The Pandemic Didn’t Kill Malls. It Made Them Smarter, Traffic Report Shows

The pandemic made mall owners get a lot more creative with their leasing decisions. And the bold moves they have made are paying off in increased foot traffic, according to a recent report by analytics firm Placer.ai.

Placer.ai, which gathers data on customer visits and dwell times, looked at nine U.S. malls that added innovative tenants over the past year, including a casino, kids play spaces, enhanced food offerings, and an American Ninja Warrior Adventure Park, and found that each of the malls saw an increase in visitors.

“Although malls were hit hard during Covid-19, many of them are finding ways to reinvent themselves and stay relevant,” the Placer.ai report states. While malls face numerous challenges, the report notes, they are quickly learning how to successfully reinvent themselves.

“We’re seeing a fundamental reimagining of what the mall is for,” Ethan Chernofsky, Vice President of Marketing at Placer.ai said, elaborating on the report in an interview.

“We see this shift to more types of entertainment, more interesting food and beverage, and then we see a fairly direct impact on business,” he said.

“What is happening in the mall space is amazing because essentially we’re doing this 180 from the pre-pandemic 2019 retail apocalypse view that the country is over-malled and malls are dying, to just a handful of years later recognizing that this format may be primed for another golden age,” Chernofsky said.

The shifts the top-tier malls are making to more entertainment and food and beverage could in turn have a beneficial waterfall effect for smaller, lower-tier malls, as traditional apparel and beauty brands may find themselves crowded out of malls that are shifting more to experiences and eating.

Mall landlords are becoming more flexible about shorter term leases, and trying new concepts that they previously would have rejected, Chernofsky said.

“It’s a very different scenario than what we were seeing as recently as five years ago,” he said, when the reaction to new concepts often was “Oh this doesn’t fit in a mall.”

“Now almost everything gets the opportunity to prove itself, and that’s driving a lot of the innovation in filling these spaces,” he said.

Here are some of the examples cited in the report:

American Ninja Warrior Adventure Park, MainPlace Mall, Santa Ana, CA

An American Ninja Warrior Adventure Park, which lets visitors try obstacle course challenges similar to those on the popular TV show, opened this summer at MainPlace Mall. The mall saw its monthly visitor number jump by 18% compared to the same period three years ago, pre-pandemic, according to Placer.ai data. The attraction also drove the mall’s share of loyal visits up by 13.4% compared to the previous month.

American Ninja Warrior Adventure Parks CEO Adrian Griffin said his company has been ‘blown away by the response” to its first U.S. mall location. The MainPlace mall site is “well on its target to reach more than 350,000 visitors in its first year,” he said.

And since that opening, other mall landlords “have been banging on our doors to get the concept in their malls,” he said.

At MainPlace Mall, the American Ninja Warrior attraction replaced four former retail stores, The company looks for spaces with high ceilings, and needs a minimum ceiling height of 16 feet, with typical square footage ranging from 20,000 square feet to 60,000 square feet.

Hollywood Casino, York Galleria Mall, York PA

York Galleria Mall in York, PA had been seeing steadily declining traffic numbers compared to pre-pandemic years until a 500-slot, 24-gaming table, 80,000 square-foot Hollywood Casino opened in a former Sears space.

When the casino opened in August, 2021, mall visits spiked by 31.4% compared to August, 2018, and they have remained positive since then, according to Placer.ai data.

Eataly, Westfield Valley Fair, Santa Clara, CA

In June, Eataly, a combination Italian market, restaurant, and cooking school, opened its first Northern California location at Westfield Valley Fair in Santa Clara.

The Placer.ai report notes that prior to Eataly’s arrival, Westfield Valley Fair already was one of the more successful malls in the country, but the new attraction apparently boosted foot traffic even higher.

The gain in visits compared to pre-pandemic numbers exceeded 20% for the first time in months during Eataly’s opening week. They have since remained consistently elevated, with visits for the week of July 25 up 27.7% compared the same week in 2019, according to Placer.ai.

99 Ranch Market, Westfield Oakridge Mall, San Jose, CA

Asian supermarket chain 99Ranch opened its first mall location at Westfield Oakridge Mall in March of this year. The supermarket also contains a dining hall, tea bar, and bakery.

There were long lines of visitors waiting to enter on opening day, “and the crowd-drawing hype seems to be more than a flash in the pan,” Placer.ai reported. The months following the opening were the mall’s strongest in the past year and a half, according to Placer.ai. Visits were up by 10% in July, and shoppers commented that the addition of the store had turned the mall into a one-stop shopping destination for them.

Surge Entertainment, Pierre Bossier Mall, Bossier City, LA

Surge Entertainment, a children’s play space with zip-lining, bowling, laser tag, and arcade games, opened at Pierre Bossier Mall in Louisiana in April. Placer.ai spotlighted this addition in its report because of the impact on dwell times – the amount of time visitors spent at a mall.

Placer.ai reported it saw a dramatic increase in average dwell time after Surge Entertainment opened. Median dwell time jumped to 78 minutes after it opened, up from a median time of 51 to 58 minutes for the nine months prior to the opening. Since then, median dwell times have remained elevated and have consistently stayed at 75 minutes or longer.

A “slap in the face” becomes a wake-up call

Placer.ai’s Chernofsky sees the above innovations, along with others, as signs mall owners learned important lessons during the pandemic lockdowns.

The pandemic, for mall owners, “was like this crazy slap in the face, or getting cold water dropped on you,” Chernofsky said. “But coming out of that experience a lot of folks are saying, you know what, I don’t need a 10-year lease. Maybe I want the ability to keep my space fresher – have core anchor tenants but also have a part of the mix that constantly is refreshing itself.”

“We’re clearly entering into a new phase of what to expect from shopping centers and malls,” he said. “There’s a degree of creativity and willingness to test and try both from the owners and retailers themselves. I think it is going to yield a really exciting period over the next decade where we start reimaging what the mall is all about.”