experience. And most of them have a similar layout like this

one, and includes a food court, popular clothing stores, and the

most important part of any mall anchor stores. This is where

department stores like JCPenney, Macy's and Sears once reigned

supreme, but department stores are disappearing. And that's

spelling trouble for the standard American Mall. bases

have struggled to compete against smaller online

competitors or rivals with smaller brick and mortar

footprints.

Malls had a symbiotic relationship with their anchors.

At the anchor close the malls performance began to plummet.

Melissa Repko: It used to be that a lot of those anchor

stores would draw people to the mall. And now if you walk

through many malls, top malls, you see the lines are outside of

different stores stores like Sephora or Lululemon. And some

of the other stores like a Macy's that historically was the

anchor of a mall, in some cases is struggling to get shoppers to

walk through its doors beyond going through to get to the

parking lot.

Unknown: Department stores are struggling to keep up with the

ever changing tastes and demand of younger consumers. But the

slow death of department stores isn't killing all malls, the

ones

that are closing are underperforming or have lost

their own way with the customer. So the brand is not working for

one reason or another. So it's hardly impactful to us. When you

have an obsolete situation or brand close,

the death of the American mall has been a bit overblown. Course

AI research found that retail mall sales grew 11% in 2022 to

nearly $819 billion. Some of these thriving malls have

pivoted toward an experiential model, replacing department

stores with grocery chains, casinos, gyms, ice skating

rinks, and in some cases, even residential apartments. These

new experiences and brands are recapturing America's need for

retail therapy.

The aftermath of pandemic, things were a bit more

challenging for more landlord. More store closures. Well, malls

were closed for a period of time suffered from bit more store

closures activity loss.

malls have bounced back to near pre pandemic occupancy levels as

customers sought out experiences following the Covid shut down.

Department stores haven't been as elastic. For

Melissa Repko: years we've seen a lot of department stores that

have anchored malls struggled to keep up with changing tastes. So

a lot of their shoppers have grown older and they've had a

harder time drawing in younger shoppers with trends and brands

that they like

Unknown: another headwind department stores face is the

bifurcation of consumers. Americans can be increasingly

divided into two groups, luxury shoppers, and discount shoppers.

Luxury shoppers are still flocking to higher end malls

called Class A malls which have been able to ignore the red

alarms of the mall retail apocalypse, they'll certainly

a more affluent consumer, and why that dominates the fact that

the tenant is it's pretty clear, right? You certainly want to be

in those areas where the most amount of foot traffic the most

amount of income going through your doors, which obviously is

very important to

retail, the shrinking middle class and also getting hit by

persistent inflation, leaving them with a smaller

discretionary retail budget. That's bad news for department

stores, and strip malls generally anchored by discount

retailers have been able to further siphon off traffic from

department stores. by attracting deal hunting shoppers we've seen

Melissa Repko: across the country, the retailers that are

opening the most new stores are ones like dollar stores, ones

like off price chains. And those are all in some cases taking a

bite out of department stores because if someone can get a

dress or a pair of shoes that this was similar brand that a

department store carries for less, they may just go to TJ

Maxx or they may go to Marshalls instead of going to Macy's.

Department stores have been hit on all sides, they face

competition that really cuts across the whole retail

industry. On the one hand, they're losing market share to

off price names like TJ Maxx and Marshalls. On the other hand,

they're facing more competition from Amazon and Sheehan and

other players that are online. And they also are losing share

to big box players like target that are selling more throw

pillows and towels and dresses and shoes. And all of those

competitors have made department stores have to work harder and

move faster to keep up and to hold on to customers. mall

Unknown: owners are sifting optimizing these empty spaces

left by empty anchor stores easily freeing up 10s of 1000s

if not hundreds of 1000s of square footage.

It's great for the for the mall owner as we repurpose and

transform what these shopping centers are but it's really for

the customer their their journey has been amplified. They want to

take a photo and they want to they want to have their senses

evoked. And I think that when we do our job right, we're

providing all that it's a great approach. You can see it you can

you know, smell the maybe a great restaurant or cleanliness,

clean environment, you can taste great food you can feel the

fabric and you can see other people and so all those things

you know subconsciously when you have a positive experience,

you're those senses are being impacted in a positive way and

you're like, I like that place I want to go there, we've seen

tremendous benefit once we do get repositioning we tend to

open and then you know, that has exponential positive impact on

on your shopping center,

there has been good demand and the landlords have taken

advantage of some of that space, three positioner malls to invest

to redevelop and find fresh new concepts to drive. Back the rest

of them all that in some cases have gone, you know, to the

point of the newer types of uses, like I meant and

multifamily, some cases meditel hotel, a little bit of office.

In some cases, we've also realized that the importance of

omni channel strategy to retailers themselves the

importance of having, obviously online presence, but also

physical brick and mortar location, maybe not as many

stores as you once thought you needed to have. But the role of

having an omni channel strategy that one plus one equals more

than two,

the halo effect from retailers continues to shine on malls.

American malls are generally outperforming other retail

formats per square foot. In fact, about 13% of US consumer

dollars spent on retail goods, and adjacent services were

through malls in the first quarter of 2023. According to

Coresight research.

Melissa Repko: A lot of retailers are pretty muted about

their outlook. They don't expect it to be a terrible year but

they don't expect it to be a great year either. Many of them

anticipate it's another year of moderation when people are kind

of coming back from a period of extremely high spending during

the pandemic and also recovering from some normalized levels of

pricing after a period of inflation. malls

Unknown: have proven to be resilient. But all malls aren't

made the same. And many are still struggling to find

profitability, those who are calling

for the demise of the mall. That might have been premature. But

stepping back there are probably still too many malls in the

country. There were last By most estimates, around 1000 malls a

few years back

malls unable to shift to the new model r&d Closing from 2017 to

2022. The number of malls in the US declined almost 17% yearly.

But it's not all doom and gloom as more physical retail stores

open than closed in 2020. To a first since 2016. According to

research firm core site when you

look at a mall absolutely we were giving them a plethora

customer a plethora of reasons to go to the center and it might

not just be to buy apparel, it could be to work out it could be

to work there could be to live there. So we look at as live

work playing. I meant going

to the mall and I think we realized that there is an

experiential element that the mall provides malls will

continue to play a meaningful role in the retail sector.