>Abandoned malls — sometimes called zombie malls — are becoming a problem in the U.S. Last summer the mayor of Akron, Ohio, asked residents to stay clear of the Rolling Acres Mall, which has been boarded up for years, becoming the site of crimes ranging from trespassing to a possible murder.
Why not turn these 'zombie malls' into centers of gaming?
That's a mudrerhobo base of operations if I ever saw one.
Do you know how much money does it cost to keep one of those things running? Well, you can always squat and make an unhealthy fire trap.
>you can always squat and make an unhealthy fire trap.
Sounds like the perfect job for a pack of gaming gopniks.
It feel strange to behold such a sight.
Like some kind of post-apo feeling.
The times have changed. I remember how the mall in my area used to be a brightly-lit palace of white and black stone and sparkling water fountains. Now half the lights are dead, the fountains are empty, all the stores are closed, and all that's left is a few fast food places, a couple government offices, and a grotty little comvenience store. It's fucking depressing.
The 90s died in 9/11
>Why not turn these 'zombie malls' into centers of gaming?
They did that with one here. LARPs and weekly paintball events. I think it got shut down by property developers working on the nearby buildings as part of the 'regeneration' of the town centre, and efforts to force more people and more traffic into a town that can't handle it.
No, the 90s died when the turn of the millennium happened.
Please don't commercialize my urban exploration locations
>Urban exploration
>90s mall
Doesn't it kinda suck?
its even weirder when you visited that mall somewhat frequently during your youth. now its all boarded up except for the food court, which was converted into a storage unit place.
The 20th century started when WW1 happened.
The 90's ended in 9/11.
>be me
>be 17
>hanging with my bros
>let's go check out the abandoned mall down the road
>find a way in through the back
>Fuck yeah
>fucking around in abandoned mall
>wtf lights and sirens
>wtf footsteps and shouting "anontown police"
>book it
>fat friend only short stories it.
>gets caught
>leave him behind
His story:
>cops catch him
>what are you doing in here?
>"I DON'T HAVE TO ANSWER YOU."
>immediately arrested
>has to take a government funded class on how to not be such a hooligan
I´m German and we have malls popping up all over the country in even smaller cities. If this is their future, I´m scared. I´m glad I live in a town with a healthy historical city core dating back to the middle ages with lots of various stores, bars and restaurants..
The problem with American malls is that there was a tax loophole that made them profitable all the way until you run them into the ground. They fixed that so developers abandoned the malls.
Pretty much nailed it. If you finance the building of something like that, you're mortgaging it against future revenues from outlets within your mall - rents to cover the sunk cost, but also to cover the rolling costs of maintenance, civil liability, and so on.
It's genuinely cheaper to put up signs saying no trespassing on an empty lot and have a security company nominally patrol it for a small fee (taking the liability partially on themselves) than it is to let people use it as open space, and that's before we get to the complexities of deemed rights of way, abandonment of land and so on.
Other than the cost and the fact that after a couple of years derelict they're probably none too sound which just screams lawsuits -
because it's better to do nothing with them. The land has a greater value closed off than in use; you use it to drive up local land costs, which drives up property prices because scarcity of land means new housing or whatever has to be built elsewhere.
This makes your own land more valuable, and you borrow against that equity, hedging against future rises in value which, if you time them right or have enough properties, you use to pay off your existing loans and keep the excess. Voila - you've made a few million a year doing fuck all.
Letting sweaty paintballers in would only lower that value. Better to make them pressure other developments - even if they're only using the local wood on a private farm, that's a value that the landowner is going to consider against any possible offers from developers, which drives up the cost further.
Ring a ding ding
now you know why
Big malls are a thing of the past and that's a good thing. The future is local little specialized shops.
Hahaha are you fucking kidding? Police in your town are assholes. If the cops caught me and my buds dicking around abandoned property they'd tell us not to be idiots and go the fuck home to our parents.
>government mandated class on how to not be such a hooligan
I laughed
In all seriousness OP malls are a perfect dungeon design. I've always wanted to do a DOTD/Dead Rising style mall full of nasties where the players have to hide out. It'd be fun.
If your mayor is stupid enough to authorize the construction of a mall in a small town you better campaign hard against him
I slipped through a hole in a fence to cross over some train tracks once. Cops stopped me. 400$ fine for trespassing on private property.
Why do you care? You are the last generation of germans ever.
>campaign hard against him
>Not starting a shadow mayoralty
>fat friend only short stories it.
kek'd
epic meme bro you're so cool
>You are the last generation of germans ever.
No need to single out the Germans. Many other European nations have leapt off the precipice.
You had to strawman hard for that one, right ?
Fortunately our mayor is a realo-green guy who uses rare beetles as an excuse to not build permanent shelters for ´fugees, but is also a die-hard enemy of urban sprawl, so I guess our inner city will be save for now.
Too costly.
They quickly go into disrepair in major ways and attract vagrants, druggies and just criminals in general. A lot of them also shut down specifically because the economy of the local community wasn't able to support it.
There's a pretty great series on youtube of abandoned and near-abandoned malls.
>Please don't commercialize my urban exploration locations
>urban exploration locations
>malls
>Please don't commercialize my malls
kys
If you wanna get raped, user, go ahead.
>attract vagrants, druggies and just criminals in general
Allow people to hunt the undesirable.
Problem solved?
That's almost as good as exploring relicts of ancient times can get in USA.
Put bear traps around the entrances.
>uses rare beetles as an excuse to not build permanent shelters for ´fugees
>a die-hard enemy of urban sprawl
Well someone won the Mayoral lottery, it seems.
>rare beetles
Its true though.
In my town (central germany, around 60k people) they opened a mall like 3 years ago.
At first people were hyped about it. What an awesome place to go shopping.. etc.
Then after like 6 month the first stores began to close because of the high rents for their stores inside the mall and the lack of new customers.
In a town that big (or rather small) its not really surprising that not everyone goes to the mall to shop for jewelry or fancy cloth every day.
The only stores making good money were food places. Mc Donalds, some Bakery chains, a chinese fastfood place, pizza etc.
To attract more people to the mall they advertised "free wifi" which was a terrible mistake: It only attracted "refugees". (to avoid /pol/ terminology.. you know what kind of young men i mean). Having these guys occupying every single spot inside the mall with a bench or even sitting on the floors in groups of 10+ was basically the dead sentence for the mall.
i know alot of people who went there to grab some food in their lunch breaks who don't go there any longer and i myself haven't been there for like 1,5 years now.
There's quite a few large shopping centers being constructed in the capitol area my home country at the moment. Large shopping centers built on or nearby a subway or train station are a pretty convinient since you can have a lot of stores in close proximity and easily reachable by both car and public transport.
It's the small- to medium-sized malls, usually in the suburbs that are dying. They never had much speciality stores just your standard grocery stores, clothing stores ad restaurants, and when you can just order clothes online and go to the corner store fro groceries, there's little need to go to a mall. So they end up run down and filled entirely by shitty bars since selling shitty beer and pizza at markup seems to be the only thing that makes some profit there.
I live near there. I've been meaning to check it out for awhile but never got around to it because it's a good 45 minutes away and there is the potential of danger.
Retail is dying. Amazon and eBay killed it. The remaining retailers are the ones who had the forethought to establish a strong web presence early one. I work retail and our company's biggest division is Dot Com, followed by corporate contract stuff, with retail stores being the smallest and least profitable part of the company. For now our stores mostly just exist to be a place for people to pick up dot com orders.
You need to get a castle. Or a 12th century hospital or something. They're fun as hell for urban exploration. My hometown growing up had four decently sized ruins in it and several small ones.
Best for urbex is the 1960s building tho.
No pic because I spent 10 mins writing this shit I cant be arsed to upload anything
For real though, a comic book/gaming shop is slowly taking over a mall nearby,
>has a large storefront
>rents out store front next door to gamers
>has signs in other abandoned store fronts for advertising
It's like the only company doing well there,?
Man I have seen a FLGS taking over the entire Street floor of an haussmanian building for magics and wargame room over 5 years. My current lfgs bought its space from a gw store and is infinitely more prpfotable now. Nothing in this business can phase me anymore.
When you think about it, a lot of dungeons were malls before they became dungeons
This is dying industry speaking. Brick and mortar stores are the absolute cornerstore when it comes to being advise people
Remember, is the kind of retard who will end up closing bricks and mortar stores left and right in a handful of years becausehe can't understand what customer service and local communication is a thing.
It really is. The LGS I frequent for paints is located in a mall that's basically one bad month away from looking exactly like the pic in the OP. There are like, a nail salon, the LGS/comic store, a theater, and some general goods store that just sells $150 Scarface prints with those gaudy gold frames. No food court, no other stores at all. It's literally empty every day except for Friday nights because that's when the LGS hosts Friday night Magic.
I went in today to see if an order I made came in and one of the children's ride things broke and the machine just kept repeating a child's giggling every few minutes. Lemme tell you, that shit was legitimately terrifying to hear echoing through an empty mall.
>new law: when a mall is abandoned, the property becomes a free-speech zone where murder is legal.
>don't elect people without kids
lmao
>that
>not this
>THE LUCKY ONE'S WERE THE FIRST TO DIE
That should be a Veeky Forums banner.
Fuck, I keep meaning to watch that
I yield this argument... FOR NOW