Talking Malls

There's a trend over the past decade in Germany....to build American style mall operations, and expect success to come easily.....then find that the shops are drawing marginal customer support, and the business plan is all screwed up.

Here in Wiesbaden.....they built a three story mall near the Bahnhof.  I'd guess that at least sixty stores exist in the building and it's a marvelous piece of architecture.  A couple of the shops have folded up over the last four years, and this past summer....they finally agreed that the food operations in the place need some type of pumping-up.....to attract more people at lunch from the surrounding areas.  In other words.....they are failing to reach their financial goals.

This week, out of Berlin....the Mall of Berlin finally was sold off.....for one Euro.  The place was finished off around three months ago, and it's having a hard time.  Numerous construction issues are not fully resolved, and various characters have not been paid for completion of work.

The new use of the Mall of Berlin?  A music/dance club.  Yep, imagine 200,000 square meters of club space, with ten thousand people hanging out on some evening.

All of this brings me back around to the idea of making American-style malls into a German shopping experience.  For some reason.....it barely works.  Old-style German shopping districts still attract people and have not been losing customers to the American-style.