In the past several years, online shopping has taken over the fashion industry, and in-person shopping has become exponentially less popular. The COVID-19 pandemic also played a huge role in the decrease of in-person shopping, in the way that has caused many of them to close completely. In fact, almost 25% of the malls in the United States are deemed to close in the next 5 years.

In early August, the largest mall owner, Simon Property Group, was in talks with Amazon about turning some old and closed J.C. Penny and Sears locations into fulfillment centers for the web retailer. Although this might seem like a good idea, mall analysts realized it might not be so easy. Demand for logistics buildings has never been higher as e-commerce sales blow up. But according to CNBC the obstacles include the fact that the properties need to be rezoned, which could converge with pushback from local municipalities.

“Just because retail space has gone vacant or remained fallow does not mean that it is automatically a good candidate for repurposing into industrial space,” the head of Moody’s Analytics commercial real estate economics division, Victor Calanog, stated.