We went to Pueblo last week and ended up in a time portal.

It happened when we went to the Pueblo Mall. Once through the door, we were back in 1985.

All of the storefronts were occupied. The same applied to the food court spots.  It was clean, decorated and festive.

Families – lots of families – browsed shop windows. Small groups of teenage girls shopped and giggled. Small groups of teenage boys shopped while trying to impress the teenage girls. I looked behind a Ficus plant for Rod Sirling. I thought I heard him say “Imagine, if you can, a mall caught in time.”

But there was no Twilight Zone host. Nor were there gang signs, broken escalators, gunshots in the parking lot or other signs of blight. There was even a 1985-style video and pinball arcade.

It was familiar but distant. I remember taking my kids to the mall when it was a treat for them and me alike. We’d spend entire afternoons there. To suggest “let’s go to the mall” was an invitation to entertainment and high adventure.

I remember the same from my childhood. Living in Denver’s southern suburbs, we were frequent visitors to the fabulous Cinderella City mall.

When it opened in 1968, it was the largest covered mall in west of the Mississippi River and remained among the nation’s largest malls until its demolition in 1999. It was laid out with spokes radiating from a central hub where a fountain put on a show that reached 90 feet in the air.

But the highlight was in the basement. Cinder Alley was an indoor city scape, complete with roads, sidewalks, New-York-Style signage and streetlights. It was perpetually nighttime in Cinder Alley in all the best ways.

In the intervening years, malls have fallen upon tough times. Empty storefronts and major hubs leaving. Crime encroaching. Bad stuff.

But recent trends show a promising future for the malls. According to the Los Angeles Times, the immediate gratification tendencies of Gen Z and their online upbringing are driving them back to malls in an unexpected way. They’re used to being able to access things immediately, comparing, downloading and enjoying with a couple of clicks.

But the online shopping experience isn’t like that. You click, wait and find out that what was shipped to you is nothing like what you expected. So where can you go to not only get variety, but can also see, feel and experience a product before purchase?

The mall, of course.

“Gen Z shoppers are bringing back the mall shopping center experience,” Kristin Grove, senior vice president of national retail leasing at the global real estate firm JLL told the Times. “They want a sense of community. They want to bridge the gap between the social media that they’re doing, and meet and shop in-person.”

And in so doing, they’re returning the malls to 1985.