E-commerce, one of the most-cited culprits behind America’s dying malls, may soon become the mall. Cue The X-Files theme music.
E-commerce, one of the most-cited culprits behind America’s dying malls, may soon become the mall. Cue The X-Files theme music. The nation’s leading mall owner, Simon Property Group, is purportedly in talks with Amazon to house fulfillment centers in some of their vacated department store real estate, people familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal. The companies have discussed converting stores previously occupied by J. C. Penny and Sears, once lynchpins of mall traffic that have been bleeding revenue and shuttering stores left and right in recent years, leaving behind massive desolate spaces that never fail to give me the creeps. And all those big-box spaces gathering cobwebs have apparently left an equally massive hole in Simon’s profits, otherwise I doubt they’d be considering filling their prime retailer real estate with a distribution center.
