Murray • Are malls back? Nationally, yes, shopping trends indicate.

But at Fashion Place Mall, interest never died down, said Kirsten Lee, the executive vice president of retail and leasing for GGP, the company that operates the suburban shopping center.

Her headline? “Crushing it since 1972.”

Traffic here is up 8% year-over-year, and sales are up 13%, bolstered by its biggest holiday shopping season yet last year, she said.

This year, with 55,000-square feet of new retailers added and just a single vacancy, the mall is expecting an even busier season, said Mark Thorsen, the mall’s senior general manager.

Those newer stores include Alo, a California-based premium athletic-wear retailer, and Garage, a Canadian casual-apparel brand focused on young women’s apparel.

Hotel Chocolat — a luxury chocolate store that started in the U.K. and offers ethically sourced, less sugary options — also opened this month, said store manager Alex Tran, who was setting up the artsy space ahead of its mid-November grand opening. It’s the brand’s first location in Utah.

And longtime draws like Lululemon and Hollister have recently remodeled and reopened, with larger retail spaces.

The mall’s operators gave The Salt Lake Tribune a tour of the property early this month, ahead of the holiday season.

Seeking ‘a little adventure’

Sherida Hosie, a West Jordan mother on the cusp of the Gen X and Millennial generations, remembers going to the Valley Fair Mall with her friends growing up, before she could drive.

Once she got her license, she’d head to Fashion Place, where she’d hit up Sam Goody for CDs, she said, and browse clothing stores to find pieces she’d later ask her parents to buy. The trips weren’t necessarily about shopping.

“It was more of an experience,” Hosie said. “It was more about being independent, kind of like a little adventure.”

Hosie said she’s been trying to cultivate an experience like that for her daughter, 14, who seems to text her friends but hardly hangs out with them.

It’s why, about a month ago, she suggested her daughter ask a friend to go to the mall. It worked. One Sunday, Hosie dropped the pair off at Fashion Place, just like her parents used to.

She’s since dropped her daughter off at more mall hangouts — most recently at Jordan Landing, an open-air shopping center off Bangerter Highway in West Jordan.

Hosie goes to an open-air mall like that every week or two herself, she said, and an indoor mall, like Fashion Place, about once every two months. She expects that’ll increase as the holidays get closer.

Data from Placer.ai, a location analytics company that tracks foot traffic using mobile device data, shows visits to open-air malls have increased 5.8% year-over-year in October, and indoor mall visits are up 4.1%.

Still, the mall bounceback has been uneven: Fashion Place and other higher-end, so-called Class A malls are generally doing better than their more affordable counterparts.

The Tribune asked readers for their mall thoughts. Of the 96 people who answered, 90 told us they’d been to a mall in the past year. Many said they like to physically see and try on items along with the convenience, as one reader put it, of “park[ing] my car once.”

Most respondents said the last mall they visited was Fashion Place, followed by City Creek Center in downtown Salt Lake City.

“Malls can be disappointing when good stores pull out,” one reader wrote. “Fashion Place is really the only solid mall in Utah.”

Often, Hosie said she’s looking to share experiences with her daughter and younger son. Some of her top mall stops are The Lego Store, Pop Mart, Lush and Miniso — a recently opened Chinese household-and-consumer goods store that launched its first Utah store in Fashion Place.

That generally aligns with mall research. Today’s shoppers are looking for “leisure and discovery,” according to a consumer survey report from the International Council of Shopping Centers and McKinsey & Company, and they’re often “drawn to curated environments.”

“This is especially true among younger generations, who expressed stronger preferences for edited assortments, pop-ups, and showroom-style formats,” the report found.

That interest is “really driven out of the COVID experience, and being isolated and at home,” Lee said, citing her company’s focus-group studies.

What Utahns want

Each mall also has its own personality and “consumer demographic,” she said.

“So what the ladies want in Tulsa might be different than what the shopper wants here,” she continued, “and it might be very different than what the shopper wants in Southern California.”

At Fashion Place, the mall’s core demographic skews female, tends to be from a higher income bracket and ranges in age from the mid-20s to mid-40s.

“We’ve also learned that the consumer here really likes and takes pride in how they dress,” Lee said. “They want to look good.”

Lee said that hasn’t always been the case in Utah, where outdoor gear has long kept a strong hold on fashion. But social media has changed tastes: Now, ultra-trendy and more-modest clothing retailers tend to do well here. Often, a shopper will see an influencer’s outfit on TikTok and want it for themselves.

It’s why GGP’s strategy has involved getting those brands into Fashion Place. Sure, someone could order online, but “it’s a lot cooler to go into the store, try it on, see what you think — maybe get some more stuff while you’re there,” Lee said.

Thorsen added that Fashion Place aims to serve everyone, from seniors to Gen Alpha. There are, for instance, mall-walker groups that skew older, as well as shops that cater to online trends, like Pop Mart, which sells the once-frenzy-inducing plushie Labubu.

When that store opened last year, Thorsen said, the line stretched all the way to Dillard’s, then outside, and continued all the way to The Container Store.

In May, a clothing store called Edikted, made popular by TikTok and geared toward Gen Z, will open at Fashion Place.

Will there be huge lines at that opening? Thorsen said, “I very much anticipate that.”

Other stores planned within the next year include a Kendra Scott jewelry store and Rothy’s, which started as a direct-to-consumer brand and sells washable knit shoes made with recycled materials, along with other items.