Shopping malls, once the commercial hubs of the holiday season, are in decline. It's a trend that's playing out in communities across the country, as measured by the disappearance of shoppers and storefronts.
In Bangor, it has also meant a rise in municipal code violations that are so severe that the city has taken the mall's owner to court. Some believe that despite all its troubles, the aging structure could still hold a place in the city's retail landscape.
On a recent Friday afternoon at the Bangor mall, Marie Barry is in the middle of her winter routine.
"I'm not really here shopping," she says. "I use the mall as a place to walk safely. So if I walk around five times, I can get a three mile walk in in a safe environment."
Barry says she’s here nearly every day, and on most mornings, walkers like herself vastly outnumber shoppers, even during the holiday season. It's just not the same place these days, she says.
"Well, I remember they used to have coffee down here, and so you could stop and have a cup of coffee, and they had all the chairs and stuff like that, so it was more social and stuff," Barry says.
Bangor isn't the only place to experience this malaise, but it has emerged as an extreme case.
"The code violations cover areas of HVAC systems and property maintenance, so safety issues for people coming to the mall, and also for the business owners that are in the mall," says Bangor's community and economic development director, Anne Krieg.
She says after hearing complaints from tenants and shoppers, the city sued the mall's owner, New York-based Namdar Realty Group, for these code violations, and for failing to address a stormwater pipe leaking sewage.
The decline of the shopping mall can be seen across the country.
"Malls have seen huge drop in traffic and in spending in recent years, that was kicked off in large part following the Great Recession in '08, and has accelerated since then," says Erin Percival Carter, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Maine.
She says when the pandemic interfered with indoor shopping, many consumers turned to the internet.
"And I think even people who maybe were holding out and not doing quite so much online shopping pre pandemic, really had to get used to the idea of online shopping during the pandemic, and then it's hard to interrupt those patterns," Percival Carter says.
And she says in recent years malls have lost their appeal as places for social connection.
"People aren't really going to the mall just to get swept away," Percival Carter says. "They're not going to the mall to see who they run into because they're not expecting to run into anyone. They're not expecting that they're going to see anything particularly exciting because that that investment has just fled."
But there is still hope for this once-prominent retail establishment. The Maine Mall in South Portland has managed to buck the trend of decline and other malls across the country are using the buildings in new and more creative ways.
And despite the woes of the Bangor Mall, the city's Anne Krieg says the surrounding retail stores are doing quite well.
"We've been hearing from, the destination retail that's around there that they're having a very good year, our traffic numbers are pretty steady," Krieg says. "They haven't dipped at all ... So we definitely see that area as a place that could easily be successful for anything that wanted to be at the mall."
Krieg says the city has changed the zoning for the mall to make it easier for new kinds of development.
But in the meantime, roughly half of the storefronts remain vacant. An entire entrance is roped off. And mall walkers have to adjust their path around buckets set up to catch leaks.
Mall walker Marie Barry remembers a time when it wasn't like this.
"But I really think it's extremely sad what's happened to the Bangor Mall, because it used to be so vibrant, and it was wonderful to see crowds of people and children," Barry says. "So it's sad, and I hope they can figure out something to use this space."
In a statement, an attorney for Namdar says the company is committed to working collaboratively with local officials to ensure the property’s long-term stability.
The city has asked the judge to order the company to pay several million dollars in fines for the violations.
A spokesperson for the city says they could not speak to the specifics of the court case because it is still pending in Bangor District Court.
