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This is Work - The Ghosts of Retail Past

 


Technology, evolution, industrialization, environmental factors, and so many other things have changed everything in the entire world and how and where people have shopped is not any exception. The indoor shopping mall has become a dinosaur in many places, where once they were the place to go.

Some readers may be familiar with the indoor shopping mall of the past, with every possible retail store you could choose from, perhaps a food court and restaurants, and many times entertainment attractions. Once a vibrant place, now shown bustling in American nostalgia filled television shows like the third season of Stranger Things.

A quick stop in some recent traveling landed me in what looked like a large shopping mall from the outside. Once inside, the number of remaining retail tenants could be counted on one hand. There were mostly people looking for some exercise while getting out of the cold. It seemed scary and sad to see something that should be full of commerce,and keeping a local economy going be a giant hollow shell. There were so few stores, a directory of stores was no longer needed.

This comes as no surprise. Pretty much anything I can think of buying can be purchased online. There is not the reason to go to a mall to find a store. There is nothing drawing me there. For the few stores that were open for business, they had workers. I am sure all were grateful to be employed, yet none looked super overwhelmed.

Change is inevitable in everything, yet the empty shopping mall was more of a museum to the consumer of the past, and store chains that sadly no longer exist. It is a reminder to all to not get too comfortable in the methods of anything, including working or shopping, will eventually change.

While this building may not be able to employ hundreds of people in it’s current form, there is hope for the space. A large building, with ample parking, and usually located near an interstate highway can be converted to so many different things. This is work, may not be for retail sales clerks. Rather this is work is for the idea people, the people who take a vision and make it happen, the local city officials who approve new projects, the financial people who fund them, and the teams of labors, construction crews, trades people, technology people that make these things happen. This is work, resurrecting the dead shopping mall of the past. #thisiswork

 ~Karen Cirincione

Email: kcirincione@gmail.com        

Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/karenjcirincione

Twitter: @kcirincione 

 


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