America is full of abandoned malls. What if we turned them into housing?

[Jilly_in_VA]

Amy Casciani, a longtime real estate developer whose corporation built housing across seven states, watched her local community struggle for years to add new homes.

Casciani grew up in upstate New York, in a suburban town outside Rochester. She eventually started a family and raised her children there, and in the early 1990s, a new mall opened up, bringing over 100 new stores including anchor retailers like Sibley’s, J.C. Penney, and Sears.

The mall was a proud boon to the town of Irondequoit, and a go-to spot for teenagers to hang out. “Hands down the most attractive shopping mall in the area,” an editorial for a newspaper serving Albany declared. “From its blue Legolike entrances and splashing fountain to its light-trimmed glass roof, columns and carousel, the mall exudes carnival gaiety.”

But in a few short years, retail patterns across the United States began to change. Mall foot traffic slowed and online shopping ticked up. Stores in the Irondequoit Mall began to close, and by 2016, the last major anchor, Sears, called it quits.

Casciani ached for her town, which not only was dealing with the eyesore of the abandoned mall but also lacked enough vacant land to develop desperately needed affordable housing. Her nonprofit development group, PathStone, embarked on a complex but meaningful project: They retrofitted the Sears department store into 73 rental apartments and built a new four-story multifamily building with 84 rental units on the adjacent parking lot.

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/24075581/housing-conversions-stripmalls-affordable-supply

No reason, other than lazy developers who'd rather take the tax loss.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. That Mall

Is where I attended my first college fair in 1990. So sad what happened up there. That was also The Gap where I met Audrey Hepburn when I was a little girl.

[SergeStorms]

14. Another Rochester area DUer.

There's more of us than I imagined. I live on the west side of Monroe County, on the Lake.

[budkin]

39. I was born in Rochester, grew up in the village of Geneseo

Our main mall was Marketplace in Henrietta but every once in a while we'd go to Irondequoit mall to change it up.

[SergeStorms]

49. Marketplace is still going...

pretty strong. Eastview in Victor is doing well. Greece-Ridge is holding it's own, with some decline. Irondequoit seems to be the only one that couldn't make it, and it was a nice place.

A lot of people, like me, are older now and buy many things online. I always hated malls, even when I was younger. Guys are different like that. 😉

[GenThePerservering]

66. Guys are different like that.

::sure, Jan:: gif

[AllaN01Bear]

59. if our walmart were to pull up stakes , id love to see it as a homless shelter or put

all of sonora city and tuolumne county offices under one roof.

[JustAnotherGen]

64. I've been in NJ since 2006!

Grew up in Scottsville - but an AQ grad! Lived in Greece, then Brighton before I moved for a job.

[SergeStorms]

65. I love Scottsville.

There's so many beautiful old homes there. I'm retired now, and I moved around quite a lot when I was working.
I moved to Florida after I retired, but the culture shock drove me back to New York. There were too many right-wing, bearded rednecks, driving pick-up trucks with gun racks and confederate flags flying. And those were the women! 😉
I can handle the cold better than I can handle the summer heat and right-wingnuts in Florida. I fled, screaming all the way back to New York.

[mcar]

2. I've been thinking this for some time

Ditto the empty(ing) office buildings in downtown areas due to remote work. I believe Washington, DC, is looking into this.

[lindysalsagal]

6. Same, here. But it will require government support. $$

Transportation, maintenance, supervision, administration. Basically, they'd be "projects." Will taxpayers allow the budgeting?

I'd love to see them with basic needs included, like a food pantry, a nurse, daycare, possibly mental health/addiction support. Possibly dedicate some specifically for elderly or post-conviction rehab housing.

Community theaters and groups need performance spaces, as well. Lots of potential going to waste. Instead, we bicker about immigrants and legislating religion.

[mcar]

16. Absolutely

The other issue with office buildings is that they are not outfitted for apartments - bathrooms, enough natural light, etc. I believe the DC government is looking at ways to retro-fit buildings for different uses.

[NanaCat]

56. Office buildings wouldn't be a problem to convert

Name any home that has the bathroom usage that the typical office building has. FFS, you don't even have to consider the entirety; each floor in a high-occupancy building requires a shocking amount of plumbing needs to accommodate.

Don't think of the slow times when most people are working. Think of the stress on the system when dozens of people are putting each floor's bathroom through 'peak' usage periods every few hours--when they're coming to work, on breaks, at lunch, and before they leave work. And that's not counting the office suites that have their own bathrooms and kitchens.

An apartment complex of a similar number of residents doesn't put a bathroom through as much plumbing stress as one floor of an office building at the 10 a.m. break. It takes a powerful system to deal with that much usage all at once.

Wiring for the electric system--same thing. Even when everyone is home in an apartment complex, they don't use nearly as much electricity as your standard office floor.

They just don't.

This is why office buildings would work for conversions--and have.

[RAB910]

3. the challenge with converting office space or malls into homes is the plumbing

that's the huge difference between residential and commercial properties

[tinrobot]

10. And the air conditioning, and the electrical...

...and the fact that most malls don't have windows/egress to the outside.

It's not an easy renovation.

[Zeitghost]

11. Yep, lots of code and construction issues involved

I would imagine that new construction may be more cost effective.

[Old Crank]

44. Yes many code issues.

It might be easier to renovate towers for this purpose than the one and two story malls. But things could get done and opening up more to the outside while having courtyards inside woiuld be great. Plus small scale shops, rehab and counseling available wouldn't need quite the same code compliance issues.

A lot of the older malls are near transit also which helps.

[pandr32]

25. They could face a center green space and communal areas.

I am sure indoor green spaces are possible, and stores already have large windows. It could be done. Large, outdoor gardens and parks could be built into the huge parking lots that already replaced nature.

[Peacetrain]

4. Yes this is beginning to happen and could be just the thing for families

of all ages.. Seniors to Young Singles and all in-between.. there was a news report on that just the other day and how restaurants and stores facing into the newly created housing in the mall could be available to people.. Just think.. no cars needed to grab a quick bite or walk in bad weather.. could be a real blessing and opportunity to towns short of affordable housing or housing period..

[Srkdqltr]

5. Someone has to do it.

We here can agree that something has to be done and feel good about it but someone has to pony up the money.

[Silent Type]

7. Several old malls are considering that in my area. I'm just not sure they are looking at really affordable housing.

I doubt there are many real estate developers who would prefer to take tax losses to profitable revenue. Point is, I think many worry about feasibility of these projects working.

[Johnny2X2X]

8. Only governement can help this

In my area of the country, the only thng that would be built would be McMansions or luxury condos if it weren't for cities and municipalities having zoning laws that make builders jump through hoops to get approval and permits for their new developments.

The free market would be almost no affordable housing as builders want to maximize profits and luxury units do that the best. But whenever some new condo/apartment project is proposed, the city I live in negotiates with the builder to ensure X% of the units are affordable or at or below market etc. So we'll get a new 16 floor condo with the first 2 floors being for subsidized housing, the next could flors being afforable or market value, and then a bunch of really expensive units on the upper floors. It's not the perfect situation, but it does help alleviate some of the rent increases we see.

[Fla Dem]

33. According to the article State and federal governments are.

In 2022, California lawmakers passed a statewide law to help facilitate the conversion of empty commercial buildings to housing, with supporters cheering the law’s potential to “unlock” tons of previously unavailable land.

The Biden administration is also excited about the possibility of converting more vacant strip malls into housing, and in October, released new federal guidance to help leaders and developers navigate the unfortunately complex financing process.

“It’s not going to be a panacea,” said one senior official who works on the White House’s housing policy and was not authorized to speak publicly. “But it could have a range of self-reinforcing benefits for community and economic development, housing and employment.”

[Dulcinea]

57. McMansions & "Townhomes from the low 800s"

...are all that's built where I live. People whine endlessly about the homeless population & the lack of affordable housing while out-of-state corporations & Air BnBs buy up all the affordable properties. It's destroying the housing market, & it sucks. I'd love to see old malls repurposed for affordable housing.

[MagickMuffin]

9. Several decades ago I tried to get the city to convert a hospital into housing

Plenty of individual rooms with plumbing just waiting for the officials to do so.

I was told it would cost the city too much money. So, it was grazed to the ground and the county hospital built more facilities on the land.


I would think converting malls would be challenging.

[ScratchCat]

12. One of the biggest problems with getting housing available for people

Is that the vast majority of people who get involved in real estate - and especially real estate development - do so with the intent of making huge sums of money without doing any actual work or labor. Much of the "increased cost" today - just like with consumer goods - is the increase in profit for the developer.

The story notes that Amy Casciani is a "long time real estate developer", and then notes later that she started a "nonprofit development group" to build that housing. There is no doubt in my mind she is sticking large sums of money in her pocket as well.

I just shake my head. The root cause of lack of affordability for almost everything in this country comes down to the amount of money the entitled class wants to put in its pocket at the expense of the rest of the country. The greed was always there, but it clearly excellerated over the past six years due to the Trump Tax Cut Scam.

[Voltaire2]

13. The system is broken and there is no ideological capacity to admit this.

We are stuck in neoliberal hell.

[Jilly_in_VA]

15. Actually

we are stuck in RepubliKKKan real estate developer hell. They are opposing everything except something that will make them megabucks.

[orthoclad]

34. Housing became unaffordable due to the Great Recession,

where millions of homes were foreclosed and bought up by those with inherited generational wealth, who then cornered the market and drove housing prices up.

[h2ebits]

17. The parking lots of these closed malls offer a place to build new housing.

Using the old mall buildings for affordable housing is a good solution. Architects with great imagination could re-design them and rather than razing the buildings; they would re-use what is available.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

47. good idea. some have HUUUUGE lots.

[RipVanWinkle]

18. Almost no one wants to do anything unless

it involves making a lot of money.

[CTyankee]

19. Why did the mall idea not succeed?

I thought the idea of having lots of stores available in one large space was good. You could visit a lot of different stores selling different things in one area, rather than drive all over to different locales, find parking, etc. One mall, one parking lot/garage, fewer trips to find things.

My guess is that online shopping made malls somewhat obsolete. Is that right?

[orthoclad]

38. Malls destroyed Main Street,

then in turn were destroyed by warehouses (Amazon) and the delivery economy. The cycles of profit.

I miss Main Street. If you look hard, you can still find remnants of small-scale, walkable communities.

[GenThePerservering]

67. Retail was over-expanded in the 80s and early 90s

We had far more square feet of retail per capita than anyone else in the world. It took very little to start emptying out those malls - one was people got tired of 'sport shopping' and had other things to do with their money. Another was online shopping, but only about 15% of retail is online...but that's enough to tank these over-built malls.

A lot of those places need to be razed and returned to farmland.

[Bettie]

20. Make them retirement homes for Gen X!

Yes, it's a joke, but hey, we grew up in malls!

[dembotoz]

21. converting some buildings into housing is harder than it looks

perhaps other uses would be more viable
think out of the box not just the housing box

[brooklynite]

22. Blaming "developers"'is easy..

Turning malls into housing is as difficult as turning office into housing. They’re not laid out (windows, water/sewer, electrical) to accommodate housing units. You’ll essentially be tearing down the mall and building from scratch on the existing property.

[maxsolomon]

26. Stop injecting reality into this discussion.

Why can't you just blame developers for their greed and laziness?

[Scrivener7]

41. The White Plains Galleria is being converted

to mixed use offices, retail and residential.

They say above and around the existing structure.

[IbogaProject]

23. Nope malls were never 'nice'

they destroyed untold numbers of main street businesses. Malls used to require stores to stay open the entire time the mall was open. No way for a mom and pop business to take time off. Also those malls banned political activity so they helped Reagan and the Bushes slip into power. I never liked all the long walking in and out and the chemical smell from all the plastics and adhesives.

[moniss]

24. Much of it is

NIMBY based.

[Goodheart]

27. Either that or pickleball courts!

[yellowdogintexas]

37. I have seen some articles about dead mall conversion into pickleball, tennis,

volleyball and even basketball courts in the old anchor stores. Each large store has plumbing on every floor; conversion to a shower arrangement should be easier than apartment type plumbing.

[totodeinhere]

28. It is often cheaper to build from scratch than to renovate a property.

We could build housing on the land but it would probably be better just to tear the mall down and construct from scratch

[twodogsbarking]

29. They want to turn ours into a casino.

[jgorman1962]

31. Nashua NH

They are converting what was once a two-story Sears into a casino in Nashua NH. The mall is still there, barely

[bucolic_frolic]

30. Suitability, cost and ease of conversion depends on age, condition

I can think of near 50 year old malls near me. The concrete decks have cracks, they've been leveled with resurfacing. Are they structurally sound? Well they haven't been condemned. Are they good for another 50 years? Maybe they do it easily in a single-level mall. I have no idea of demolition, renovation costs. There are impacts on local communities, traffic patterns, zoning issues. Often new rental housing in established neighborhoods, and the aging existing population is wary of the millennial upstarts moving in. Just throwing out there, this is a complex issue with local conditions.

Sometimes they turn malls into manufacturing space, or mixed usage communities. Might be easier to turn strip malls into housing

[orthoclad]

32. Communist!

Using depleted resources for the good of society? Shame on you!

Seriously, though, abandoned malls are an incredible resource. It's land that has already been damaged by development and infrastructure. Every time I see an old factory or wharf repurposed for housing, I think "Somewhere a forest was left standing".

I saw a nearby mall which went out of business be bulldozed and the debris, containing who-knows-what, carted off to destroy yet another piece of land as a rubble dump. Then, they built another mall there!

We have a dearth of housing in the US inventory. Young families are competing in a tight market. Repurpose the mall buildings for affordable and subsidized housing. Cover the roofs and parking lot with solar panels, and make car chargers available. We can help young (and old) families achieve secure housing while we help avoid climate catstrophe and spare a forest from being torn down for development.

But this won't line the pockets of the already rich, so we won't.

Thanks for bringing this up.

[jgorman1962]

35. Why not AFORDABLE housing?

The one mentioned in greater Boston is $2600/month for a 1 bedroom. It's nice removing dead space abandoned malls, but who could afford to move in?
$2600 is way more than most mortgages in the area!

[leftstreet]

42. +1

[Elessar Zappa]

36. Very difficult and expensive.

It would need to be done by the city or state with no profit margin. It might even be cheaper to tear them down and build from scratch.

[Scrivener7]

40. They're attempting it at one site near me.

Should be interesting.

[Kaleva]

43. Maybe convert to services instead of housing

SOS, Post Office, clinic, dental and such. Put a gas station in the parking lot like you see at many Walmarts.

[meadowlander]

48. My local mall worked with the city council to lease to the library

and has co-located other government services like the vaccination centre and some other health care clinics. Then the council agreed to build a new pool across the road. The mall was dying for years but is picking up a bit recently because they looked beyond just being a private commercial space to create more of a community hub.

[Kaleva]

61. Yes. Turn the mall into a community hub

[Mossfern]

45. With a big increase in local population

The municipality would need to build more schools = higher property taxes for those already living in the area. Municipal services would also be increased. Perhaps the developers could be responsible for building the schools?

I live in NJ and my property taxes are more than $25,000 per year.
Yeah, you read that right. I do not live in a McMansion; our home is 135 years old.

[marybourg]

46. And truck parking!

[WarGamer]

50. I read a great article about this...

Problem is... taking a 4 story office purposed commercial building and converting to residential may cost more than building from the ground up.

We had this come up in my community when Farmers Insurance walked away from their massive building.

Fire codes... different amounts of sewage and water pressure requirements. etc etc etc... the list is long.

Windows, doors... basically EVERYTHING

[WarGamer]

51. The answer is simple but controversial.

The City/County/State needs to take land and build out 4000 square foot lots on paved streets with utilities run for tiny homes and mf'd homes.

Sell the lots at "Cost"...

Probably 10-15k a lot.

These ain't granddaddys "trailers"

[Redleg]

52. You are right about controversial

I can just hear my neighbors complaining about "lower income" housing just down the street. Fits into the "fuck you, I got mine ethos" that is so strong in America. I get that people are worried that their home prices will suffer. The solution to that is to not sell your home.

[WarGamer]

53. +100...nt

[meadowlander]

69. The city/county/state can't just "take land". It has to buy it.

Which means it needs a budget which probably needs an approval process that will require public consultation on public funds being spent on property development instead of services for taxpayers. Malls tend to be in central locations to create the commercial catchment which usually means higher land prices.

Then you probably need to rezone the land from commercial to residential which will be another public consultation process. Then you'd need to pay for infrastructure upgrades to support housing on a site that was previously zoned commercial. You might need to upgrade the wastewater and drinking supply pipes and interceptors, put in upgraded stormwater management, roads, etc.

Then you need to hire people who can plan the new subdivision since this isn't usually in-house expertise for local government. You'd need to consider the highest and best use for that land which may not be detached manufactured homes but might be townhouses or apartments or mixed-use developments. Then you need to hire contractors to build it because again, that's not in-house capability. Even using pre-fab houses you still need to do all the earthworks, all the service connections for the infrastructures, all the fences, landscaping, etc.

It's not impossible but you're not going to come out of that process with $10-15K lots. I live in a subdivision that was designed as a "model project" by government to show private developers that better urban design could be achieved for affordable housing. It's a great subdivision - good light, privacy, passive solar heating, and access to open space, but at the end of the day it didn't cost any less than comparable private development in the same area - about $230K for a two-bedroom one story house on a 4500 sq ft lot. And that's converting a park to a housing development so doesn't factor in the demo and waste disposal costs for a huge mall and parking lots.

You'd be better off in almost any scenario doing something that retrofits the existing structures.

[WarGamer]

70. I should have been more clear... TAKE their own land.

City/County/State has TONS of land.

And my father was a land developer... localities make deals all the time with developers to allocate part of their land for this or that... parks, etc...

This 20th Century model of 8900sf lots and 2600sf houses isn't efficient today.

You could build 80 lots on 10 acres.... after accounting for roads and other space

[Deep State Witch]

54. I think it would take a lot of work, but it's possible

I think that it would take a lot of modifications to make a mall into housing. Look at plumbing, for instance. You have large stores with maybe one set of restrooms per floor. Plus, you have maybe one or two sets of restrooms per floor in the open part. Each store may or may not have it's own toilet and sink. If you make those stores into separate housing units, each one of them is going to have to have a toilet, sink, and shower, plus the accompanying sewage. Plus a separate kitchen sink and drain. Unless you're doing dormitory-style living, which would kinda suck but be easier to modify an existing structure.

At some point, it might just be better to knock them down and build new housing.

[Bonx]

55. Reminds me of 2004's 'Dawn of the Dead'

[elocs]

58. Turning abandoned malls into housing may seem like a good idea, but most are faced with big building code issues.

It's happened where I live, even as places to house the homeless, but it has huge building code issues that are not easily met.

[Kennah]

60. But we need to pay for the next football stadium

[drmeow]

62. They did it in Providence

https://www.businessinsider.com/americas-first-shopping-mall-is-now-micro-apartments-2016-10?op=1

[Texasgal]

63. One of our malls

here in Austin, TX has been repurposed into a community college campus.

[wiggs]

68. Santa Ana, CA, has done exactly that...great project in area needing both supportive housing and

renovation. I was part of the design team....very satisfying.

https://la.urbanize.city/post/affordable-housing-replaces-strip-mall-parking-santa-ana

https://www.integrityhousing.org/portfolio/tiny-tim/

https://www.multihousingnews.com/from-strip-center-to-mixed-use-the-story-of-la-placita-cinco-in-california/

[jmowreader]

71. Windows. Windows are why.

A habitable dwelling must have at least one window.

Most people here haven't worked in a mall. Since I have, let me enter into the discussion.

Every store in a mall, except the anchor stores, has a service corridor behind the retail spaces. If you wanted to turn a mall into apartments, you'd first have to eliminate the service corridor by tearing out the back wall of the retail spaces and extending the partition walls to the perimeter wall - which is generally masonry and very hard to cut through. You would also have to install plumbing, ventilation for range hoods and dryers, sewer service...by the time you were done, you'd have more money into it than you'd spend just calling the Loizeaux Brothers in to level the place and building real housing.

What would work better is to do what they did here in Coeur d'Alene to revitalize the dead mall we had. There's a sporting goods store called the Black Sheep that made more money than they knew what to do with during the Clinton's/Obama's/Biden's Gonna Take Your Guns Away Any Second Now Sales. In their last store they had departments for things like clothes and drinkware. The store was REALLY crowded, so they bought the dead mall, took all the empty storefronts, and put their non-core departments (read: anything but sporting goods) into their own storefronts. Now, instead of having a table with all these right-wing t-shirts and hats they sell as fast as they can put them out they have a whole little shop for right-wing paraphernalia. Some of the big boxes like Walmart or Target could do the same basic thing to a dead mall.

[Skittles]

72. you mean like this?

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/plano-texas-collin-creek-mall-redevelopment-townhomes-construction-project/287-fa12f1b5-27dd-4374-8afc-18c616219c67