{"id":15269,"date":"2021-05-21T09:50:15","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T14:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/?p=15269"},"modified":"2021-05-21T10:04:20","modified_gmt":"2021-05-21T15:04:20","slug":"recycling-dead-mall-into-affordable-housing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/real-estate-marketing\/recycling-dead-mall-into-affordable-housing\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycling dead malls into affordable housing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like, OhMyGAWD! I totally LIVE at the mall!<\/p>\n

I can 86 the localized 90\u2019s-isms for readability\u2019s sake, but the fever dream of having a penny fountain in immediate view when I leave for work could soon be realized at a fraction of the price of purchasing (pfft!) a home, and that\u2019s honestly thrilling.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve been reading for the past 10-ish years<\/a>, while the physical retail experience hasn\u2019t flatlined, the concept of the indoor mall has been crumbling just as badly as pre-Amazon edifices themselves.<\/p>\n

Usually the answer to \u2018What do we do with this huge building we can\u2019t wring any more cash out of\u2019 is keep it around, Ozymandias statue style, to shelter from the eventual zombie outbreak, but there are other options! One small company is working on a big project.<\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not another coffee table book of abandoned mallscapes, even though those ARE incredibly cool. They\u2019re repurposing giant retail spaces into low-income housing!<\/p>\n

The project lead, quite rightly assesses that \u201cThe [housing] market is screaming out for a solution\u201d, and the entrepreneur hit on it by scoping out malls in already dense, already prime, already…BUILT locations and buying owners out or partnering with them to create the living spaces the elderly, hardship scholarship students, and no-collar\/apron class workers need so badly.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdaptive reuse\u201d is the name of the game, and I\u2019m ALL about it.<\/p>\n

Yours truly is the kind of person who\u2019ll dare you to point out which of my home furnishings I bought new and which were restored from a dumpster dive session, so recycling whole BUILDINGS to serve the most in need makes me all kinds of tingly.<\/p>\n

And as amazing as it is, turning former arcades of excess into spaces to celebrate on the wider portions of Maslow\u2019s hierarchy of needs is neither a new concept, nor an isolated one.<\/p>\n

A few years back, McAllen, TX converted a dead Walmart Supercenter into an amazing library. Here in Austin, the famously be-curfewed Highland Mall was made over into a huge community college<\/a>! I love stopping by for voting and watching community theater just as much as I Ioved the rock-bottom sales that hit as everything cleared out…even if I never DID figure out what they did with the much-coveted gates in front of that empty Hot Topic.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s awesome. Cities are also looking at buying out hotels to turn the already-livable structures into stable, COMFORTABLE housing for anyone living on the streets. Empty swimming pools become the centerpieces in community-run skateparks! Cracked, empty parking lots can be unpaved, converted to neighborhood gardens, and made into paradise again!<\/p>\n

When you have the will, the cash, and the necessary bulldozer operating licenses, nothing\u2019s impossible, especially when it comes to securing community health\/wealth! And considering the rising cost of living in urban areas is driving the much-needed service sector out FAST, \u2018reduce, reuse, recycle\u2019 in realty, needs to be a reality ASAP.<\/p>\n

This article was first published in February 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(REAL ESTATE MARKETING) How do you recycle a building? There are more and more examples each year of the death of the indoor mall, but all that space can’t go to waste.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337716,"featured_media":15270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[847,109,1234,1908],"class_list":["post-15269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-marketing","tag-affordable-housing","tag-real-estate-marketing-2","tag-real-estate-news","tag-recycling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/02\/photo-of-shopping-mall-2861655-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337716"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15269"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17067,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15269\/revisions\/17067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}