The new American shopping mall is less Macy's, more church, bowling, bookstore

I'm in love with how the foreclosed-upon, near-dead, anchorless Lloyd Center mall in Portland OR has been chaotically and ad-hoc reclaimed for weird retail, art installations and semi-performance participatory art

The city keeps trying and failing to figure out ways to destroy the mall, previously for a boondoggle MLB expansion stadium, currently for a LiveNation venue that's slowly spawning a protest movement against non-local venue management. In turn, the mall's rents have dropped such that the artists who used to haunt Central Eastside warehouses have started renting spaces for pop-up galleries and interactive installations, and niche crafters (an off-brand lightsaber store, for instance, and a pinball arcade) have moved in longer-term. There's an 80s-themed exercise group who revived mall-walking. Something like 60 small businesses taking advantage of the low rents.

I don't have links handy but afaik this was the original idea of early malls, like an enclosed town center that could handle various needs.