May 29—The new generation of retail shoppers drift away from indoor shopping malls and grow toward the online shopping craze. The mall has become a dreadful wasteland of department stores and restaurants. There are about 1,100 malls in the country today, over the next several years about a quarter of them will be at risk of closing. Some analysts believe the number of closures will be even higher than expected. At our local county mall, many stores have left or are planning on leaving. Popular stores such as Hollister, Pacsun, and Rue 21 have left in the past leaving teens in a dilemma.

The mall has been bringing new attractions in like Dicks Sporting Goods and sit-down restaurants, specifically Moctezuma’s Mexican Restaurant and Tequila Bar also Buffalo Wild Wings. Even though those things are great, it still doesn’t fill the hole of missing retail stores. Many students at Central Kitsap High seem to be skipping out on the Kitsap Mall and taking their shopping needs out to the Tacoma. Some even go all the way out to Westlake Center in Seattle or Westfield Southcenter in Tukwila. Autumn Mullins, junior, said that she prefers shopping at the Tacoma Mall. Mullins would love to see change to the Kitsap mall by opening stores such as Tilly’s, Charlotte Russe, the Garage, and bringing back Hollister. Ashlyn Anderson, junior, said, “I would like to see stores like Garage and Tilly’s come to the Kitsap Mall”. Anderson also would rather go to the Tacoma Mall to do her shopping.

In March 2017, the Kitsap Sun posted an article stating that JcPenney was planning on closing 140 stores and the Kitsap Mall was at risk due to weak sales data. Other stores all over the nation have been minimizing. Aeropostale and PacSun both filed for bankruptcy, Sears and Kmart are struggling to stay afloat, and Macy’s is shrinking.

A new addition to our community is The Trails. They have stores there that the Kitsap Mall has not had; Forever 21, DSW, Marshalls, Sierra Trading Post, Ulta. They have restaurants people can enjoy too. You can shop at a variety of stores and not be confined to a set of long hallways that look deserted.  This new shopping center has pulled the attraction from the mall. Online shopping websites have also been causing a decline in malls. One of the major websites taking over the online shopping realm is Amazon, run out of downtown Seattle. This website takes up almost 50 percent of all online sales.

American malls may make a comeback like everything else has in the past, or they will just dissolve into history. Amazon can keep expanding, possibly taking the place of stores like Walmart and Target. Time will only tell what will happen to these malls, hopefully the Kitsap Mall will stick around for another decade or so.