The business of owning and leasing out shopping malls ain't what it used to be. I'm old enough to remember when malls themselves were the hot (and worrisome) new trend, popping up in the suburbs and decimating the business activity in the nearest city. Nobody would bother to go downtown to shop anymore, with such an inviting alternative. How unfair! I remember the sometimes heated lawyerly discussions about the first amendment implications of the way that malls had become 'functionally' public property, i.e. town squares. Of course, in the cycle of life one decade's up-and coming phenomenon becomes another decade's old and lagging loser. Shopping malls are still good hang-outs for teenagers, I imagine, but they aren't such vital places for shopping as they used to be. Many of the once-prominent bookstores, record stores, cinemas, and video retailers that once gave people a reason to go have disappeared as people buy books, music, movies, online. Ev...