Would you live in a Mall?

A lot of residential homeowners and commercial development are seriously pondering the idea of including residential space along side or rather on top of retail and commercial space. This will maximize use of the land and the potential income it could derive. In an interesting article on this idea, it quickly becomes apparent that this will soon be a reality.

"Where you have density and income, and you have the opportunity to do a larger redevelopment or a ground-up development, I think it can make a lot of sense," he said. "If you just happen to have extra land and somebody else is putting up condos, that's a short-term prospective. I would be concerned if that took off in a major way." Most malls don't go beyond three levels because shoppers don't usually go above that, Sterrett said. Residential development lets mall owners get cash from higher floors. "Instead of doing two levels of retail and being limited to 100,000 square feet of additional retail," Sterrett said, "you could do 15 or 20 stories of multifamily. In fact, the higher floors are most desirable because of the views."