[The Great Yazoo]

Interestingly, in my town, Wal-Mart abandoned one store to build a new one across the street. The old Wal-Mart was in a shopping center owned by the dominant landowning family in this county (our county is named for their ancestor).

The shopping center owner had failed permit increasing the size of the store, increase parking, improve traffic flow, and make other changes to meet Wal-Mart's needs. So Wal-Mart bought its own property across the street and opened a new store.

While the old store lay vacant for a while, the shopping center owner ultimately enticed a grocery store chain to open there. The shopping center's layout was more conducive to the grocer's operations than Wal-Mart's.

This is all to the consumer's benefit. They have choices of going to Wal-Mart on one side of the street or the grocer on the other.

Government intervention restricting Wal-Mart's moving to the other side of the street would have 1) forced Wal-Mart into a less than optimum retail space, 2) prevented the grocer's expansion, 3) eliminated consumer choice between Wal-Mart and the grocer, and 4) enriched the landlord by forcing Wal-Mart to stay put. None of those results benefits the consumer.

[CriticalJ]

Woah Chief. I didn't mention anything about gov't restrictions. Keep the gov't out whenever possible.

As far as your other point, I am sure that there are many cases similar to the one you mentioned. That's great for your town. It would be nice if happened that way everywhere else. Maybe most of these buildings are owned by third parties who won't cooperate. It still leaves a lot of derelict shopping centers out there.