At the northern tip of Miami Beach’s famed barrier island, atop what was once a tangle of mangrove-filled swamps, sits a three-story, 466,000-square-foot sanctum for the super-rich. A pair of models dressed in beige linen outfits strut silently past onlookers like a wandering catwalk ad. Outside, shoppers shell out $30 for valet parking and the right to show off their supercars near the main entryway. It’s sunny and breezy on this picturesque Monday afternoon, but when it does rain, mall workers will scurry out front with umbrellas to escort shoppers to shelter.

Bal Harbour Shops looks like a posh resort compared with the 1,100 or so indoor malls sprinkled throughout America’s suburbs. Instead of the glare of fluorescent lights and fake plants, the main drag here is lined with tropical greenery and ponds with turtles and koi. It’s different from your run-of-the-mill mall in other ways, too: This one isn’t constantly cutting deals on rent to get stores to stay. In fact, there’s a waitlist. And while some malls are desperately seeking financial lifelines, this one is planning a $400 million expansion.


On this day, Matthew Whitman Lazenby, the Bal Harbour Shops’ developer, is biting into a veggie club sandwich at the mall’s second-floor grill. The view is expensive: Range Rovers and Porsches sit outside amid the palm trees. Lazenby, 40, has just returned from a business trip to South America, where he visited several malls, including one in Sao Paulo that’s a virtual duplicate of his. The grandson of the mall’s late founder, Stanley Whitman, Lazenby says he’s fully cognizant of the industry’s troubles—and how they don’t really affect Bal Harbour.

“There’s not many luxury stores you go into and say, ‘Ugh, this is terrible,’” he says. “There are some, though. Not here.”

Malls across America are dealing with what’s been called the “retail apocalypse:” the looming death of an industry unable to cope with the shifting shopping habits of consumers. Clothing retailers close stores by the thousands as households shift spending to travel, eating out and other leisure activities. More importantly, foot traffic continues to slow as customers abandon the suburban mall for the ease of online shopping. U.S. e-commerce sales are expected to account for 17 percent of all retail by 2022, up from 12.7 percent in 2017, with Amazon.com Inc. the main driver, according to Forrester Research.

Even worse for the American mall, Credit Suisse has predicted that from 20 percent to 25 percent of the complexes will shut their doors within the next five years. It’s the kind of cultural cataclysm so total that suburban explorers now trek through dead malls with their cameras, chronicling decay as if they were ancient ruins.

While the malls Generation X came of age in are on death row, luxurious versions of those dinosaurs are doing just fine. Malls such as Americana Manhasset on the wealthy north shore of New York’s Long Island, the Forum Shops at Caesars in Las Vegas, and the Grove in Los Angeles, often teeming with a healthy mix of wealthy locals and spendthrift tourists. But even among these successful swanky malls, Bal Harbour Shops stands tallest. It regularly tops the annual list of the most productive shopping centers in America, according to real estate research firm Green Street Advisors. Bal Harbour Shops declined to share revenue numbers, conceding only that it’s profitable.

Though it’s not enough for a mall to simply be near rich folks, it sure does help, says Michael Brown, a partner in the retail practice of consulting firm A.T. Kearney. “Those malls in the densely populated, high-income sectors are continuing to thrive,” he says. Bal Harbour is certainly among them. Many shoppers do come here from afar, but some live right next door. The two towers of the equally decadent St. Regis Hotel across the street are visible from the mall’s second floor. The Ritz-Carlton is just down the road, with one-bedroom suites that can run more than $1,000 a night. Between them sits more than a half-dozen luxury high-rise condominiums lining that famous beach.

One downside for luxury malls located among the well-to-do, however, is that they constantly need to update their offerings to appease all those discerning buyers searching for the hottest brands.

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