By Laura Dinsdale
The sunvalley mall is a very popular mall for students of benicia high to shop as well for anyone in the bay area. It’s the closest mall to Benicia high school so it makes for a good place to go when looking for clothes. But has there been a decline in the sunvalley mall? Have the number of shoppers decreased?
Online shopping revenue has increased from 16% in 2021 to 22% in 2025 according to trade.gov, with online shopping increasing it could be one of the leading issues to hit sunvalley mall. People see online shopping as easier so less and less show up to physically shop in stores. An article from Forbes talks about the switch from in person to online shopping.
A big issue the mall faces is not having good or attracting stores for customers. SF chronicle says while the shopping center has department stores — two Macy’s, a J.C. Penney and California’s last remaining Sears — it also relies on local tenants that can have a tougher time luring shoppers because they lack name recognition.
I asked student Natalie Archille if she liked going to sunvalley mall to shop at their stores and the reply I got was, “ I think the mall has good stores but not many,” she continued with, “one thing they could do to make stores better is for example with PacSun, no one really goes to PacSun unless they want to go to their brandy melville section, so they should make a simple swap from PacSun to Brandy Melville to attract more customers.”
The mall should invest in switching out stores for what’s more popular for the younger generations who would actually like to shop at the mall, but don’t because the stores are outdated and don’t have clothes that shoppers at the mall would actually like. Stores with less shoppers visiting should be the choice for which to be swapped about.
MA Chronicle talks about some alarming statistics of malls’ decrease in popularity and says between 2017 and 2022, an average of 1,170 shopping malls closed each year. If this trend continues, up to 87% of malls in the U.S. could be shut down over the next 10 years. So if you enjoy shopping at the mall this could be alarming to you.
The pricing of mall clothing could also be an issue to the shopping decrease. MA Chronicle goes on to say malls are losing their affordability and accessibility, causing a decline in their popularity, even just for hanging out. “They used to be a little more working class, middle class, and not so high-end,” Garcia Dealba said.state 12% or so of retail spending is now online.
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