In particular, I'm thinking about the two malls in the small California city I called home for the last three decades of the 20th century, and where we still have a vacation place. The story, I believe, is fairly typical.
The older mall began to die years ago, when its anchor store - Penneys -moved to the newer mall as one of its three anchors. The former space was then occupied by Mervyns which died in 2008, sat vacant for awhile, and then reopened as a Goodwill used goods outlet. It is currently being renovated to be an outdoors activity store, I suppose camping, canoeing and like merchandise.
The newer mall is now on life support, two of the three anchors died - Sears and Gottschalks - and only Penneys hangs on, for how long is unclear. The Sears space stands vacant and a Forever 21 rattles around in the former Gottschalks space. I'd guess the mall owners have vacant shops in the interior and therefore have no incentive to renovate the Sears space into smaller stores meeting the needs of the incurably (irrationally?) entrepreneurial.
Meanwhile the parking lots at some big box free-standers like Walmart and Costco signal busy sales at both. Parking lot evidence suggests people still shop at grocery stores; online groceries with delivery hasn't made much of a dent yet. On the other hand the Kmart is probably at death's door, its lot an empty sea of asphalt.
Somebody needs to come up with a model of how to repurpose mall space as apartments or community college branch campuses or medical offices or even assisted living units. It looks to be square footage that, at fire sale prices, could be used for many socially desirable things.
An alternative would be to level the malls and keep the parking lots, leasing pads to various restaurants which seem to attract diners who rarely enter the adjacent mall. The owner would then be a lot maintainer and rent collector. I could see this working out economically for franchise restaurants, the dining public, and the one-time mall owner who could perhaps provide private lot security.
