In an era when many shopping malls are struggling, what distinguishes mall properties from each other? One suburban community with a failed mall and stalled redevelopment efforts, Charlestowne in St. Charles, examines what you find if you look what is around a mall:

Commercial businesses such as retail stores, restaurants, and entertainment venues depend on a strong local population to generate steady sales and foot traffic. The more households that surround a shopping center, the greater the built-in customer base to support those businesses and the more attractive the redevelopment is for a developer. For Charlestowne Mall, the surrounding area has relatively low population density compared to other successful shopping corridors in the region. With fewer nearby residents, there is less day-to-day demand to sustain large-scale retail, making it harder to attract and retain major tenants. The graphic below provides the basic demographic and market data within a five-mile radius of the Charlestowne Mall site. Developers and businesses rely on this data to evaluate the market feasibility of proposed commercial uses and to understand the strength of the local customer base.

From this analysis (which continues for about 10 more malls in addition to the chart above), several features of Charlestowne stand out: the nearby population is relatively small and the mall has no interstate access. It does have a higher median household income than some malls, including the two others on the list that were demolished (but had more residents nearby with one having interstate access and another not).

So is the real story about this property about mall overdevelopment? As the number of shopping malls expanded in the growing suburbs of the end of the twentieth century, how many were doomed from the beginning? Or perhaps developers and communities were too optimistic about how many people malls might draw or projected more nearby residents than ended up living nearby. Did anyone foresee the rise of online shopping or the shifts in consumption habits?

The trend in recent years is to try to save malls with new features that will continue to pull people to the property. But the malls that are already closed – such as Charlestowne – can struggle to replace them with something local residents and leaders want. This property still has fewer people nearby and no interstate. Even if the mall building is closed, it is hard to lose the dream of the mall and all that went with it including local revenue and a local gathering spot.