TUNNEL VISION.

• Author: Campbell, Spencer
• Position: STATEWIDE: West

For nearly half a century, western North Carolina shoppers have flocked to Asheville Mall on Tunnel Road for their sartorial needs. But like everything from newspapers to human decency, indoor shopping centers face intense threats from the internet. As many as a quarter of the 1,211 malls in the United States will close within five years, according to a 2017 report from Switzerland-based financial-services turn Credit Suisse Group, as online sales grow from 17% to more than a third of all sales by 2030. A new project from an out-of-state developer, however, just might give the Asheville Mall a longer life expectancy.

Seritage Growth Properties, a publicly traded real-estate investment trust created when Sears spun off 234 stores in 2015, has applied to the city of Asheville to demolish the mall's Sears department store. In its place, Seritage proposes four new commercial buildings, including a site for a restaurant and a multiscreen movie theater. The plans also call for 204 apartment units packed into 227,100 square feet stretched over six floors.

Shopping centers nationally are finding new life as centers for offices, entertainment and restaurants, Seritage noted in its application. "The proposed redevelopment of the Sears property at the Asheville Mall, with its strategic regional location, exemplifies this type of adaptive...