Might be a good idea, but it won’t matter if the shopping mall property isn’t in a viable economic area. There are several reasons the old style enclosed shopping malls have been on the decline the last 20 years.
--Market Saturation, too many retail outlets in the area
--Decline in the local economy, this is particularly true in the northeast and Midwest, the former manufacturing areas, steel production and mining towns that have disappeared as those capabilities shifted overseas
--Population shift in an area, usually tied to decline in the economy as towns are abandoned so are the malls
--Shift to mixed use zones that combine outdoor plazas, shops, restaurants, retail, office space as well as residential and hotels into a designated area, creating an entertainment district
--Revitalization of down town areas and return of smaller shoppers
--Online shopping, wouldn’t impact an entire mall, but has had a minor impact on retail in general…..people are lazy, don’t want to go out so they order online or were in remote areas that were never serviced by malls to begin with so they just order online
--Zoning changes, the city rezones to do something new with the location
--mismanagement by the property owners…..sometimes out of state (out of sight out of mind) owners simply don’t care and don’t make updates to the property, don’t even try and keep occupancy rates near 100% and retailers leave, and one a couple go they all start to go….leaving the property abandoned

You might want to check out the dead malls website sometime, they catalog dying (low occupancy), abandoned and demolished enclosed shopping malls across the country, it’s not updated regularly, but it does give a decent outlook on different areas of the country and its easy to see why some of these malls disappeared and why bringing in start-ups really wouldn’t have had any impact at all.

I’m sure we could pick out a few rural area regional shopping malls that would better serve the community as technical training/community college campuses or satellite campuses for larger colleges.

Lots of uses to convert these properties
--Technical training center
--Community College
--Retirement Community
--Filming location for movie/tv studios
--Low income housing, make it self-sustaining so they can create community gardens, solar power, etc.