Once upon a time, going to the mall in December was magical. Festive decorations everywhere, stores overflowing with toys, books, clothing, housewares, furniture, everything you could ever want. Holiday shoppers left with armloads of presents, some already gift wrapped by the store where they were purchased. Shopping malls were glamorous destinations from the 1960s through the early 2000s.
When the Brass Mill mall opened in 1997, it was supposed to revitalize Waterbury. Nearly 3,000 jobs were created at a time when there were more retail jobs than workers in Connecticut. The mall’s developers expected to see more than 2 million shoppers in its first year. Seasonal workers were hired every year to help with the large influx of shoppers during the holidays.
The mall is now more than half empty, and a lot of what’s left are nail salons, barber shops, and jewelry stores. There are a few really good stores selling things you can’t find anywhere else, but for the most part, the mall is gone. Packs of teenagers roam the halls, trying to entertain themselves. Shoppers are all online, buying their gifts from Amazon, or looking for discount prices at Walmart.
What happens next? In-person retail shopping is unlikely to ever be what it once was. Amazon is currently bulldozing a forest and leveling a hilltop to build a giant distribution center straddling the border between Waterbury and Naugatuck. We are steadily shifting to a society in which everyone lives isolated in their homes, connected to the outside world through the internet, rarely connecting to anyone or anything in person.
Some malls seems to still be doing well. The Westfarms Malls in West Hartford is still mostly full. Maybe in-person shopping will continue, just on a smaller scale. Or maybe the dying malls in Waterbury, Meriden, and other towns are a red flag for a struggling economy. When people are poor, they don't have money for mall prices. They look for the cheapest prices they can find, and a lot of the time that's Amazon.
