The American shopping mall is dead, right?
I mean, ask anybody: Amazon.com Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. beat the mall to death, and there is no coming back.
No one goes to the mall, and they never will again, and all the real estate investment trusts (REITs) that own malls and shopping centers are going to zero.
Zilch. Nada. Goose egg. Worthless.
At first, this, the conventional wisdom, makes a lot of sense – to me and every other investor.
After all, no one in my house went anywhere near a mall this holiday season. What shopping we did, we did online.
Why go to the mall and put up with all that traffic and the crowds?
Well, as it happens, while everyone has been declaring the mall dead and listing all the ways they'll never set foot in another one, a very specific kind of mall has been reinventing itself – and successfully, to boot.