Apple Store Permanently Closing at Struggling Mall in Chicago Area

Not just struggling but dealing with rampant, often violent, shoplifting.
There’s an entire subreddit full of stories coming from that location, so I don’t blame Apple for closing shop.
Losing money is one thing, but not being able to guarantee the safety of your staff is a whole nother.

This was a beautiful mall and strangely just vacated over the years. This place seemed to face the decline of "brick and mortar" shopping more than others, but this will be a thing of the future where the zoomers and some millennials will do all of their shopping on their phone.

So funny thing: we have a couple large malls here in Anchorage, and while both have been slowly declining one of them has experienced a sort of revival in the last couple of years thanks to COVID and some thoughtful remodeling done by the mall owners. They opened up formerly closed in feeling parts, added more seating and table space plus trendy music and free WiFi across the entire complex. Now shopping there in the late afternoon/early evenings it feels like when I was a teen in the 90’s again: full of tweens and teens talking, window shopping, sucking down frappes and hot pretzels by the basketful. I think groups still want to congregate, you just need to provide what they’re looking for.

It is interesting, but malls never really took off over here. I think there is a small one about an hour away in Lingen, but I can't think of any others in the area.

I guess it is that, while Germans love their cars, they aren't car centric. They have lovely, picturesque pedestrianized town centers and people would rather walk into town, or catch a bus or train, than drive an hour out of town to find a mall.

That we don't have many zoning laws, or at least they are wildly different to the USA, probably helps as well. Residential areas all have bakeries and most have convenience stores or small supermarkets, so people can shop on foot for the essentials. The same for restaurants, there are often small local restaurants mixed in among the housing, so you can walk there to eat, then walk home. The big chains are then mainly in the center of town or at autobahn stops.

We have a German, Balkan, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Greek and 2 Turkish restaurants and a burger bar within easy walking distance, plus 4 bakeries, 3 ice cream parlours and 2 cafés, the local McDonald's is about a 10 minute roundtrip by car, I haven't been there is over 15 years, the burger bar serves superior burgers and is 2 minutes walk from the house... And McDonald's is the only US-chain restaurant in the town, Subway opened up a few years back on the outskirts, but they survived for about 3 months, before they closed up shop.

The only one we drive to is KFC, which is about 20 minutes away in the city next door, we used to drive there maybe once a month, but that has dropped off to once or twice a year over the last 6 years or so. It just isn't worth the effort, the food isn't better than what we get locally and it is more expensive that good quality fresh food from a "proper" restaurant...

It's quite sad how the new generation will never experience the fun it was to hang out at a mall after school together to socialize. Now kids just sit isolated at home and send each other TikToks while waiting on their food delivery. Damn I sound old!

Have any of the stores Apple has opened in the past 5 years been inside a mall? Or have they all been free standing?

The death of malls is still happening sadly...
Its quite sad... Hopefully we can see a revival of malls in the future.

Seems to be a lot of experimenting with taking malls, or land once occupied by malls and building mixed use areas with residential, retail and commercial space that are highly walkable. I am hoping they find a formula that works. The US needs affordable housing options badly.

The death of malls is still happening sadly...
Its quite sad... Hopefully we can see a revival of malls in the future.

Why? Malls were never a good solution in the first place.
I’d rather keep buying with next day deliveries and avoid overcrowded public places