I live in the county with the highest median household income in the country. 3 out of 5 anchor store locations at the local mall sit empty and national retailers are continuously leaving. Some are being replaced by lower end stores which could never have afforded a mall location 10 or even 5 years ago, but many locations remain empty. The mall is slowly dying and the owner is looking to redevelop it.
I have to admit I'm not sure what the point of your comment is in this context. Are you implying that even though Loudoun County has the highest median income in the country it might still not be able to support a mall because the wealth is concentrated and a large number live in poverty? If so, I can assure you that is not the case. Loudoun County has the 6th lowest poverty rate of US counties at 3.4%. It should be a great location for a mall yet the mall is still not doing well.
> I'm not sure what the point of your comment is in this context
Median household income is a poor proxy for a mall’s revenue driver: aggregate proximate disposable income. One can maintain lofty median incomes while peripherialising disposable income through higher median costs of living.
(Side note: I spent a hot minute in childhood in McClean. The food in Leesburg might have triggered my inner gourmande. Forgot that until just now—thank you.)
Would have never guessed that since the original comment didn't mention disposable income but only a statement about median income hiding gut wrenching poverty. Loudoun County has the 3rd highest average household disposable income and a low poverty rate, so again should be a great location for a mall but isn't. While some malls are succeeding, Tysons Corner Mall and Tysons Galleria in Northern Virginia for example, many more are struggling and many have already died. Some of this is due to the shrinking of their traditional tenants, national retail chains, but is also due to those same potential tenants choosing to relocate existing stores and open new stores in non-mall locations.
> the original comment didn't mention disposable income
It was pointing out that the chosen isn’t the signal it’s being positioned as.
> Loudoun County has the 3rd highest average household disposable income and a low poverty rate, so again should be a great location for a mall
Source? (Purely for curiosity.) Averages don’t matter. Aggregates do. If I am a county of one, even with tremendous disposable income, a good location for a mall I do not make.
Malls are absolutely in structural decline. But pointing to median and average metrics is misleading, though not in an uncommon way.
But it's fun to take a larger trend that's been happening for many years in many cities, and pretend it's a uniquely SF disease.