For decades, small company owners hoping to move their business or expand it to a mall were confounded by a lack of available space, or prohibitively high rents for empty storefronts. Now, as the number of big box and restaurant chains pulling out of those locations increases, the entrepreneurs that want to set up shop in shopping centers once reserved for giants like JCPenny, Macy’s, and Starbucks are finding mall vacancies in many parts of the U.S. — and at times paying lower per-foot rents than those corporate giants.
The list of large companies that have gone bankrupt or closed numerous stores in 2025 has been long, and includes craft chain Joann, Party City, Kohl’s, Big Lots, Claire’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and many more. While not all the big retailers and food businesses shuttering outlets have been based exclusively in malls, many maintain sizable footprints in U.S. shopping centers — including Starbucks, which last week announced hundreds of location closures. The subsequent slump in occupancy rates at many malls is now allows many smaller businesses to set up shop in them for the first time.
A recent study by commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield estimated the national vacancy rate in malls at 5.8 percent in the second quarter of 2025. While that may not sound high, it represented a 20 basis point increase over Q1, and a 50 point hike since the same period in 2024. That evolution is now leading many owners or managers of underoccupied shopping centers to rethink their earlier aversion to renting to smaller businesses, whose lower cash reserves often prevent them from taking on assured, long-term leases.
Instead, according to a recent report by CNBC, entrepreneurs are not only finding vacant space in malls available to rent. But they’re often also negotiating considerable deals on rent rates, business set up assistance, continual occupancy services, and shorter lease durations from owners. Some shopping centers set aside space for smaller businesses on more flexible terms, in hopes of converting them to longer-term leases, according to ICSC, a trade association of shopping center owners.Not surprisingly, more entrepreneurs want o seize those opportunities to move into shopping centers.
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“That kind of access wasn’t on the table for startups and small businesses three years ago in most metro areas,” Teresha Aird, co-founder and chief marketing officer of the Offices.net real estate brokerage, told the business news channel. “Now it is, and they’re making the most of it to test physical presence without overextending capital… The result is a more flexible, opportunity-rich environment that can be a lifeline for entrepreneurs navigating tight margins and competitive markets.”
The new opportunities for smaller businesses to rent mall space aren’t evenly spread across the country. For example, experts note that availability of nearly any commercial space in the New York City area is so tight that even converted warehouses are tough to lease. But many major U.S. urban centers — especially in medium-sized city centers and inner-ring suburbs of larger cities where big retailers have shut stores — the chances for entrepreneurs to move in on malls are multiplying.
To be sure, some shopping center owners continue betting they have more to gain by waiting for big box, anchor tenant occupants. Rather than renting to entrepreneurs with smaller budget looking for shorter leases at lower costs, many mall managers hold out for so-called “credit tenants” with large enough reserves to sign 5- to 7-year contracts at full market rates.
But an increasing number of mall landlords are feeling enough pressure ontheir vacancy rates and revenue that they’re now looking to rent to small businesses — even some pop-up stores. Many are even adding sweeteners to bring entrepreneurs aboard.
“In West Des Moines, a family-owned restaurant recently assumed an old chain pizzeria location at a rent of almost 30 percent below the original asking rent,” local real estate broker Jacob Naig told CNBC — adding the owner helped finance the kitchen redesign. “Such a deal wouldn’t have been possible just five years ago.”
There also may be another factor at work in the small business migration to malls. According to a recent study by location intelligence and foot traffic data company Placer.ai, small and niche retail and food companies are helping transform the entire shopping mall experience.
That involves giving consumers used to swooping in for fast, targeted buying blasts reasons to stay longer. Former single-store visitors to malls may now also get medical or wellness treatment, go to the gym, see local service providers, take in a spa, and enjoy a fancier meal than typical food court businesses usually offer.
As part of that, entrepreneurs can take over prime locations that national chains gave up, and add local, quality goods, meals, and services that effectively rebrand some malls. At the same time, they benefit from the work of former corporate occupants, who previously researched and identified those spaces as good for business.
“These spaces already had a site selection review, foot traffic, and locals are used to seeing activity in the space,” said entrepreneur Andy LaPointe, the owner of Michigan gourmet food company Traverse Bay Farms, who told CNBC he now operates locations in two strip malls. “But the magic happens when a small business brings, not a cookie-cutter replacement, but something unique, a place to linger and a sense of belonging… So when a national chain leaves a space, it isn’t just a gap, it’s a canvas for a small, local business to create something lasting.”
And that, after all, is what small businesses do best.
NEW GLARUS, WI—Tsking her tongue with envy as she put the finishing touches on her teen’s at-home hairstyling, local mom Sandra Bennett told reporters Friday that she was pretty jealous of all the dick her daughter was going to pull with those highlights. “Honestly, I’m happy knowing what these dirty blond highlights will do for Cassie, but it’s hard not to wish I were in her boots, knowing the second she’s back at school she’s going to be plowed six ways from Sunday,” said Bennett, admitting she had mixed feelings of pride and enviousness as she imagined the way her daughter’s L’Oreal DIY highlights would get her tossed from classmate to classmate like a rag doll. “It was bad enough when she got her ears pierced at Claire’s, but now? My God, she’s going to be straight-up pregnant within the week. What a lucky kid. As parents we do so much to help our kids get laid.” At press time, Bennett had reportedly resolved to get her own highlights and try hanging out at a local bowling alley to see if she could get in on the action.
Hey, remember me? I’m the girl who, right before the 2022 Game Awards, said Xbox head Phil Spencer dresses like my dad when he goes on a Sunday morning bagel run. (We squashed the beef at Summer Game Fest, don’t worry.) Though I was being playful and pointed with my fashion critiques, I wasn’t just speaking to the style (or lack thereof) on display at gaming’s biggest night, but how it’s indicative of a larger identity crisis within the industry. On nights like The Game Awards, this multi-billion-dollar industry tries its hardest to ape Hollywood, with a glitzy production, A-list actors, and, bizarrely, men in sweatshirts.
It begs the question: Who are we? Are we all wealthy industry leaders wearing denim jackets in an attempt to look more approachable, more pedestrian? Or are we wannabe fashionistas from Long Island leaning too hard into living in Brooklyn? Or schleppy gamers who throw on whatever is on top of their clothes chair in the morning? The answer is simple: We’re all of it. This is an increasingly diverse industry (despite its inability to name women), and the more that diversity is reflected in the people who attend these events, the better the fashion will be by default—because we’ll get more variety, more personality, and more cultural backgrounds on display.
This year, I’ll be attending The Game Awards (no, you can’t see my outfit yet). Since I was so passionate about fashion last year, and now I’ll be there in person, I feel it is my civic duty to provide unsolicited advice on how to look good for gaming’s Oscars.
Let me be clear: You don’t have to spend a lot of money to look good. There are tons of ways to ball out on a budget, from renting the runway, to borrowing from friends or family, to combing through thrift stores for long-lost treasures (which is how we found my fiance a 1970s-era Yves Saint Laurent military trench for $150 in Italy). Whether you’re attending The Game Awards or you just have a semi-formal event in your future, here are some tips to ensure you don’t draw the gaze of my fashionable Eye of Sauron.
Also, I’m offering personalized fashion advice, so reach out in the comments, via e-mail, or my DMs.
Even then, though, in the depths of the game’s nadir, I could see something in the distance, past all the anger and frustration of the moment. So much of the negativity seemed to be coming not from a place of true revulsion, but disappointment, of people’s expectations of Cyberpunk 2077 being “The Witcher 3, with cars” being fumbled.
That spot on the horizon, as tiny as it was, nevertheless had shape and form. It was hope. Big games simply cannot be allowed to die, so even then, as Cyberpunk was on the receiving end of an unprecedented backlash, I could see where this story was headed. The world loves nothing more than a bad game’s redemption arc—see No Man’s Sky for a similar example of the genre—and as bad as Cyberpunk had been at release, surely CD Projekt Red, after spending all that time and money to make the game, would eventually spend enough time and money to fix it?
Screenshot: Cyberpunk 2077 | Kotaku
As time did its thing and moved ever onwards, that spot on the periphery would get bigger, until one day it would displace the negative vibes around the game entirely. One day, Cyberpunk 2077 would be good. Could be good. Please, Cyberpunk 2077, you could hear being said louder by the day, be good.
This game has been out for a while. The team is well past the debut of their creative baby, but being the good parents they are, these devs continue to nurture and support their creation. This game, to this day, is still getting new content after all these years.
We were now free, two years after the game’s nightmarish release, to convince ourselves that this was no longer the same game it had been at launch. Two years of work had righted the ship, given people what they wanted. Cyberpunk 2077 was good now.
But was it? I, along with most of you, had played it in 2020 and thought it was terrible. How much could really have changed since then? With a bunch of time to kill on a recent vacation, and to address my own simmering curiosity over the shape the game was in, I spent a few weeks working my way through Cyberpunk 2077, front to back.
IS CYBERPUNK 2077 GOOD NOW?
That’s a complicated question! But it’s why we’re here, now, in March 2023. What I found was that yes, over the past two years and change a bunch of technical improvements have been made. And when I say improvements, I say it like a battlefield medic would, in that “sawing a man’s legs off” is an improvement over “dying”. My first encounter with the game in December 2020 had lasted for around 10 hours, and for that entire time, even with a relatively new PC, Cyberpunk 2077 ran like trash. So bad it was distracting me from the game itself.
Now it runs great. With DLSS working its black magic and a bunch of patches under its belt, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game reborn on my PC—the exact same PC I had played it on in 2020—with even my modest rig able to run it in 4K, ray-tracing enabled, without skipping a beat. A smoother framerate also made the game’s sluggish shooting and driving sections slightly more tolerable, and best of all everything looked fantastic. So far, so good.
Cyberpunk’s countless and often mission-breaking bugs also seemed far less frequent. There are some still there, ones I think are just part of the way the game was built, like how cars don’t appear in the world so much as they’re dropped, still rocking on their suspension as your character first spots them. Or how police chases simply do not work. Pedestrians still walk and stand through one another, like they’re re-enacting the end of Watchmen. But there are a lot less of these, and I didn’t run into any of the formerly huge issues—like cars and bikes catapulting off the screen—so again, progress.
If bugs and weird glitches were your primary hangup, then sure, Cyberpunk 2077 is “good now”. This technical triage didn’t really matter to me, though. I’m a Battlefield 2042 veteran, I am used to finding pleasure amidst uncooperative polygons. What their taming did at least allow, though, was the opportunity to stop worrying about them, and focus on the game itself. Not what I had wanted it to be, or expected it to be in a post-Witcher 3 world, not what its calamitous launch had prevented it from seemingly ever being. Just me, a smooth framerate and the entirety of Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of me.
OK, I have SOME THINGS I need to say that will sound review-like. I played through 85 hours of Cyberpunk 2077, much of it over my vacation, I need to talk about this with someone.
I started this whole endeavour thinking I’d be writing about one game, Cyberpunk 2077, but I ended up playing two very different ones over those hours. So different, in fact, that I’ve had to basically write this whole piece twice, since so much of my first draft would eventually end up in the bin.
The first Cyberpunk 2077 I played was how I imagine—actually, how I know after looking at Steam achievement statistics showing how few players had completed important sidequests—most people’s time with the game went. You aren’t led through the main storyline so much as you’re shoved, bombarded from the outset with urgent phonecalls, frantic messages, cutscenes where you’re coughing up blood, directions to travel here, have a shootout there, and before you know it you’re at the endgame wondering why you’ve barely scratched the surface of Cyberpunk’s world, cast or myriad of RPG systems.
Writing about this Cyberpunk as I went, my notes used the word “dogshit” a lot. The main storyline is the very worst of Cyberpunk. It doubles down on the game’s failed attempts to be an explosive FPS, shines its brightest lights on Night City’s dullest characters and moves so fast that Cyberpunk’s elaborate endings mean nothing because you haven’t had the time or space to give a shit about anyone affected.
My conclusion to this piece, as the credits rolled, was that Cyberpunk 2077 was unsalvageable. Its problems were too fundamental, the scathing reviews from 2020 justified in their damnation.
Screenshot: Cyberpunk 2077 | Kotaku
CYBERPUNK 2077, PART II
But then something weird happened. Instead of being dumped back at my lair in some kind of overpowered postgame, I found myself reloaded back to a checkpoint just before the final mission. There was no real endgame here (the storylines as they wrap up rule that out), just a soft reboot, presumably so players could jump straight back into those final hours and make different choices, enough to unlock one of the game’s four other endings.
Here, with the main quests all but resolved and my need to see a final cutscene already satisfied, another Cyberpunk 2077 unfurled in front of me. This Cyberpunk was full of unresolved sidequests, only now I had the time and space to resolve them. The game finally had time to breathe. It took its foot off the gas, stopped harassing me to sort out Keanu Reeves’ problems and began slowly serving me the game’s most memorable quests, most with meaningful consequence, each one taking me on a tour of previously-unseen corners of the game’s lavish world and giving me a newfound appreciation for its scale and detail.
I met all my favourite Night City residents in this second Cyberpunk, and I think it’s easily the best way to meet them. To be able to savour each little adventure at its own pace, instead of having them crammed in between main quests. In this second game, where I was no longer following a Keanu Reeves-led narrative laced with international intrigue but free to just be a guy doing murderous odd jobs around town, Cyberpunk felt so much closer to what I had expected from it back in 2020. A game about exploration, being a handyman, uncovering unforgettable little stories with sticky moral quandaries. The Witcher 3 with cars, basically.
My conclusion after this second Cyberpunk wrapped, after I’d rinsed it of every substantial (and less so) sidequest on the board, is…well, it’s what you’re reading now. My reflections of a game that is still broken in so many ways, and forgettable in many others, but which is also more than that, so much more than most people who (rightfully and understandably!) bounced off the main storyline in 2020 and never looked back will ever know.
It’s almost as though Cyberpunk’s main problem isnt with its various components themselves, so much as the urgency and order they’re thrown at you. Playing Cyberpunk 2077 as CD Projekt Red designed it is like going to a fancy restaurant and having the steak thrown at your face before you’ve even looked at the menu. Then getting your delicious entrée served 90 minutes later. The food is good, sure! But that wasn’t the best way to eat it.
Everyone who has ever said “just try the side missions, they’re better” in the time since Cyberpunk 2077’s launch, and sounded like a copium addict at the height of a trip, turned out to be right on the money. I’m sorry for ever doubting you. Some of these auxiliary quests are good, but many of them are excellent. A mayoral candidate having a little IT problem is a highlight, as is the tragic and unforgettable case of a cop’s missing nephew and a cattle farm. Claire’s tale of loss and revenge is handled with the utmost care. Judy’s evolution from peripheral quest-giver to her beautiful finale was a joy to play through, and Kerry’s mid-life crisis resolves in possibly the most cathartic moment of the whole game. These stories are well-written, deeply interesting and many of the best ones don’t even need you to shoot anything.
I could go on and on here, and kinda want to, but I’ve wasted enough of your time with my thoughts on a game that’s now over two years old, and was written about, at length, maybe more than any other video game in history. Thank you for sticking with me this long.
IT’S STILL CYBERPUNK 2077
Technical fixes aside—and they make a difference!—this is still Cyberpunk 2077. The good stuff was good in 2020, the bad stuff was bad in 2020, and they will forever be that way because you can’t save a game by patching in a new character arc (or any character arc) for Johnny Silverhand, or turn some dials and suddenly make the entire first-person shooting experience feel even remotely exciting.
I feel like I did everything I was supposed to do here, everything the zeitgeist and the blip on the horizon said I should do when it came to this game. I played it in 2020, bounced, then gave it time—time it may not have deserved if it was any other game from any other studio—to clean itself up. I revisited it to play the game this was supposed to be.
It’s not that game, of course. The “Cyberpunk can be saved” narrative is as delusional here as it is for so many other big-budget failures, when success had seemed assured but for whatever reason never arrived (of course Cyberpunk 2077 will always be, if nothing else, a financial success). Bugs and fundamental shortcomings in the game’s structure are two very different things. One can be patched, and mostly has been. The other, we’re stuck with forever.
Screenshot: Cyberpunk 2077 | Kotaku
And that’s OK? I’m OK with it, at least. There was so much anger and frustration tangled up in this game’s launch, all fed as much on people’s expectations as much as the reality of the game that was on offer before us. This was the next game from The Witcher 3 guys, it cost so much money to make, it took so long to make, it released so many incredible (and, turns out, quite fanciful) trailers, blah blah blah.
All this led to a consensus that the game was both busted and a huge disappointment. Now? Now it’s still a little busted and still disappointing in most of the same ways. There are still huge holes in this game, with shortcomings it will never overcome, but decoupled from the Bad Vibes of its 2020 launch I found myself free in 2023 to just fire up Cyberpunk 2077 and play what was in front of me.
What I found was a game that, when given the chance, could be more than just a trainwreck of a launch. It could also, with a bit of work and a bit more patience, be something truly special. And that was enough of a redemption arc for me.
