Malls are dying. So why is this one thriving?
∞
On a May afternoon at Westfield Montgomery shopping mall, a group of teenagers with shopping bags races across the tile floor before deflating into chairs by the escalator, checking their cellphones and sipping Starbucks Frappuccinos. For Olivia Andreassi and her friend Vanessa Pontachak, both 13-year-olds from Bethesda, this is a weekly ritual. While Friday nights are for meeting up with friends in downtown Bethesda, weekend afternoons are for getting together to prowl the mall, just as they were for their parents’ generation, when shopping malls meant video arcades and Orange Julius. “We’ve been here for, like, four hours,” Olivia sighs, before sipping from her straw.
But step past the food court and through the exit door and the scene transforms. Rather than teenagers laughing against a backdrop of piped-in music and the smell of soft pretzels, you’ll see a frenzy of construction. Workers in yellow hard hats bang nails. Power tools whir and pound. From the mall’s old parking garage, a new wing is emerging, looking like a massive modernist sculpture of shiny rails, rusted steel girders and concrete walls.
Though Olivia and Vanessa may not realize it, indoor shopping malls are on the decline across the country.
Read the rest at Bethesda Magazine.
