Creating Downtowns From Failed Malls

"In Englewood and Lakewood, they're building downtowns in the freshly scraped footprints of shopping malls... For a generation in towns like Lakewood, malls and big boxes stood as community meeting places. But once the mall is closed and the retailer off to another box, communities are left with hulking shells.

...To create these urban centers, suburban town councils and investors are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to manufacture them from failed malls and big-box stores of the past - or from nothing at all."