Macerich Co isn't usually in the business of hosting religious processions in its mall parking lots.
But when it allowed a Good Friday event featuring a costumed Jesus, prisoners and Roman guards at a Phoenix mall last year, hundreds of shoppers turned out from the heavily Hispanic community, where re-enactments of the Stations of the Cross are a major occasion.
The response proved to Macerich that its program to attract the surrounding population to its malls was working.
A small but growing number of real estate owners and developers are tapping into the same demographic change U.S. politicians have begun to recognize.
Two ethnic groups - Hispanics and Asian-Americans - are expected to see their population and buying power soar in the coming years. And several demographic experts project that non-Hispanic whites will be a minority nationally by 2040 or 2050.
If mall and shopping center owners fail to adapt to the changing demographic make-up of the country, they risk seeing their properties become mausoleums of a less-diverse American past.
"It's a bunch of guys trying to build for a (white) world that's no longer growing. But there are those individuals out there that are seeing the growth in different ways. They're picking it apart and making some big money off of it," said James Chung, president of strategy and research firm Reach Advisors. READ MORE
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