent payments, Starbucks is closing physical locations, and developers see a future for big box stores as office complexes. …
“At the Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, a suburb north of Seattle, an adaptive reuse project already in progress suggests that America’s vast stock of fading shopping infrastructure could indeed get a second life as places to live. …
“Developers are turning a wide swath of the 41-year-old shopping center into Avalon Alderwood Place, a 300-unit apartment complex with underground parking. The project won’t completely erase the shopping side of the development: Commercial tenants will still take up 90,000 square feet of retail. But when the new Alderwood reopens, which developers expect will happen by 2022, the focus will have shifted dramatically. …
“Lynnwood may offer an ideal testing ground for the long-term opportunities in large-scale suburban mall-to-housing conversion. The suburb of roughly 40,000 people is a commuter bedroom community for Seattle, which has been struggling mightily with a severe housing shortage. …
“ ‘There have been some great examples of this kind of redevelopment, such as Tyson’s Corner in Virginia, but it’s very specific to individual cases, and very expensive,’ says Nick Egelanian, president of retail consultancy SiteWorks, who predicts up to a third of malls will be vacant due to the economic fallout from the pandemic. ‘If it’s a good location, you can backfill that with residential, hotel, office and entertainment.’ …
“Brian Lake, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who focuses on housing issues, believes that, minus the hurdles put up by zoning regulations and red tape, such commercial conversions should be happening everywhere. From a construction standpoint, conversions are simple.
‘We need to open up every opportunity possible to develop new affordable housing,’ he says. ‘Fannie Mae estimated we need an additional 2.5 million units just to satisfy the long-term demand, and that’s before this year’s crises.’
“Converting commercial real estate to housing may be the best use of land in such an over-retailed country. Big shopping centers tend to be centrally located and connected to transit. … During a time of housing shortages, Lake believes that transforming empty commercial buildings is a ‘moral imperative.’
“The Alderwood redevelopment brings challenges. … So the city is working on a housing action plan to make sure social services and education arrive in the community, not just new apartments. The mall may be evolving, but the desire, and challenges, in creating a community-oriented development still remain.
“ ‘You can have acres and acres of housing, but without a community, is it a place?’ [David Kleitsch, the city’s economic development director,] says. ‘Does it fulfill somebody’s experience?’ ”
More at City Lab, here.
Suzanne's Mom's Blog 
Great idea. I hate seeing vacant malls. They could be put to good use.
Lots of possibilities, although I doubt they’ll ever be as photogenic as the old covered bridges you collect!
No a mall cannot compare to a covered bridge. Thank you.
It seems to me that in many malls, there is room for community services such as a grocery store, post office, library. Some of the parking lot could be converted to a park. Solar panels on the roof. Starting to sound pretty good.
I love this vision. Shop owners used to think trees in the parking lot wasted space for cars. But I have seen studies showing they make people feel inclined to frequent such a shady, pleasant shopping area.
Yes, I think there are lots of things that can be done to repurpose malls to make them inviting places for people to live and gather. So much went into building them. It seems better to reuse than tear down.