There are currently 53 stores located in the mall, including the food court.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Malls are starting to adapt to a new generation of shoppers and trends, as stores are finding new ways to use technology to gain a larger customer base.
Green Street reports that nationally, mall foot traffic has decreased 5 percent, with the Pacific and Northeast regions seeing slightly larger crowds. Outlet foot traffic decreased 7 percent, with the Midwest seeing higher volumes of foot traffic. The pandemic spurred a shift towards more online shopping, with fewer people going in person.
“They [stores] very quickly figured out, ‘So you can't come inside, but here's an app, and you can shop here and we'll deliver it curbside, or a third party company can come up and pick it up curbside and deliver it to your house,’” Brandon Isner, director of retail research at Newmark, a global commercial real estate service, said. “[They were] just able to pivot so quickly.”
Nicole Smolik, owner of White Light, a small business in the College Mall, said she started selling jewelry on Etsy in 2016 from her RV. She ran her business online full time for three years before setting up booths at various holiday markets and festivals. But the pandemic shut down many events she was supposed to attend.
“Luckily, my online sales didn't suffer that much, so I was still able to stay afloat during that time,” she said. “But not being able to do those in-person sales definitely made it harder.”
When events did start back up, Smolik said she found an opportunity to open her shop at College Mall.
“I set up a kiosk there for the holiday season in 2022 and the kiosk was nice because it gave me something to do during months when there wasn't a lot of events going on,” she said. “So like January, February, March are months where there's not really a lot of vendor markets going on.”
Having the online option to sell her products has helped Smolik’s business grow. But she still sees the value in having a physical shop in the mall; she gets extra sales from foot traffic.
“At that point, it was like, well, I could spend $1,000 a month on a warehouse space or an office space to keep my business in,” Smolik said. “Or I could spend a little bit more every month and just have a store and open up another stream of income through retail in-person sales.”
Smolik makes the most money during the holiday season, Mother’s Day, graduation and when students come back to school in the fall. Weekdays, especially during the summer, are much slower. That’s when creating a website for online shopping helps.
“The goal is to open up as many streams of income as possible for the business,” she said. “So now that we have a storefront, we have a website that we're selling from. We're doing story sales on Instagram, and then we're doing some vendor markets. That's four separate streams of income that I can rely on being separate from the store completely.”
Sarah Asher, manager of the Arts Alliance Gallery in College Mall, said after the pandemic, she started to advertise events and artwork on social media more in order to rebuild her customer base. It has also helped her attract more artists to display their work – from about 20 initially to over 50.
Sarah Asher, manager of the Arts Alliance Gallery in College Mall, said December is their best month for sales. (Isabella Vesperini)
Volunteers, including Asher, run the gallery. Asher also sells her work in the store: crocheted and knitted tops and scarves. The gallery hosts music performances and arts and crafts events to get more people in the store and looking at the art, which also brings in more revenue. She is hopeful for the future of the business.
“There's other compensation that we get when we sell our work,” she said. “So each artist is helping to sell their work and other people's work. It's kind of like a mutual benefit, you know, and so that helps out a lot.”
Next year will mark 60 years since College Mall, a Simon Mall, opened in 1965. Sears and Wassons were its first two big businesses with 130,000 square feet total. In the following year, 33 more stores opened. In 1970, 63,000 more square feet were added and more stores joined the mix in the coming decades.
College Mall underwent its latest expansion in 2007 when 12,000 square feet were added for new stores and to create a new food court. In the last 12 years, anchor stores Sears and Macy’s have shut down. Ulta Beauty took Sears’ place, while the section where Macy’s was until the pandemic has been closed off completely.
Nicole Kennon, director of PR and communications for Simon Malls, said in an email statement that College Mall is “thriving” with additional businesses opening, such as Men’s Warehouse, Orange Theory Fitness and BJ’s Brewhouse. There are currently 53 stores located in the mall, including the food court.
Dave and Buster's is set to replace Bed, Bath and Beyond. The arcade is expected to open in late January. (Isabella Vesperini)
“The addition of Dave & Buster’s, early next year, will add a fun, family-friendly entertainment option,” Kennon said in the statement. “The recent multi-million dollar investment in the mall's interior gave shoppers a fresh new look and feel with updated flooring, lighting, and restrooms.”
Green Street gave College Mall a grade of A back in 2009-2010. It was reduced to a grade B mall but has been recently upgraded to B+. Green Street assigns grades based on tenant mix, productivity (sales per square foot, mall sales, foot traffic), location (redevelopment potential) and condition.
“Unfortunately, sometimes malls fall out of favor with people,” Isner said. “Or sometimes it can be a case of just one too many malls built within a region.”
Recently, big retail stores such as Bed Bath & Beyond and Macy’s have been closing locations across the country. Isner said this could be in part due to operational issues and declining popularity. But other stores are still taking their place.
Green Street grades malls based on tenant mix, productivity, location and condition. (Green Street)
“If you have too many stores that carry the exact same thing, sometimes there's regional nuance that the people want something different,” he said. “It can come down to another company that sells similar things might just be a better run company, or just have more momentum. Or is the new the new bright thing?”
Isner said since College Mall is the primary mall in Bloomington, it doesn’t have to compete with other malls for customers. More local businesses are moving in, and store owners say they’re satisfied with the foot traffic. Fewer new retail developments are being built across the country as well.
Many malls are being redeveloped into open-air malls, or mixed-use developments with stores, apartments and offices. Over the last 10 years, Isner said, there has been nearly a three-percentage point decrease in vacancies for open air centers, and almost a four-percentage point rise in availability for traditional malls.
“There's been a lot of malls that have just been converted into an open-air mall, where the overall square footage will actually be reduced,” he said, “but it'll be modernized to kind of match how people shop today versus how they shopped in 1983 or whatever.”
