"It's a Bermuda triangle for business," said local businessman Michael Facey.

The situation was bad before COVID, and it is only getting worse.

"It's telling when property owners are reducing the rents by 75 per cent and you still have empty buildings."

There are 20 different businesses and agencies in the outdoor pedestrian-only mall in the heart of Armadale, in Perth's south-east corner.

Half of those shops are permanently closed.

"There's nothing to keep you in here and there's nothing to invite you in here," said Dome Cafe franchisee Graeme Hill.

But what happens when most of the businesses close?

Crime rife after dark

According to business owners, the Jull St mall's biggest problem is its high concentration of crime.

Every year for the past decade, Armadale has consistently recorded the most criminal offences of anywhere in the Perth metropolitan area — aside from Perth's CBD itself.

Mr Hill is the only Dome franchisee in Western Australia who closes his doors before the sun sets.

"My biggest stress running this business is — can our staff get to and from work safely?" he said.

"We go against franchise agreement. There's way too many incidents that are uncontrollable.

"The anti-social behaviour has just gotten worse and worse."

A tavern that had operated in the mall for decades recently closed its doors, despite spending millions on renovations.

Mr Facey, who is leading a push to renovate the street, said it could not attract any customers after dark.

"People are scared to come into the Jull St area because of the problems," he said.

"Yet every time we talk about the problems, all that does is scare more people away.

"But if we don't talk about the problems, nothing will change."

The undesirable activity was not just relegated to the cover of night.

Ashleigh Jennis said she regularly witnesses drug deals in the mall from her office window at the local childcare centre.

"I see that every day. They can't see in but you can see out," she said.

"They're passing stuff to each other. It happens at least at least three times a day."

Mr Hill said he was unsure what he would do once his lease expires.

"It actually gets to you after a while. I've had a gutful," he said.

"I'm sick of banging my head on the same bloody brick wall and no one listening."

Patrick Kahn remembers a time when the Armadale town centre was a place he enjoyed visiting.

"It was beautiful. The shops were always occupied. Now there's nothing here," he said.

"People just come and sit around — it's stupid. It's unsafe."

The anti-social problems the Jull St business owners face were predicted at the time the once-busy thoroughfare was converted into a mall in 1992.

Archived planning documents said the absence of vehicular traffic might encourage anti-social behaviour.

However, it was expected it would eventually be stamped out with "increased community involvement" in the mall as it became a vibrant civic space.

Mr Facey said that hadn't been the case for years.

It begs the question:

Do pedestrian malls still work in 2020?

Julian Bolleter, the co-director of the Australian Urban Design Research Centre, said he believes the best days of the pedestrian mall are behind it.

"They're a little bit out of fashion, frankly," he said.

"New urbanism, which is the dominant urban design movement around the Western world, is all about shared spaces — cars, cyclists, pedestrians, public transport."

"There's nothing inherently wrong with malls, it's just you require considerable density to make them work, or you need to really keep them on a life support system and just keep programming events to be held in there.

"Given bricks and mortar retail are struggling generally, particularly because of online offerings, it's been hard enough to activate your traditional high streets — let alone a place like Armadale."

Mr Bolleter said there was no quick-fix to reinvigorate a mall that had lost its way.

"The problem is by just turning it back into a street, you're not dealing with a lot of the economic and social problems which underpin the vitality of the area," he said.

It is a view shared by the City of Armadale which was pinning its economic hopes on a long-term strategy that takes into consideration the entire town centre.

That vision includes the redevelopment of the railway station precinct, the creation of a new central piazza and the construction of a tree-top walk through the city's streets, leading into the mall.

The council has spent money on the mall in the past on the advice of several reports and consultants.

It was now subject to a further report by a local urban planning firm, but the details of that are under wraps for now.

But Mayor Ruth Butterfield said activating the mall and the town centre required a large amount of investment over a long period of time.

"The issues impacting the Jull Street Mall cannot be considered in isolation from the broader and more complex issues impacting on the Armadale City Centre," she said in a statement.

Ms Butterfield said council was focussed on things like increasing residential density and attracting private investment.

"We need to change this narrative and have reasons for people to bring their children and come to the city and when they do, they will see that it is absolutely beautiful," she said.

What can be done to fix a struggling town mall?

It was a question Marcus Westbury asked himself in the mid-2000s when he realised the main drag in his hometown of Newcastle, New South Wales had become a wasteland.

"I counted 150 empty buildings in the two main streets over the course of a weekend," he said.

"There were entire blocks that were more or less boarded up.

"Some were smashed in and some were just like someone walked out of there a week or two before and never came back.

"It was a pretty intimidating place. People who had somewhere to go probably went somewhere else."

Mr Westbury spent the next decade of his life working to breathe life back into the Hunter St mall through a start-up he formed called Renew Newcastle.

"The idea was that we'd go to the owners of the buildings and we'd borrow them while they're empty and lend them to someone who's got a creative or community project," he said.

"They'd take the space effectively on a rolling 30-day basis.

"If the owner gets a better offer, they can have the building back but in the interim, someone's starting a shop or a gallery or a workshop."

Mr Westbury said over the life of the project, 250 projects were launched and 80 properties in the city were re-opened.

"You could see the effect that had. Rather than for-lease signs in the window, we had signs and activity of life," he said.

"You're taking someone's passion, enthusiasm and drive and marrying that with a space that would otherwise be going to waste.

"Times that by 50 to 100 spaces and suddenly you're seeing this huge investment — not necessarily money — but of energy and creativity and imagination, which inevitably has a transformative effect."

Mr Westbury said the financial investment from government then followed.

"If people aren't seeing the place, they tend to have the worst version of it in their imagination and people don't tend to get out and walk down a strip where everyone's telling them not to," he said.

A shopping mall without shops

In the city of Mandurah, south of Perth, Raylene Blythe knows first-hand the effect negative public perception can have on business.

For 22 years, she has run her gift shop on the Smart Street Mall, a place well-known in local circles for its concentration of crime and violence.

"It was turning people off because you'd have something happen at night-time and people would go, 'don't go to the mall," she said.

"Of course, that affected business, then with having less people around you seem to have more nonsense happen."

She and other business owners are ecstatic the City of Mandurah was spending $2.5 million to re-construct the mall.

"Most of the time, if you had a construction site at the front of your business, you would be absolutely horrified. We're elated," Ms Blythe said.

"We are so excited that something is actually happening out there. It's so good, you can see light at the end of the tunnel."

But it was not just the aesthetics that had improved life on the mall.

So far this year, the City of Mandurah has spent more than $50,000 on security officers to conduct foot patrols in the town centre.

Ms Blythe believed that was money well spent.

"If there are any dramas, you're straight on security and they are there within a heartbeat," she said.

"It used to be we call police. We don't need to call police anymore.

"Ugly scenarios and ugly places create ugly behaviour.

"If you've got a beautiful bright place, it does seem to curb some of that unattractive behaviour."

It was something the business owners of the Jull Street mall could only hope for.

"Jull St should be the diamond in the Armadale CBD. Unfortunately, it's just a lump of coal," said Mr Facey.

"It's been ignored and neglected for years and now it's the small business owners paying the price.

"We're a shopping mall without shops. What do you call that?"