Why are some Pittsburgh-area malls thriving while others are struggling to survive?
What is going on with the malls of the Pittsburgh region? Some are being torn down and others are echo chambers that were once bustling. As others continue to thrive, what makes the difference between vibrant and vacant?
The answer is you have to change to survive and you have to recognize the need to stay ahead of the curve.
To those who made memories at the former Century III Mall in West Mifflin, its demolition is a gut punch -- and the same can be said for the vacancies at The Mall at Robinson, Monroeville Mall, or The Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills.
"The day of having again, four department stores and a food court, that's not simply going to work anymore," said Herky Pollock, President and CEO of Legacy Realty Pittsburgh.
Over his four decades in commercial real estate, Herky Pollock has watched shoppers' desires change.
"So now the consumer, when they go out, they're looking for experience over anything else," Pollock said.
Pollock defines that experience through things like shopping, quality food, and entertainment.
"People are gonna add vitality and vibrancy into their malls, and the ones who haven't are the ones going by the wayside," Pollock said.
Pollock says that for instance, at the Pittsburgh Mills, they put very little back into the shopping center and aren't managing it for long term success.
While at The Mall at Robinson, they're physically in a tough spot, geographically competing with South Hills Village and surrounded by 5 million square feet of shopping, making it hard to compete for retailers.
"They had a great collection that does very well, of merchandise that appeals to teenagers and twenty-somethings, but beyond that, they don't have a much broader merchandise mix," Pollock said.
Pollock says that Walmart's proposed plan in Monroeville favors the strategy of morphing into a more lifestyle-based mixed use development.
That type of development is similar to what the old Northway Mall along McKnight Road did, converting to the Block Northway, where virtually every store has an outside entrance.
And at Ross Park Mall, they aren't stopping with using Nordstrom to bring in more high-end retailers.
"They're adding more food," Pollock said. "They're redeveloping their food court. They've added House of Sport, they're looking at the ways to make the overall shopping experience longer and more fun."
Because Pollock says, and this is just logistical, the longer you get the customers to stay for the experience of it all, the more they spend.
Pollock says that online shopping may have slowed some foot traffic in malls, but it has not killed them. It's been more of a motivating factor to encourage successful retailers to adopt ways to use their own online sales to draw customers into their stores.
Online shopping has also been a motivator for the malls to make changes to be a more entertaining destination.
Pollock says Dick's Sporting Goods' House of Sport is probably the best example of the entertaining shopping experience.