This excerpt might interest you.
I like the idea of universities or clinics using the premises too.
Philippe
Rescuing shopping malls
Reclaiming the suburbs
Some of America’s struggling malls are getting a new lease on life
Mar 31st 2012 | SAN ANTONIO AND WINDCREST, TEXAS | from the print
edition
THE old Rackspace headquarters was stuffed to the gills. In 2007 the
company, which offers cloud-computing and web-hosting services, had
more than 1,000 employees in downtown San Antonio. People were crammed
at folding tables in the hallway. They often had to go to a different
building or shuttle around the lifts to talk to people in other
departments.
Still, when Graham Weston, the company’s co-founder and chairman,
suggested that they move into a shopping mall, staff were sceptical.
The mall was vacant. Its site, the encircled suburb of Windcrest, was
slightly grotty, not least because of the huge dead mall right off the
highway.
Building a campus from scratch, however, would have taken several
years at least. Anyway, the place was cheap. “Nobody wants a mall any
more,” says John Engates, the chief technology officer. Except
Rackspace, and others like it, who have come to see a dead mall as a
blank canvas. In 2008 it opened its new headquarters, and won a prize
for community economic development. Now it has more than 3,000 workers
on site, with plans to hire hundreds more by the end of the year.
Plenty of enclosed malls are, of course, still thriving. And after
several abstemious years, shoppers are perking up. In February,
according to the Commerce Department, retail sales were 1.1% higher
than they had been in January—higher than expected, and a welcome sign
of recovery.
But many American malls had run into trouble before the recession
started, and the country’s nascent recovery is not likely to revive
them.
… / …
One strategy is to turn the mall itself into a mixed-use
development. The Natick, a high-end mall in Boston, has added
condominiums. Another idea is to bring in unconventional tenants. In
Cleveland, Ohio, part of a mall has been given over to indoor gardens,
with the idea that it might be a model for other urban agriculture
programmes. Schools and universities are another settler group. The
University of the Incarnate Word has leased part of another mall in
San Antonio. Vanderbilt, in Tennessee, has leased some space to open a
clinic; patients are given pagers so that they can get a snack from
the food court while they wait.
Hundreds of high-school students in Joplin, Missouri, are taking
classes in a converted mall after the town’s high school was destroyed
in a tornado last summer.
These projects may be more sensible than enclosed retailing.
Universities and offices do not depend on passers-by as shops and
restaurants do. But turning these spaces to fresh purposes requires
some expense and experimentation.
Le 21 juin 12 à 15:21, Tina Manley a écrit :
> It seems such a waste of a great building and space but I guess this
> sealed
> its fate:
>
> "The store opened in a prosperous middle class area that has become an
> impoverished, high crime neighborhood in the intervening decades."
>
> Love your desolate photos!
>
> Tina
>
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 10:29 PM, Chris Crawford <
> chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> http://chriscrawfordphoto.com/chris-details.php?prodId=1071&category=32
>>
>> --
>> Chris Crawford
>> Fine Art Photography
>> Fort Wayne, Indiana
>> 260-437-8990
>>
>> http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com My portfolio
>>
>> http://blog.chriscrawfordphoto.com My latest work!
>>
>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Crawford/48229272798
>> Become a fan on Facebook
>>
>>
>> --
>> _________________________________________________________________
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>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Tina Manley, ASMP
> www.tinamanley.com
> --
> _________________________________________________________________
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