Micro-Loft Living in America's Oldest Indoor Mall

[ed. Don't know about the "micro" part, but this doesn't sound like a bad idea - re-purposing defunct and/or under-utilized malls to help ease housing crises in some cities.]

Living in the mall is probably a teen dream. But it's also a reality in Providence, Rhode Island, where nearly 100 micro-lofts, many of them 225-square-foot studios, came online in a historic shopping mall last fall.

While the lofts at the Arcade are likely the first of their kind located inside a mall, small-scale living is a wider trend across the U.S., mostly in cities where finding inexpensive ways to provide housing for people is a serious problem. Places like New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle and Chicago have reduced the square footage requirements for apartments in recent years, with some going as small as 220 square feet, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

At the Arcade, considered America's oldest indoor mall, owner-developer Evan Granoff made his vision for a thriving "live small/play big" micro-loft community a reality -- but not before the historic site survived a few bouts of economic hardship.

by Ilyce R. Glink, CBS News | Read more:
Image: Ben Jacobsen Arcade Providence