Those anchor stores are on life support. New channel anchors: American Girl, Apple Stores, etc, etc. What is dead is price-based stores the internet has replaced.
I think Betteridge's law of headlines applies to this article. I live in Indy where the (billionaire) Simon's live, who own Simon Property Group. Their stock is currently @ 161, up 100 points over 5 years ago. Their stock has just been upgraded: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20140312006497/en/Fitc...
I used to live between two of their major malls for years. I could barely leave my apartment for 2 months before xmas due to traffic. They just spent millions remodeling their high end mall adding capacity and additional room for high end stores like Sacks and Restoration Hardware.
Non generic crap malls are fine. Junk stores that have generic brand cheapish clothes and the like (JCPenny) are being replaced by Amazon, but overall malls are doing fine.
Our local mall has realized that, I think. Most of the new stores are designer stuff - think Coach bags - and a new anchor called Von Maur which is an old-style department store - attentive staff, live piano in the lobby, etc. They seem to be doing much better than the JC Pennys of the area.
