Why is one Myrtle Beach shopping mall dying while another thrives across the street?
Walking through Myrtle Beach Mall can feel downright eerie.
It’s quiet, save for the sound of a few footsteps. There’s a darkened but still open arcade that can be heard long before it can be seen.
The hallways are dimly lit. Some have flickering lights, a little like a horror movie set. Much of the parking lot lacks lighting at all.
Dozens of storefronts sit empty. The few that are occupied sell items like jewelry and souvenirs. Many of the stores have more employees than customers.
Four prominent anchors remain: AMC theater, Belk, Books-A-Million and Bass Pro Shops, the fourth having been seemingly immune to the rest of the mall’s decline, possibly due to the fact that it has bright lighting and its own entrances.
It’s hard to imagine what the mall was like in its heyday decades ago.
Then there’s the Tanger Outlets directly across Highway 17.
Unlike Myrtle Beach Mall, Tanger is vibrant, decorated with Christmas lights and doesn’t have a single empty storefront. Even on weeknights when the place isn’t busy, it’s clear that the outlet mall is popular. All summer long the parking lot is packed, but Tanger gets plenty of winter traffic, too, from locals doing holiday shopping and snowbirds who stay for weeks or months.
It’s a striking contrast, these two malls next door to each other yet living opposite lives, opposite realities.
Myrtle Beach Mall is dying, waiting to be torn down and replaced with something new. Tanger Outlets is thriving, busy and seeking its next reinvention. The last thread tying the two together is the transformation of retail, as brick-and-mortar storesnationally have declined in recent years.
Tanger Outlets seems, for now at least, to have figured out what it needs to do to survive. Myrtle Beach Mall didn’t.
The death of Myrtle Beach Mall
Myrtle Beach Mall’s decline isn’t a story unique to the Grand Strand. Indoor malls like it have struggled since the mid-2000s, experts say. Interest in them fell in near-unison with the rise of online shopping. Cities across the country built what turned out to be too many malls in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, only to have shoppers abandon them for the internet.
Myrtle Beach Mall was built at the height of that construction boom — it opened in 1986.
Myrtle Beach Mall and Tanger Outlets once had many of the same stores, yet one failed while the other is possibly the most vibrant it has been in years. How did this happen?
The most obvious factor, two retail experts said, is that Tanger Outlets likely siphoned off customers from the older Myrtle Beach Mall when it opened in 2002.
Longtime retailer and industry consultant Ric Anderson said traditional malls are “being surrounded by all of these discount centers,” which are “sucking the life” out of their older counterparts.
Myrtle Beach Mall might have been victim to the overpopulation of shopping centers.
Plenty of shopping could be done across the street at Tanger Outlets for cheaper. A 15-minute drive south of Myrtle Beach Mall is Coastal Grand Mall, which has full-size restaurants, a movie theater and plenty of shopping. A five-minute drive north takes shoppers to Barefoot Landing, which has restaurants and shopping.
With all of these similar options so close by, something had to fail, Anderson said.
How Tanger stays popular
Across the street from Myrtle Beach Mall, it’s another world.
Tanger is 100% leased, according to the mall’s area marketing manager. The area is brightly lit, and even within a few minutes of closing, it’s easy to find dozens of shoppers looking for the latest deals.
The mall has taken steps in recent years to follow the trend of many shopping centers fighting to survive — making shopping more of an experience than just spending money, said Carlee Dewey, area marketing manager for Tanger.
In 2018, the outlet mall got a face-lift, a major remodel as it celebrated its 16th year in operation. By that point, Myrtle Beach Mall languished, and all that was left was to figure out what to do with the concrete monolith.
Tanger has a food court with a half-dozen options for eating. In September, popular local brewery Tidal Creek Brewhouse licensed its brand to open a beer garden there. Shoppers can now get a beer to-go and drink it while they shop. Tanger also hosts promotions and events, like the Elf on the Shelf scavenger hunt this year. The mall also wants to get involved with LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations in 2022.
“The experiences and events are something that we think can continue to drive people to the center and make a day of it,” Dewey said. “People that are going to go in and out every store and look for the best deals. But then there’s also folks and shoppers that are looking for something to do.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tanger has offered a relatively safer way to shop in-person, Dewey said. Its open-air walkways are COVID-friendly and have plenty of space to social distance. Many of the stores have masks sitting by the entrance.
People are “looking for a reason to get out. So to be able to get out and shop is is exciting for our consumers,” Dewey said.
Most of all, Dewey said Tanger’s biggest draw is the brands. The mall has more than 80 stores, from high-end retail to more affordable options. Variety is Tanger’s strength, Dewey said, and it’s a destination that offers stores tourists in particular might not be able to find back home.
“Shoppers still love to find a deal,” Dewey said. And, “people still like to touch the materials and try things on, shoes and everything, and make sure they fit well.”
Tanger could face problems in the future, though, said Jay Page, a Coastal Carolina University professor who studies retail. Focusing on experiences will be key to its success, he said.
“My generation — I’m in my 50s — and the generation before me are probably looking at Tanger and saying ‘Hey, we’re on vacation. Let’s look at what the outlets have,’” Page said. “But I think eventually that with the college scene today, with the millennial generation, I think Tanger will eventually be in trouble.”
The evolution of malls
Retail industry analyst Neil Saunders said there are now three types of shopping centers that do well in contrast to traditional indoor malls: outlet malls (like Tanger), mixed-use centers (like Barefoot Landing and Market Common), and massive destination malls that have luxury wings and everything else under the sun.
“There is this narrative that malls are failing, and it really isn’t strictly true,” Saunders said. “Some malls are failing. There are other ones that are doing incredibly well.”
Those “mixed-use” centers combine apartments, restaurants, bars, shopping and events. The apartments create a year-around “captive” audience for the businesses, especially for those near downtown where parking is scant, and the other attributes help draw people in, Saunders said.
“They’re just designed to be more neighborhood. You can kind of get around easily,” Saunders said. “It’s a selection of stores that are nicely curated rather than being a complex of all sorts of different retailers.”
In Myrtle Beach, these have become an increasingly popular form of shopping center, with the Market Common fitting the bill precisely.
Indoors malls aren’t cool anymore, Saunders said “A lot of them are kind of just big brick monstrosities. There’s very little natural light in some of them. They are a little bit claustrophobic. They feel kind of old fashioned. And that’s just not what modern consumers want today, especially younger shoppers.”
But that doesn’t mean an indoor mall like Myrtle Beach Mall never head a chance.
Anderson points to an example of a thriving indoor mall in Dallas called North Park: It has a movie theater, coffee shops, restaurants, and a mix of luxury and affordable shopping. It also lines its hallways with an ever-changing rotation of art. People frequently will go to the mall simply to look the art or take selfies and end up spending money at the stores as a result, Anderson said. For many traditional malls in the throes of death, North Park is an example of what could have been.
Do dying malls look bad?
Dead and dying malls can have a variety of effects on the surrounding area, experts say.
In some cases, they can be “out of sight, out of mind.” With Myrtle Beach Mall and Tanger Outlets next door to each other, Saunders said that customers likely don’t even pay attention to the former anymore.
People are also somewhat used to seeing dying shopping centers, Saunders said. They are all over the nation at this point.
“They just enter this sort of netherworld when not a lot happens,” Saunders said.
But dying malls can be a sign of something good — innovation.
“Although it is problematic for the mall that’s failing, it’s kind of a good thing for consumers because if it wasn’t for competition, you’d probably get stuck with the old failing mall and it wouldn’t be that well invested in,” Saunders said. “The worst thing in the world would be that nothing new ever got developed.”
However, dying malls can also be a problem, especially for their immediate surrounding area, by attracting crime, Saunders said, or by killing interest in bringing new businesses anywhere near them, Page said.
“It can have an impact on an area seeing a dead mall, especially with the amount of tourists coming in to the area. They are looking for areas that are vibrant and full of life,” Page, the Coastal Carolina professor, said in an email. “Most of the time restaurants will locate away from a dead mall. It can have a negative economic impact in an area.”
The future of Myrtle Beach shopping
Even as Myrtle Beach Mall dies, new stores and new shopping centers are cropping up in Myrtle Beach all the time.
The success of those shopping centers, experts say, hinges on variety to create stability. Shopping can no longer just be about shopping, Page said.
Shops on Main in North Myrtle Beach, which opened this year, offers locally owned businesses, a few smaller national chains and restaurants. The businesses there are both clothing stores as well as places with things to do. There’s Butter + Whisk, which offers cooking workshops, kids baking camps and birthday events; or Wine Therapy, where shoppers can buy wine as well as do tastings with meat and cheese pairings.
Barefoot Landing offers a similar experience. There’s shopping, restaurants and activities. It’s not just a place to buy clothes. The Market Common meets the standard as well.
Business owners also tend to like these types of shopping centers better, Page said.
“Experiential, that’s really what this generation has to have as part of shopping,” Page said.
All of the new shopping centers in the area, as well as the ones that have managed to survive, are also very different from one another. None of them could easily replace the other. Many of the stores and restaurants found in The Market Common, Barefoot Landing and Shops on Main can’t be found anywhere else in the county, and sometimes even the state.
That’s what, years ago, was planned for Myrtle Beach Mall.
A stagnant shopping center
News reports from 2018 and 2019 say Divaris Real Estate Inc. had big plans for the Myrtle Beach Mall. On its website, the company touts the way it can transform commercial real estate into something that people want. The company manages or leases more than 30 million square feet of commercial real estate nationally, according to its website.
Divaris was expected to pour millions of dollars into redeveloping of Myrtle Beach Mall and begin tearing it down by the end of 2019. The goal was to turn the area into something like The Market Common, which has shopping, residences, restaurants and a movie theater.
That never happened. Divaris has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
A project like the redevelopment of Myrtle Beach Mall being stalled is not unusual, experts say. It’s expensive and cumbersome to tear down an entire mall and start from scratch. Then the coronavirus pandemic hurt in-person retail, likely further killing interest in speeding up the project.
“It just doesn’t give a great sense of urgency,” Saunders said. “Plus, demolition and redevelopment is a costly business. So no one’s in any hurry to spend money. And it can be sensible in the financial sense just to let the land sit there and do not very much.”
So for now, Myrtle Beach Mall will continue to sit there, darkened and half-empty, a shell of its former self.
Tanger, on the other hand, if it continues to try to reinvent itself, to be more than shopping, might have a chance, Page said.
This story was originally published December 23, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Why is one Myrtle Beach shopping mall dying while another thrives across the street?."
