Labubus and a cat cafe help revive a shopping mall in New York

On a warm Tuesday afternoon in Queens, '90s hits were blaring and the mall was bouncing.

- MATTHEW HAAG

On the upper level, a family ate a late lunch around a cauldron of soup. Near the atrium, a girl chased neon tiles flashing on an interactive floor. In the cat cafe, a woman sought a relaxing moment with Dina, a gray-and-tan rescue cat dozing against a window.

Welcome to Tangram: a 275,000-square-foot indoor shopping centre in the middle of Flushing, New York, that is defying the slow death march of the American mall.

Across the country, about 10 malls close every year. Only 950 remain open nationwide today, down froma peak of several thousand at the end of the 20th century, according to Green Street, a real estate research firm. Many are now empty relics of American consumerism, conjuring memories of anchor department stores and after-school hangouts.

Those that are hanging on, like the Kings Plaza Shopping Center in Brooklyn, are increasingly hollowed out. On arecent visit to Kings Plaza, there were few shoppers, 1] vacant storefronts and a boarded-up space where a McDonald’s used to be.

Home to some of the world’s most prestigious retail corridors, New York City has not been known as a mall city. (The massive Manhattan Mall shut during the pandemic.) Things are different in the suburbs, where malls like Roosevelt Field on Long Island and American Dream in New Jersey are among the largest in the country.

Nick A. Egelanian, a retail consultant, predicted that only a few hundred malls would survive over the next decades. Roosevelt Field and the Mall at Short Hills in New Jersey are likely to last, he said, because they offer high-end shopping and attract a broad customer base.

“Most of the other malls, even in the New York area, are in some form of a decline or are gone,” Mr Egelanian said.

But Tangram is not your typical American mall.