Every Mall in America was a "nice mall" back in the mid to late 90's. The thing that killed malls was not the internet.
It was the illegals and non-White's. We went to a mall a couple of weeks ago out of morbid curiosity and it was DEAD. The place is huge and at least 85% of the people there were just non-Whites that only went to the food court and walked around (I think they were stealing too. I saw at least one brown steal something but didn't bother reporting it since nothing would be done anyway).
We left. Malls are dead. It's not us. It's them.
We have two malls within a half hour of us. One has lost about 1/2 of their stores and we stopped going there. The second one is still 95% open, clean, and 'safe'. We don't go as often because our shopping needs have changed but we still like to walk around it.