Lifestyle
Come for the roller coaster, stay for the shops: Can malls be fun again?
Mall of America’s amusement park is one of the ways the shopping center lures tourists and locals to make a day of their visit.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
In the bleary predawn hours, it’s hard to tell Mall of America from any other high-end shopping center. Workers wield mops, hammers and forklifts. Under dim lights, Cinnabon bakers stretch and roll buttery dough. Around 7 o’clock, mall walkers silently swarm the building, meticulously tracing every nook of the perimeter.
But then, you grasp the scale.
Mall walkers count in the dozens, speed-stepping past towering unlit Christmas trees and 11-foot nutcracker statues. One lap around the mall is just over a mile. Local shopping malls vary in size, of course, but Mall of America is at least three of them stuck together. Maybe seven. Arriving in Minneapolis by plane, you first see it from the sky.
At 10 a.m. — opening time — a caravan of yellow buses releases a horde of middle-schoolers on a field trip. Like a shock wave, they push to the center of Mall of America, where roller coasters loop around a carousel, a zip line, a SpongeBob-themed jumping gym. The amusement park, Nickelodeon Universe, is a top reason locals visit.
“I feel like most of the time, we just go on rides,” says Sarah Matteen, whose 6-year-old daughter, Maeve, just went on her first big-kid ride: the soar-then-plunge Splat-O-Sphere. Now, Maeve is clinging behind her mom’s leg. “She said she had lots of butterflies.”
And now that’s over, what will they do?
The exterior of Mall of America in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
Shoppers stroll inside Mall of America on a catwalk-like bridge connecting stores, food spots and the amusement park.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
“Probably go to a couple of different stores,” Matteen says. Will she buy something? “Probably.”
This was exactly the goal when Mall of America developers, back in 1989, decided to stick five football fields’ worth of roller coasters and playgrounds in the middle — with stores encircling them.
It was rare then; it’s still rare now. But the idea behind it — dubbed “retailtainment” — is a strategy many believe could save the American mall.
After a tipping point, malls try to be destinations
People don’t visit malls like they used to. For two decades, shopping centers have lost sales to the Internet. Foot traffic at indoor malls is 5% below what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to tracking firm Placer.ai.
At the same time, malls have sprawled so much that per capita, Americans still have four times more retail real estate than Europeans, says retail expert Mohit Mohal.
“At some point of time, you know, you reach a tipping point,” says Mohal, who advises malls and retailers at the consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal. Growing by adding locations no longer works, he says, so: “Malls have now been asking, how do I create a compelling value proposition?”
That’s how the mall becomes home to gyms and salons, golf simulators and pickleball courts — not just shops but stuff to do, reasons for people to return. There are even hotels, offices and apartment complexes so a shopper may never have to leave the vicinity.
Passengers soar and whirl on a ride named after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at Nickelodeon Universe, the amusement park inside Mall of America.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
Plenty of malls cannot afford this change. Some are too far gone to try. Some grapple with theft or other crime, deciding to resort to limits like curfews.
But of those with a chance to make it for the long haul, many are trying to turn back time — to when a mall was more than just a place to return an online order, but a destination for the day.
They’re adding activities that “traditionally — 20 years back — people would have not gone to a mall for,” Mohal says. “And that is helping revive the traffic in the mall.
“I don’t think it’s the silver bullet, nor would I say that malls are dying, but I would say malls are evolving,” he adds.
If you build it, they will come — and shop
By lunchtime, Mall of America is teeming with toddlers toting Build-A-Bears, babies bouncing in strollers, adults studying store maps. A girl, around 10 years old, dangles from the top of a human claw machine.
The mall started out 80% retail and 20% entertainment, but now the split is closer to 60% and 40%, says Jill Renslow, one of the executives running this place. There’s a Sea Life aquarium, mini golf, arcades, escape rooms and a psychedelic fun house called Wink World. Gleaning from sister malls — New Jersey’s American Dream and Canada’s West Edmonton Mall — Mall of America is now building a water park.
Something stands out, however, talking to mall visitors around these spots: Many say the only things they bought or would buy that day, besides tickets, are snacks at the food court. How does that make sense for the rest of the mall, for the stores?
Some 32 million people visit Mall of America each year. “We’re 70 and sunny every day,” jokes Jill Renslow, one of the executives running the mall.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
“The longer time that [people] spend in a space, typically they’re going to spend more money,” replies Renslow, chief business development and marketing officer. “But even if they don’t on that first visit, they’re going to come back because they had a great experience. … We’re along for the ride for the long haul.”
Mall of America doesn’t disclose financials as a privately held company, but Renslow says retail sales are up 5% so far this year. Visits are up 4%, she says. That’s nearly the reverse of the drop in foot traffic at malls nationwide.
Grabbing a bite turns into a ride — or two
Being a tourist destination certainly helps. Some 32 million people come every year. In a Minnesota winter, “we’re 70 and sunny every day,” Renslow jokes.
Almost on cue, a couple rolls full-size suitcases at the edge of Nickelodeon Universe: Janelle Mayfield and Evan McManus of Louisville, Kentucky.
“We literally just landed,” Mayfield says.
They jumped on the light rail at the airport and discovered it drops them directly at the mall. With a few hours to kill before Airbnb check-in, they thought they’d grab a bite — but found themselves between a log chute and a climbing wall. A roller coaster thunders overhead, heading for a loop.
“I’m wanting to, as soon as the Airbnb opens up, drop off our luggage and then come back,” Mayfield says, laughing.
The mall’s gravitational pull has worked once again.
Dreaming up reasons for people to visit
The strategy, it seems, hinges on a simple premise: Just get people in the door.
Mall of America throws 300-some events a year: the largest gathering of people dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a 67-foot-tall real gingerbread house, hair-bedazzling before Taylor Swift’s concert, wrestling matches, even a rave.
Dan Jasper, who’s in charge of leading visitors on tours of the mall, steps out from behind the scenes of Nickelodeon Universe.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
Dan Jasper says he first visited Mall of America the week it opened in 1992. He’s now a senior vice president who has been with the company for over 19 years.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
“We brainstorm. We go, ‘What can we do? What would be fun? What would grab the attention?’” says Dan Jasper, a senior vice president. “We had a bride and groom get married in Sea Life, in the shark tank, in scuba gear. … Shark knocked her veil off, live on national TV.”
One time, they got singer Ed Sheeran staffing the Lego store. Renslow says the staff constantly tracks upcoming concerts, music and movie releases.
This also means a never-ending hunt for uncommon stores and pop-ups: a spa for children, a shop of Japanese snacks and toys, a physical space for a TikTok brand.
“There’s always been construction here for the whole 16 years I’ve been here,” says Andrew Stokke, a housekeeper, leaning on his cleaning cart at the foot of a roller coaster tower. He points in every direction: “This is brand-new. That’s brand-new. It’s constant.”
Shoppers walk through Mall of America, the largest shopping mall in the United States.
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
hide caption
toggle caption
Jenn Ackerman for NPR
This, of course, takes a lot of money and staff. Renslow acknowledges this and the fact that Mall of America’s size, history, reputation and private ownership give it power that few other malls enjoy. She also calls change the key ingredient and staleness the enemy of survival.
“You can’t fall by the wayside of just doing what you’ve always done,” Renslow says.
It’s the mall’s job to reinvent itself to draw people in — then it’s up to the stores to turn those visitors into shoppers.
The midlife crisis remains a rich vein for novelists, even as its sufferers skew ever older.
In Ben Markovits’ 12th novel,The Rest of Our Lives — which was a finalist for this year’s Booker Prize — the narrator, 55-year-old Tom Layward, is trying to figure out what to do with his remaining time on this mortal coil. With his youngest child headed off to college, his health faltering, and both his marriage and law school teaching position on the rocks, he feels blocked by “undigested emotional material.”
So, what does he do? In the great American tradition, Markovits’ wayward Layward hits the road. After dropping off his daughter at college, he heads west into his past and what may be his sunset.
America’s literary highways are not quite bumper-to-bumper, but they are plenty crowded with middle-aged runaways fleeing lives that increasingly feel like a bad fit. Many are women, including the heroines of Anne Tyler’s Ladder of Years and Miranda July’s All Fours. But there are men, too, like the hero of John Updike’s Rabbit, Run — the granddaddy of midlife crisis novels — which serves as a sort of template for Markovits’ novel (and, tellingly, is the subject of his narrator’s abandoned doctoral dissertation, which he tossed aside for the more dependable employment prospects of a law degree after meeting his “unusually beautiful” future wife, Amy.)
We meet Tom and Amy on the cusp of empty nesting. This is not a happy prospect. Tom has been biding his time for the last dozen years, since he learned of Amy’s affair with a guy she knew from synagogue. This happened back when their daughter, Miriam, was six, and her older brother, Michael, was 12.
Their marriage has not improved in the intervening years. The early pages of this novel, a countdown of the Laywards’ last few days as a family unit before Miri matriculates, recalls an old magazine feature: “Can this marriage be saved?” One would think not. Amy, forever trying to provoke a reaction from her impassive husband, jabs repeatedly, “You really don’t care about anything, do you?”
Tom observes that staying in a long marriage requires acceptance of reduced expectations. He notes wryly: “It’s like being a Knicks fan.” (Like Markovits and Updike’s Rabbit Angstrom, Tom is a former basketball player. Amusingly, his description of each character includes a height estimate.)
Driving west, Tom has plenty of time to ponder his disappointments, and Amy’s. He notes that she had hoped he’d be more ambitious; she wanted him to accept a lucrative offer from a top litigation firm that would have paid for private school for their kids. Instead, Amy says, he chose to stay in his “dead end” job at Fordham Law, where he teaches a controversial class on hate crime. He is currently in hot water for his legal input for the defense in a case against an NBA owner for racial allegations. Amy’s take: “Tom loves to stand up for racists.”
Tom’s road trip takes him on a desultory odyssey visiting old friends and family. He finds their lives disheartening. In Pittsburgh, a grad school friend who became an English professor teaches “dead white men” and is having an affair with a graduate student. In South Bend, his younger brother is distressed over limited access to his kids after a divorce. In Denver, a college teammate urges him to see a guy at UCLA who wants to bring a case about systemic discrimination against white American basketball players.
His old high school girlfriend, who leads a busy life in Las Vegas as a single, late-life parent, urges him to steer clear of the case. When she also tries to talk about his alarming health symptoms (puffiness, breathlessness), he stonewalls her. “I forgot what you’re like,” she tells him, eerily echoing Amy. “You don’t really care about anything.”
At each stop, Tom tries to put a good face on his trip by telling his hosts that he’s thinking of writing a book about pickup basketball across the country. He also confesses, “I may have left Amy.” “You may?” his brother says.
Tom exacerbates Amy’s longtime presentiment of abandonment by ignoring most of her calls. Periodically, he checks in late at night, and they circle around what’s going on. “God, you’re cold,” she says when his explanations leave her wanting. His response? “Okay.” When he confides that he’s feeling “a little adrift…I can’t seem to get a grip on anything,” she surprises him by responding, “Me neither.” It’s a start.
In a 2006 interview with Yale Daily News, Markovits’ alma mater, he said, “I like to write about what it is like to become happier, although no one has ever been able to spot happiness in my books.”
You don’t have to look too hard to spot glimmers of happiness behind the missteps and misconnects in this ultimately moving probe of life, love, family and marriage across years and miles.
Guess Who
This Racing Enthusiast Is!
Published
TMZ.com
Sure, being an actor’s a dream job for plenty of folks out there, but even actors have their own dream jobs … can you guess who this racing enthusiast is?
We ran into this guy while he was hanging out with fans on Hollywood Boulevard, and he gushed about his admiration for pro racers … the ones not on light cycles, of course!
Still, he admitted he wouldn’t be up to the task of switching lanes and moving from acting into racing … take a spin at guessing who!
Biographer Peter Ames Carlin describes the making of Born to Run as an “existential moment” for Springsteen. Carlin’s book is Tonight in Jungleland. Originally broadcast Aug. 7, 2025.
Hear the Original Interview
Music
Springsteen’s label was about to drop him. Then came ‘Born to Run’
HOSEMANN: Happy New Year, Mississippi
Breakthru Missouri and Jameson Whiskey to provide 500 safe, free rides on New Year’s Eve
How to Be Outside, Inside Featuring Adelfa Marr and Manny Montana
Remains of missing Nebraska mom found 18 months after she vanished in ‘suspicious circumstances’
You can still catch Nevada’s US Capitol Christmas Tree in Washington
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Pro-police group asks DOJ to probe Soros-backed Virginia prosecutor using Biden-era law once aimed at cops
Israel becomes first country to recognise Somaliland
A murder, a manhunt and the grandmother who wouldn’t stop the search for her daughter’s killer
Nonprofit uses underwater technology to search for missing service members
Best of 2025: Top five defining moments in the European Parliament
-
Massachusetts1 week agoMIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, shot and killed in his home in Brookline, Mass. | Fortune
-
New Mexico1 week agoFamily clarifies why they believe missing New Mexico man is dead
-
Culture1 week agoTry This Quiz and See How Much You Know About Jane Austen
-
Connecticut23 hours agoSnow Accumulation Estimates Increase For CT: Here Are The County-By-County Projections
-
World7 days agoPutin says Russia won’t launch new attacks on other countries ‘if you treat us with respect’
-
Entertainment2 days agoPat Finn, comedy actor known for roles in ‘The Middle’ and ‘Seinfeld,’ dies at 60
-
Minneapolis, MN1 week agoMinneapolis man is third convicted in Coon Rapids triple murder
-
Maine1 week agoFamily in Maine host food pantry for deer | Hand Off