Posted on 04/10/2011 7:41:11 PM PDT by Nachum
Online retail sales keep climbing, big box retailers keep wondering what to do with all their space, and small stores struggle to survive at all. As a result of that nasty brew, Malls Face Surge in Vacancies.
Mall vacancies hit their highest level in at least 11 years in the first quarter, new figures from real-estate research company Reis Inc. showed. In the top 80 U.S. markets, the average vacancy rate was 9.1%, up from 8.7%.
The outlook is especially bad for strip malls and other neighborhood shopping centers. Their vacancy rate is expected to top 11.1% later this year, up from 10.9%, Reis predicts. That would be the highest level since 1990.
In the Denver suburb of Westminster, Colo., city officials are negotiating to buy and raze the 34-year-old Westminster Mall and redevelop it into offices, homes and stores. The 1.2-million-square-foot mall, once home to a Macy's, Trail Dust Steak House and Mervyn's, has seen its sales-tax generation plummet in recent years, to $1.5 million last year from $8.5 million in 2000, city officials say.
(Excerpt) Read more at globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com ...
Malls are turning into daycare for irresponsible teenagers
Malls are becoming battlegrounds for thugs
Malls are becoming too crowded
Malls are becoming too large to walk around in easily
Malls are filled with things that are too expensive
Malls aren’t selling anything interesting.
I don’t see why we need to many malls in this country and considering how many teenagers are acting, I don’t blame people for just shopping online or selling online. I find better things on Ebay than I do at most malls.
It is a form of entertainment that has become too expensive and the people are finding cheaper ways to spend their leisure time.
Most of these stores also are retail ripoffs.
Obama’s saying things are better.
Someone needs to ask him “better than what?”
Malls are becoming dangerous as mall owners and local communities do not want to solve the problems because they are afraid of being called racist.
Plain and simple. That and they don’t want to punish the ‘good’ kids.
They are not serious at all and their primary concern is not safety or the health of businesses in their locale.
People do not want to stroll around a place they are worried about being physically in danger by others there.
People also do not want to waste as much time in a mall anymore.
Yup. You would think that mall owners would get the hint that riff raff are not the best "customers."
A store I shopped at all the time is closing, it had a lot of traffic and was a low cost grocery store.
They are closing because they said with the price of food going up so much they are having their margins squeezed so much that they have to consolidate stores.
These guys were initially benefiting from the economic downturn, opening stores all over.
If these stores are starting to get killed off due to inflation, how many more will fall?
Yep, this is a recovery!
The higher Gas prices go, the more people will shop online. The only reason more people don’t do it now is because many just don’t have computers. I do a lot of my shopping on line, much of it with the same stores I would shop in in person.
Yes...and many online stores are offering free shipping now
That is true. It works like global warming, which has to freeze everything before it will warm. All malls and retail businesses have to go broke to have prosperity.
They fear being called racist more than anything else.
It's not like it was an estoric product, Presto Liddle Griddle, they sure had enough George Foreman junk nobody was buying.
It’s in the back of our minds, but not politically correct to say out loud. But, you see these gang type guys strutting around, and all these baby mama girls in the malls, it creates a certain bad atmosphere.
if Wally doesn't have it, online... haven't been to the mall in years
The problem for me is that local stores never have what I want. And when asked how long it’d take to get what I want... it turns out that ordering via the internet is 4-5 times faster than ordering from the store.
When local stores can match or beat the delivery times of internet merchants, they will regain their competitive advantage.
Failing that, they’ll need to expand their inventory to better meet the customer’s desires.
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