This was one of the main reasons for shutting malls down in the first place. Make them all fail and then repurpose the land. You can transition to a modern economy for as cheap as possible and no hassle with dealing with all the individual stores and their leases and rights

It’s the same as any war. Destroy as cheaply as possible and rebuild with modern infrastructure. Before the wars, Germany and Japan had medieval infrastructure that couldn’t support modern traffic demands and upgrading all the plumbing and electricity was impossible. So what do you do? You make up a reason to level it all and then build your super modern societies over the remains. Same thing they’re doing in Syria right now, with a civil war that’s been going on for 15 years against imaginary enemies.