Mall of America's Smart Parking Revolution | Fast Five Shorts

Malvamerica is expanding an ongoing deployment of axis communications car counting video analytics across more than a dozen locations on its 5.6 million square foot campus in Bloomington, Minnesota.

According to Chainstorage, the mall has been deploying intelligent cameras from access to improved surveillance and security since 2023.

Now, Mall of America is also utilizing AI enabled video analytics to support parking operations and provide security to shoppers.

The mall initially piloted an axis camera deployed on a light pole isolated from the building.

Despite difficult access to power and data, the trial system proved more than 99% accurate with performance improvements after minor adjustments.

The success of that initial test led Mall of America to expand the implementation and the car counting data now drives macro level decisions about mall hours and event planning as well as micro level scheduling for vendors and staff leaders.

Looking ahead, Mall of America is exploring the addition of capabilities like people counting and license plate recognition as well as leveraging line analytics to better understand customer trends such as distinguishing hotel guests from shopping center customers.

Chris, what do you think of Mall of America's new parking lot technology?

I like it a lot.

That's why I'll just come right out and say it.

The Mall of America and particularly Jill Renzo and her team there and I got the chance to interview her on stage last year and you and I both known her for years actually too.

They do a better job than anyone of understanding that the measure of success really at the end of the day when you're talking about physical retailing is that people have a good time and particularly when you're in malls, like the casino analogy is 100% apropos.

So you know, finding a parking space quickly impacts whether people are happy.

Feeling safe impacts whether people are happy.

Getting through lions quickly impacts how people are feeling.

So knowing how much staff like you mentioned in the, in the article, that impacts that too.

So yes, yes, net net.

I love the investment and can't, I can't wait to see what they do next with it too.

And because I think there's angles from talking to her on stage last year, there's angles on the safety and the theft prevention side of this that I think get really interesting in the long run.

Yeah, I think you hit on safety and convenience like number one and two things that they have to make sure are, are set up, have that great experience when they're at the mall.

What I really love about this though, Chris, is using AI to analyze the license plates and where that can go, the future of this investment.

Because what I think, you know, you have right now is the mall knows about traffic.

They can count people coming in and out.

They could do intercepts to gather data from visitors that are coming through the mall at key points of time.

But with this, they could actually start to get the same visibility for their tenants that they have on an online website.

They know this, the zip code that people are traveling to.

They know the time of, that they're spending at the mall.

They know what times of year they're coming.

So are their peaks really, you know, should they start focusing on, you know, different times of year outside of, you know, the, the holiday summer break peak that they get, the back to school shopping peak, the holiday peaks that they get?

This is really going to allow Mall of America to personalize the experience for their consultants, their consumers, or their, their visitors more than they ever have before.

And I think that's what's really key here to that casino experience that you're talking about.

And giving people a feeling like this mall shopping experience has been 100% designed to suit me and the needs of my family, especially for those travelers.

They have tons of people that come from like 2 out 2 plus hours away to do shopping trips here.

And I think that's the, the real unlock here and the value to future retail tenants that they're not going to get at a lot of other malls yet.

So that, to me, that's really where the future of this goes.

And this technology from Axis is really kind of checking all those boxes for the mall.

Yeah, that's a good point.

It should make their marketing more effective over time.

You know, if you know what percentage of your cars in your parking lot are from Iowa versus North Dakota, South Dakota, Illinois, which they get a hell of a lot of people from many different places, it tells them where they should put their marketing at what time of year.

So yeah, that's a great point.

And.