Mall Rats Photo: Jason E. Kaplan Foot traffic has plunged during the pandemic at Portland s Lloyd Center Mall
Driven by bankruptcies, redundancies and the rise of e-commerce, the retail sector has been in flux for years. COVID-19 accelerated the shift. Oregon’s malls can either reinvent themselves to stay vital or they can fail.
It is a late Tuesday afternoon and the foot traffic in Washington Square Mall in the Portland suburbs looks brisk by COVID-19 restrictions standards. Families with strollers and small children in tow, groups of teens just dismissed from distance learning and older couples stroll the wide halls, dropping their masks to sip a drink or lick an ice cream cone.
With nearly all its big-name tenants gone, Lloyd Center is little more than a cavernous shell and appears at risk of becoming a 23-acre dead weight in a neighborhood that has struggled with crime for many years.