[badgers]

I'm not sure I'd want to live in an old mall, but I could see them being purposed for office space. Parking is already taken care of, and most have bus routes already in place. The existing food court would be ready for new tenants. Other types of tenants could fill where other retail (e.g. clothing, toys) once occupied, such as a gym/fitness company, FedEx/UPS offices, office supply stores, etc.

[seanp2k2]

Yep, never understood why they don’t convert malls into office spaces. Then again, in the Bay Area (at least South Bay) there are TONS of empty office buildings for rent. I’m guessing that they all just want too much. Maybe it’s a zoning thing with the malls? Seems like they could do it with the one in Cupertino. For being Silicon Valley, sometimes this place really fails to impress with innovations like that. Instead, we have scooter startups.

[Figs]

Sometimes malls are converted to office space. According to the documentary, Making of Riven, Cyan repurposed a strip mall as office space while they were waiting for the construction of a real office. They originally started out in some guy's garage after finishing Myst and crammed 12 people in there, then moved into the strip mall -- which they said was "like heaven" by comparison, but they didn't just stay in the strip mall because it was still too small for all the staff they wanted to bring on.

[sgc]

Some malls just make everything bigger spaces and have them accessible from the outside - basically converting to a hybrid shopping center / mall.