Co-produced with Beyond Saving
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was unexpected and has occurred at a scale that was unimaginable a year ago – it seemed really far fetched even as recently as February. There's no person or business in the entire world who has not been impacted. Businesses were shut down, either voluntarily or by government edict, people were told to stay home, social distancing, mandatory masks, and in the US a complicated patchwork of regulations that vary wildly from state to state and even city to city. It seems almost impossible to talk to anyone without the topic of COVID-19 coming up.
One of the businesses that's certainly being hit by COVID-19 with full force is shopping malls. As places where large groups gather, in-person retail is reliant on fairly significant levels of foot traffic. Most malls across the country were shut down by the end of March and did not even start to reopen until late June.
It does not help that malls already were under pressure before COVID-19 began. The "retail apocalypse" was occurring in full force with many retail tenants filing bankruptcy and liquidating in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Big names like Toys 'R Us, Payless Shoesource, Gymboree, RadioShack and of course Sears all joined the retail graveyard. While retail bankruptcies are quite common – it's after all a brutal cutthroat business that survives on low margins and adapting to evolving consumer preferences – what set 2017-2019 apart was the sheer number of bankruptcies that resulted in total liquidation. Historically, we would expect big recognizable names to be bought out of bankruptcy and emerge as smaller, but still relevant, brands.
Prior to the pandemic, we saw 2020 as the year that broke the current down cycle. Malls would finally be looking at a year of slowing
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