Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Much of the attention on black Friday focuses on just how much people will spend. But one story that’s also important for retailers and local economies is a big shift in where people are shopping.
Economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at how those changing habits are affecting the traditional mall.
It’s part of his ongoing reporting Making Sense of financial news.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): The remains of Rolling Acres in Akron, Ohio, poster child for a recent phenomenon in America, the dead mall. This one went dark in 2008, fixtures auctioned off, others swiped or vandalized, nature now reclaiming more than 50 acres that once hosted Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret, the Parisian, 140 stores at its peak.
University of Akron economist Amanda Weinstein:
AMANDA WEINSTEIN, University of Akron: Even just a few years ago, you would see LeBron James as a teenager, he would be hanging out here. And now we see teenagers are breaking in and homeless people occasionally have been living in there, and so it’s really changed a lot.
PAUL SOLMAN: Talk about understatement. Rolling Acres opened in 1975, swelled to 1.3 million square feet of retail. It was once the place to shop for miles around. But neighborhood income began to stall, as in so much of blue-collar America, teen gangs crept in. Rolling Acres was on a roll, in the wrong direction.
AMANDA WEINSTEIN: We started seeing more discount stores. The J.C. Penney turned to a discount outlet store, so trying to get stores with the lowest prices possible.
PAUL SOLMAN: But why spend money on gas to schlep to the mall when you can now get the lowest prices possible online? Is this then the future for the American indoor mall, just decades after it was hailed as a retail revolution?
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