Food, Fun Power Retail Redevelopment

Mall owners are spending millions – and in the case of the Westfield Century City in Los Angeles $1 billion – on makeovers to keep their retail centers fresh, hip and inviting.

It’s hard to ignore the headlines screaming “retail apocalypse” these days, particularly when a steady stream of big players go out of business and store closures reach new highs. Cushman & Wakefield reports that major chains closed almost 9,000 stores in 2017, more than double the 2016 total. Retail bankruptcies reached 36 last year, only one shy of the record set in 2009.

Garrick Brown, Cushman & Wakefield’s national retail research director & vice president for retail intelligence, expects those negative headlines to continue, projecting that as many as 1,000 department stores could shutter their doors by the end of the year. Those closures tend to hit Class B and Class C malls particularly hard...