Fair enough, though I would say if these stores are on a spectrum tilting towards "barely open" or "on the decline" that it doesn't provide a useful counter-arg

Fair enough, though I would say if these stores are on a spectrum tilting towards "barely open" or "on the decline" that it doesn't provide a useful counter-argument for the overall sentiment which is that malls are and have been dying. That being said I haven't been to any of the ones you've listed in my adult life so would have no idea their status. I will concede that there are thriving malls in existence in the same way that stores that closed in one area of the country thrive in others. Not sure what that says towards malls as a whole but imagine it would trend to being viable in only a subset of the country.