While many U.S. malls face anchor store closures and empty parking lots, some are finding new life by becoming housing. Real estate developers are building h...
Man, I just love this idea. Especially if they added a grocery store and really encouraged mixed use shops rather than all the normal mall stuff. I love the community it naturally fosters and I would do a lot for convenience. There’s something that feels so cozy about not needing to leave the building in inclement weather to grab a bite or run a couple errands, or just being able to take a nice lit, climate-controlled walk at night.
A few thoughts on this piece in particular:
(1) The rent better be crazy affordable if they can’t have stove tops. Everything else seems great, but a kitchen you can’t really cook in makes it borderline uninhabitable imo. At least have one of those communal kitchens like they have in dorms.
(2) They mentioned natural light being an issue and that only exterior shops were typically suitable for retrofitting but the unit we see in the video appears to only have a window out into the mall. It’s hard to truly tell, but with the large skylight in the mall area, it seemed like the interior shop windows for the units received decent natural lighting.
(3) No explanation for the teeny tiny unit size? Maybe that was just the size of the preexisting space delineations, but I see no reason other projects couldn’t combine 2 to make normal sized studios or even one bedroom units.
Man, I just love this idea. Especially if they added a grocery store and really encouraged mixed use shops rather than all the normal mall stuff. I love the community it naturally fosters and I would do a lot for convenience. There’s something that feels so cozy about not needing to leave the building in inclement weather to grab a bite or run a couple errands, or just being able to take a nice lit, climate-controlled walk at night.
A few thoughts on this piece in particular: (1) The rent better be crazy affordable if they can’t have stove tops. Everything else seems great, but a kitchen you can’t really cook in makes it borderline uninhabitable imo. At least have one of those communal kitchens like they have in dorms.
(2) They mentioned natural light being an issue and that only exterior shops were typically suitable for retrofitting but the unit we see in the video appears to only have a window out into the mall. It’s hard to truly tell, but with the large skylight in the mall area, it seemed like the interior shop windows for the units received decent natural lighting.
(3) No explanation for the teeny tiny unit size? Maybe that was just the size of the preexisting space delineations, but I see no reason other projects couldn’t combine 2 to make normal sized studios or even one bedroom units.
Agreed on all fronts. I’d love to live in something like this as long as the mall had stores in it I liked. Like a true mixed use building.