Imagine a shopping mall less about shopping and more about entertainment. This is what is happening to at least a few vacant big box and department stores:

Oca’s client, real estate investment firm E8 Properties, has been buying empty Sears stores, dusting them off and converting them into “Elev8 Fun,” a massive indoor family entertainment park created in partnership with Primetime Amusements, a provider of video arcade machine.

The first one, designed by Oca and his team and housed in a 120,000-square-foot former Sears building attached to the Seminole Town Center Mall in Sanford, Florida, opened in January 2022…

To his point, increasingly, more malls are morphing into family entertainment destinations where shopping may not even be what draws shoppers in.

Industry analysts said research shows that adding entertainment experiences shifts more money to mall retailers and not away from them. Through the pandemic and coming out of it, the popularity of pickleball made its way into malls with courts popping up next to skating rinks. Indoor skydiving, Legoland theme parks, virtual golf and microbreweries are other concepts catching on.

Shopping can be its own kind of entertainment. It is not just about buying goods, whether they are necessary for life or not. It is about looking, considering, interacting with people you are with, seeing other people shopping, and participating in particular lifestyles.

But these entertainment centers are offering something else: games, competition, novelty, having fun with others.

Longer-term, does this mean hopping is less entertaining and more efficient when done online? Is shopping more often a private activity since it takes place online? Do people still want to have experiences around or near others, even if the forms of doing so have changed?