Located in Boulder, CO, Macerich’s Twenty Ninth Street features a nature-themed outdoor creek play park, lined with log crawls, fish, turtle and frog and surrounded by painted Adirondack chairs.

Shopping centers are getting creative with small spaces, packing big fun into outdoor walkways, indoor corridors, and under stairways that otherwise would go unused. These affordable play areas, as small as 300 square feet, include a full turnkey package from Soft Play.

Whether custom-themed, like the new healthy fruit and vegetable play elements at Cumberland Mall, or filled with classic woodland creatures like Greenbriar Mall, the photos tell the story.

Available for indoor or outdoor areas, shopping center play area systems include all play elements, safety flooring, seating surround, shipping and installation.

More and more properties are selecting unique shopping center play areas as an amenity to attract young families.

Simon Property Group’s Montgomery Mall in North Wales, PA includes a custom indoor shopping center play area tucked into an empty space under a staircase.

Hendon Properties Greenbriar Mall installed a Soft Play Little Footprints System, a modular play system available to shopping centers with smaller budgets and spaces.

Mirvac’s Stanhope Village in New South Wales, Australia features a fully enclosed, outdoor shopping center play area, filled with fun, farm-themed tractor and pig climbers, pumpkin crawl tunnel and waterfall play slide.

The fabulous ‘healthy eating’ themed shopping center play area at Pennsylvania Real Estate Trust (PREIT) of Philadelphia’s Cumberland Mall, sponsored by local Inspira Health Network, includes giant blueberries, carrots, apples, tomatoes and celery soft sculpted play elements, that kids can climb, jump and slide on.

Three bears sit at the edge of a river designed into poured-in-place safety flooring outside this Asheville Playgrounds North designed playground in North Carolina.

A tiny cluster of brightly colored mushrooms and flowers create an outdoor shopping center play garden for families with toddlers Macerich’s SanTan Village in Gilbert, AZ.

Soft Play creates a small version of Westfield Corporation’s popular bugs and nature themed playground at this enclosed shopping center play area at the bottom of the escalator at Westfield Hawthorn shopping center in Vernon Hills, IL.

The Outdoor Shopping Center Play Area at The Outlet Shops at Grand River, Leeds, AL