Shopping Malls and Big Box Stores: Dead or Alive

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Shopping Malls and Big Box Stores: Dead or Alive Shopping malls and big box stores have made a lasting presence on the physical footprint of cities across the globe. These mega-retail establishments are not all what they used to be. New sites are still being constructed, and old sites are still being abandoned. In Tulsa, Oklahoma for example what was once Eastland Mall has transformed into Eastgate Business Complex. A death of a shopping mall. On the other side of town Tulsa Hills, a cluster of big box stores or power center, was founded, and talk of at least two outlet malls is underway currently. As the world continues to evolve, so do the retail companies. Shopping malls and big box stores while lumped into one category have seen a recent decay for different reasons. Malls have experienced an over-saturated market. Big box stores have been losing business to the internet. Shopping malls have gone through a very trying phase during the last decade as internet shopping has transitioned from infancy to adulthood. In 2001 the Wall Street Journal found that the general public saw the internet as an informational resource than a place to shop. Fast forward eleven years, and the trend is just the opposite. Shoppers now go to the large stores to view the merchandise, and then go elsewhere to buy it (Bustillo 2012). But as Schwartz points out, these have been attributed to an excessive boom in shopping mall development in the 1990’s (Millar 2015), not internet sales. Regardless of cause there is still hope for malls at least on the horizon. In 2010 shopping malls had reached 21%, the highest percentage of malls with at least 10% vacancy in history, but in 2014 the amount has decreased by 3% (Schwartz 2015). Malls are trying every strategy they can to survive such as adding in public spaces normally provided by the local governments to attract more people (Millar

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