Architects are converting unprofitable shopping malls into New Urbanist developments:
Ellen Dunham-Jones, architecture professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and June Williamson, associate professor of architecture at the City College of New York, have documented this phenomenon in their book, Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, a comprehensive look at efforts to retool, reinhabit, or return to nature abandoned suburban forms. In some cases, this means turning gargantuan forgotten malls into hip, urbanized residential villages.
One such experiment is under way in Lakewood, Colorado, an affluent suburb west of Denver. The former Villa Italia shopping mall, a 1.2-million-square-foot indoor mall built in 1966 that had fallen on hard times, has been turned into Belmar, 104-acre pedestrian-friendly community that has apartments, condos, town houses, office space, artists’ studios, and a shopping and entertainment promenade on 22 walkable, urbanized blocks.
More Dish on the tragedy of malls here, here, and here.
(Inside Virginia’s abandoned Cloverleaf Mall circa 2011. The mall has since been torn down, and 600 apartments are planned for the site. Photo by William Fisher.)
The Dish 