Yes, it is exactly right. 'There' doesn't mean 'that place' in this sentence.

There be 句型，there are=have

Yes this sentence is 100% correct. As the previous person mentioned, 'there' in this context does not mean the same thing as 'here'. 'There' is an adverb used (usually used at the beginning of a sentence) to introduce the subject, and in this case describe the location. For example 'There are many cats here', 'There is a nice smell coming from here', etc.

All "there are" type-sentences start with "there are". Then in the end of the sentence the location of "there" gets explained. In this sentence "there" is "here" so it is perfectly logical and natural-sounding to say "there are lots of malls here". It's a set-grammatical-construct and is very common-place to say "there are...blah blah blah...here". Hope this helps :)