The Retail Apocalypse Has Arrived, What Will Rise From The Ashes?
By: Spatial Activations
Tags: Art, Retail, Malls, Experience, Attraction

If there was a silver lining to this year, maybe it’s that we didn’t have to brave holiday shopping at the mall. Goodbye, chaotic food courts. So long, grumpy mall Santa Clause.

In fact, 2020 may have put the days of mall shopping as we know it behind us for good. A decade in the making, the pandemic has finally wrought the retail apocalypse. As of October, 15% of America’s malls closed for good in 2020, according to a report by the Barclays investment group. Odds are, that’s just the beginning.

“What takes the mall’s place after we emerge from the pandemic may determine the fabric of American life for future generations”

“Good riddance,” you might think. “Malls are loud, annoying cathedrals to capitalism — no more, no less.” Yet the developers that own these spaces won’t just let them go to seed, and what takes their place after we emerge from the pandemic may determine the fabric of American life for future generations.

As a co-founder of experiential art-tech company Meow Wolf, I’ve made a business out of trying to realize a more imaginative and interesting future. In Santa Fe, that led our team to create The House of Eternal Return, an art experience that transformed a dormant bowling alley into a national sensation that attracted 400,000 visitors in its first year.

Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, NM. Photo by Kate Russell

The House’s success brought a deluge of commercial real estate developers to my doorstep. Collectively, they represent hundreds of malls and commercial centers across the country, each seeking a solution to the retail apocalypse. What do they plan on doing with all their empty square footage once we emerge from this pandemic? The common strategy that I’ve heard is quite disheartening: bail out big-box anchor tenants to protect against default before converting the spaces to online fulfillment centers.

Yikes. If transplanting digital retail warehouses into the heart of thousands of American towns feels ominously symbolic, that’s because it is. Malls aren’t just for buying things; for communities across America, they have served as “third places,” important social gathering spots outside of home and work. Rather than waving the white flag to mega online retailers, these commercial spaces should instead be updated with creative and enticing experiences worthy of leaving your home for.

“Developers of physical spaces have not been able to keep pace with digital developers…”

To do that, developers need to win back the hearts of kids, teenagers, and new families. Generation Z have abandoned malls for the same reason retail spaces are dead: there’s a more convenient and more interesting version on their phones (see: Roblox, Fortnite, IG, TikTok, etc). Developers of physical spaces have not been able to keep pace with digital developers who have crafted countless inspiring worlds for kids to explore, turning social media and mobile gaming into billion-dollar industries in the process.

But, as The House of Eternal Return proved, the physical world still has an edge. Real-life experiences, especially when they are mind-blowing and visually stunning, carry a prestigious value that the online world still cannot match. No matter how insane a virtual experience may be, there’s just no substitute for actually experiencing something IRL. In dollars and followers, Meow Wolf has proven that communities still have an insatiable desire to gather together — as long as you can deliver a remarkable and meme-able experience that is worthy of being shared on social media.

“Experiential Attractions are the new anchor tenant”

The old model for success — a big-box store, a movie theater and hodgepodge of retail stores — is now entirely extinct. Experiential attractions are the new anchor tenant. Meow Wolf is poised to prove this again in early 2021 with our second permanent art exhibition: Omega Mart at Las Vegas’ Area 15, an experience-centric mall-of-the-future created by Winston Fisher of Fisher Brothers Properties, one of the rare developers in this country who actively understands this emerging paradigm shift.

For of Resonating Lamps by teamLab

These attraction-anchored malls won’t just be monetary investments — they will be investments into a more inspiring, imaginative, and connected way of life for the American people. To center our country’s towns around warehouses for online retail is dystopian, a step toward a physical world that only exists to serve the virtual one. If you’re wondering what that might feel like, look around — it is not that different from quarantine.

We can choose to develop a more imaginative world. In Santa Fe, when the House of Eternal Return opened, we saw a vacant lot with a gutted bowling alley turn into a vaunted third place for my home city — a mecca of art and imagination that I wish I had when I was growing up. The same creative magic can happen in communities across this country.

“We can choose to develop a more imaginative world”

Transforming malls from retail hubs into social dream-a-toriums filled with art, technology, and play is certainly a major upheaval. But so was the concept of the mall itself, once upon a time. Not only did malls reward their investors; they made their communities closer, too. We shouldn’t give that up just because everyone is buying their Christmas gifts online. Commercial developers need to again learn what their communities are willing to leave the house for and then anchor their recovery strategy to that. And I can promise you, it is way more than the same-old mall Santa Clause from the 90’s. What communities are seeking are amazing experiences that remind us that the real world can still be a magical place.