Malls

One of the canonical under-utilized assets in Kyle’s Alternative Real Estate thesis — treating dead or distressed retail footprint as a reinvention/arbitrage opportunity rather than a write-off. The thesis (crystallized in his notes on The New Urban Crisis) reads dead malls alongside the gulf between superstar-city land at ~$64,800/acre and small-metro land at ~$6,700/acre as a buying opportunity “if you have a formula / strategy for increasing the value of that land.” Malls and Parking Lots are the paired examples of the built space worth reimagining.

Kyle’s June 18, 2026 link capture gathered two concrete reinvention cases: the BBC Future piece The Massive Farms Emerging Beneath Our Cities on repurposing under-used urban space (including dead retail and parking footprint) for farming, and a Fox Business item on North America’s first year-round indoor ski slope opening at the American Dream mega-mall in New Jersey — a mall reinvented as an experience destination.

Context: The U.S. has seen a long wave of mall closures (“dead malls”) as e-commerce and changing retail habits hollowed out anchor tenants. A parallel movement repurposes the surviving footprint — into entertainment/experience destinations, distribution/last-mile logistics, housing, or other non-retail uses.

Where this appears

• Alternative Real Estate — dead malls as a canonical under-utilized asset to reinvent; the superstar-vs-small-metro land-price arbitrage.
• The Massive Farms Emerging Beneath Our Cities — repurposing under-used built space (retail/parking) for urban farming.
• Parking Lots — the companion under-utilized asset in the same reinvention thesis.