Editorial: The end of national retail at Pittsburgh Mills

Another one bites the dust.

In this case, it’s another national retailer bidding farewell to the Pittsburgh Mills mall. This time it’s Bath & Body Works, the fragrance and personal care shop that has been as critical to the operation of every mall as a pretzel stand since 1990.

Have you ever been in a mall without a Bath & Body Works? Unlikely. Capital One Shopping puts the number of malls in the U.S. at about 1,200. There are more than 1,800 Bath & Body Works locations.

The power of the chain itself might not be quite what it was in its 1990s heyday when every teenage girl was drowning in products smelling of Cucumber Melon or Sun-Ripened Raspberry. But the shops are still chugging along, offering candles, body spray and lotions. Eight new locations opened in August.

Does this point to a problem just with the Pittsburgh Mills? Not on its own. Bath & Body Works is rebranding and going with an updated style it calls “Gingham+,” which sounds a little like the redesign Cracker Barrel restaurants tried this summer. Company goals include pivoting more toward non-mall locations.

But walking away from the Mills had to be the easiest decision the Columbus, Ohio-based company made in years. Bath & Body Works was the last survivor of national retail in the mall. If the Pittsburgh Mills was a horror movie, Bath & Body Works was the “final girl” who escaped with her life, a cloud of Warm Vanilla Sugar wafting behind her.

The mall is limping long, more a barely functional parking lot than a shopping destination. Between its echoingly empty storefronts and owner Namdar Realty Group’s legal landmine, civil and criminal, it is a haunted house chasing business out of the area. Even those that stay nearby, moving off Namdar’s property to freestanding locations, are still impacted by the negligence of the company’s road maintenance.

Every retailer is dealing with economic issues right now. Every remaining mall is trying to figure out how to adapt to the new ways people gather and shop in an increasingly online landscape. It is the same shift Main Street areas are still navigating from a time when shops and restaurants abandoned downtowns for malls with convenient indoor spaces and ample parking.

But this feels like it is more than the Mills becoming a ghost town like other malls and shopping areas, mere shells of what was there before.

This is the collision of that sad circumstance with a different horror story. Shops and restaurants in Pittsburgh Mills didn’t all go out of business because the mall was dying, the way many a shopping center has perished. The Mills slowly became a shuffling zombie, forcing healthier businesses to flee or perish.