Shopping centers from Delaware to California are carving out premium paid parking spots steps from their front doors, and customers who already spend money inside the stores are pushing back hard.
At Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, New Jersey, 119 of roughly 7,700 parking spaces have been roped off as paid "preferred" spots. The price: $2.45 for the first hour, $2 for each additional hour, capped at $10.45 per day. Shopper Crista Ardito told CBS News New York she paid $4.45 for a preferred space on a recent visit. Her reason was blunt.
"We're both lazy and we're both hungry."
Ardito's willingness to pay puts her in a minority. Across social media, shoppers at malls in Georgia, Delaware, Kentucky, and beyond are posting videos of the paid-parking zones, and refusing to hand over a dime.
GGP, a major mall operator, has rolled out premium paid parking at 23 of its 95 properties, spanning Kentucky, California, and Maryland. Spokesperson Lindsay Kahn told USA Today that the vast majority of parking at GGP malls remains free and described the premium spaces as an optional convenience service. The company did not disclose how much revenue the program generates.
Named locations with paid spots include Mall St. Matthews in Louisville, Kentucky; Valley Plaza Mall in Bakersfield, California; Northridge Fashion Center in Los Angeles; and The Mall in Columbia, Maryland. None of those malls' specific pricing structures appeared in the Daily Mail's reporting.
The trend is not limited to GGP properties. Christiana Mall in Newark, Delaware, and Perimeter Mall in Dunwoody, Georgia, have also introduced paid premium spaces. At Cumberland Mall in Atlanta, a TikTok user filmed rows of empty preferred spots near the front entrance while she walked from the back of the lot.
"All these darn parking spots. I had to park at the back of the mall because you have to pay to park at the mall now?"
The complaint captures the core frustration: paying customers are pushed farther from the door so the mall can sell proximity to whoever will pay extra.
At Perimeter Mall, one shopper looked up the cost, found it was $5 for two hours, and still refused to pay. She posted a TikTok video making her case.
"I looked up the price and it's only $5 for two hours but that's not the point. Y'all trying to cheat me."
A father visiting Christiana Mall with his son walked across the entire parking lot rather than pay for a preferred space. He summed up the mood in his own TikTok post.
"They are getting real crazy with milking every dime they can get out of you, even to park at the mall."
He added, with resignation: "It's the world we're in these days."
The most aggressive example sits in East Rutherford, New Jersey. American Dream, a sprawling complex that combines hundreds of retailers with an indoor water park, theme park, ski slope, and skating rink, gives visitors just 15 free minutes of parking. After that, every vehicle is charged $6 plus tax per visit, according to the complex's own parking information page.
That fee is not for a premium spot. It applies to every car in the lot. A family spending an afternoon at the water park and grabbing dinner pays the same flat charge as someone who runs in for a phone case.
The business case is straightforward. Mall owners have faced years of pressure from online shopping, declining department-store traffic, and expensive upkeep on massive properties built for a different retail era. Many shopping centers have long offered valet parking or reserved spaces, but the new wave of paid premium spots goes further, monetizing basic convenience that customers once took for granted.
GGP's framing, that the spaces are "optional", is technically accurate. Nobody is forced to pay. But the practical effect is that the closest spots sit empty while paying customers circle the lot or hike from the far end. At Cumberland Mall, the TikTok video showed exactly that: vacant premium spaces near the entrance and a full general lot behind them.
Mall operators are not breaking any law. They own the lots and can price them however they choose. But the backlash suggests they are misjudging their customers. Brick-and-mortar retail survives by offering something online shopping cannot: a physical experience worth the trip. Charging people for the privilege of walking a shorter distance to spend money inside your stores is a strange way to compete with Amazon.
Several basic questions remain unanswered. No mall operator cited in the reporting disclosed revenue figures from premium parking. None explained how paid spaces are enforced, whether by meters, apps, license-plate readers, or attendants. And no one addressed what happens when a shopper parks in a premium spot without paying.
The pricing math at Willowbrook raises its own question. Ardito said she paid $4.45, but the mall's posted rate starts at $2.45 for the first hour and adds $2 per additional hour. The $4.45 figure suggests roughly one hour of parking, though the exact calculation is unclear.
What is clear is the direction. More malls are testing paid parking. More shoppers are recording their displeasure. And the gap between what mall owners call "optional convenience" and what customers call "nickel-and-diming" is only getting wider.
When the people keeping your doors open have to pay just to park near them, don't be surprised when they stop showing up at all.