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Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

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Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#81

Post by wlesieutre »

heartbreak wrote: post #78
wlesieutre wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I had a Wegman's I'd go to the mall. They're in Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, but seem to have something against Connecticut. :( On the malls note, the Chapel Square Mall in downtown New Haven got turned into apartments before I moved here. It's weird and seriously depressing looking, though I haven't seen the interior courtyard area myself. There has to be a better way to do it than this:…

Wegman's are further south as well. There are multiple in Virginia (NoVa, Richmond, Charlottesville).

Yeah, I listed just the nearby states. Connecticut + Rhode Island are a hole in the middle of PA/MA/NY/NJ. They're even expanding to multiple locations in North Carolina, but nothing around here.

I think my closest one is >2 hours away in Woodbridge, NJ. Used to live in PA and had a Wegmans, so it bums me out. Stop 'n Shop isn't the same.

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#82

Post by pavel_lishin »

excalibur wrote: post #71
pavel_lishin wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Car keys deposited at the door into a machine that won't release them until you pass a breathalyzer. So, basically, "don't bother coming here because you can't leave"? You'd need to make sure it was either accessible by public transit, or that there's cheap and effective semi-public transit like Lyft or taxi cabs - and it has to be cheap and effective for two trips, since you'll have to come back to pick up your ca…

Those things already serve most shopping malls. The idea was that the venue would provide everything people needed to keep them happy until they sober up, but they would of course be free to leave by means that don't involve DUI.

> The idea was that the venue would provide everything people needed to keep them happy until they sober up

Then they should offer up sleeping accommodations, too.

While I know that in most places, you legally can't serve someone who's already intoxicated, in practice few people go to a bar to get slightly tipsy. If I'm going for a night out, I'm not going to be ready to drive again until morning.

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#83

Post by macintux »

lostapathy wrote: post #65
macintux wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't blame a mall operator for not wanting to invest huge sums of money in renovations in order to run an entirely different, probably much less profitable, kind of business.

Much less profitable than owning an empty building?

Owning an empty building can be cheaper than owning a building that requires maintenance and more insurance because it's in use.

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#84

Post by rjsw »

foobarian wrote: post #17
projectramo wrote: post #2

I remember learning that in the 90s some companies had this useless asset: gas pipelines that spanned the country, but had dried up and were not being used. Other companies had a problem: how to acquire the rights to lay fiber from one end of the country to the other. Some very smart person realized you could lay the fiber in the old pipes. Question: what can be done with all that retail space? Is there a new use of…

A local mall in Natick MA recently lost one of their anchor stores (JCPenney) and replaced it with a Wegman's, which the first I saw a supermarket as an anchor store. I would love to know how desperate they must have been or how sweet of a deal they gave Wegman's to make this happen.

Having a supermarket as the anchor in a mall is fairly common in Europe.

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#85

Post by dangus »

selimthegrim wrote: post #73
ortusdux wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Cleveland over the weekend and got a quick tour from the director of small business development. They turned one of their Arcades (malls) into a small business incubator. It made for a quirky shopping experience. There was a peanut cookie shop next to a handmade bow-tie store. Parts of it felt like walking through Etsy. The tour concluded with several business that had spun off into their own locations. It s…

Which mall was this? Randall? Parmatown? Tower City? Arcade sounds like one of the old downtown ones....

It's probably the 5th Street Arcades https://www.5thstreetarcades.com/

It's really a fantastic space, and it was basically empty just a few short years ago.

That said, its model is not necessarily a solution to suburban mall decay, as it was already part of a dense downtown with a growing residential population and a captive workday population that often uses the arcades as a walkway between Euclid and Prospect.

Many malls will never recover as the US simply has too much retail square footage. Along with that, they're not so great with property tax efficiency, where historic main street districts easily outperform them. There's a Strong Towns article out there somewhere about the subject (probably this one: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/4/23/bon-ton-gone)

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#86

Post by taurath »

projectramo wrote: post #2

I remember learning that in the 90s some companies had this useless asset: gas pipelines that spanned the country, but had dried up and were not being used. Other companies had a problem: how to acquire the rights to lay fiber from one end of the country to the other. Some very smart person realized you could lay the fiber in the old pipes. Question: what can be done with all that retail space? Is there a new use of…

We need community spaces. Now more than ever. But the whole corporate mall situation is really bad - I’d rather see farmers markets, a grocery store and drug store, maybe some local food vendors (Bangkok style single vendors?). Someplace people actually want to hang out - not just to shop.

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#87

Post by pnutjam »

mbreese wrote: post #40
codingdave wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be a whole new flavor for YC or other incubators - don't come to SF and fight to find housing... come to the new Coding Mall - offices are in the East Wing, apartment in the West Wing, demos and sales kiosks in the former Sears, VC offices in the former JC Penney, and everyone meets up in the food court (which is still running, btw, to keep everyone fed) for informal discussions.

In Indianapolis, one defunct mall was turned into datacenter space [0]... so you could have it all in one place. [0] http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2012/10/30/lifel...

Unfortunately, converting that mall has has done nothing for the local area. It's minimal jobs and still a blighted area. birds eye view: https://binged.it/2y6nRsi

crazy guys video, it still mostly looks like this: https://youtu.be/xkHcWDNn_4Q

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#88

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #63
codingdave wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning is a matter of negotiation with the city council. If you are going to bring literally dozens of new employers and hundreds of jobs to a struggling smaller town, and revitalize their old mall, I can just about guarantee they will cooperate, including developing a new zone just for the project if needed.

It's not that easy. Having highly restrictive zoning that makes this sort of thing a big pain in the but is going to be a fairly good indicator of whether or not the government has a "we tell you what to do, you don't negotiate with us" type of attitude.

If you're dealing with a struggling smaller town, as codingdave said, and they take that attitude, well, there's another struggling smaller town right next door...

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#89

Post by kirbypineapple »

duxup wrote: post #79
guyzero wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoning can be an issue - there's an abandoned mall in Cupertino that's probably half a mile from the new Apple HQ. And to say it's prime land is an understatement - the entire area is desperate for new housing. Current proposal is for 2,400 housing units on the land. But previous zoning proposal that were ballot initiatives got defeated (hurray democracy) and it's required a state bill to force the city's hand for zo…

I remember traveling to work to the valley for the first time and driving by Apple HQ just to see it and then, going to the steakhouse near that mall (OMG was it good). I went by that mall and was thinking "WTF is this doing here with all this insanely expensive land and such!?!?!" I would half expect the bulldozers to show up with 10 minutes notice or something. I was driving around all amazed by "OMG I know all the…

Was it Alexanders steak house? If so I did the same thing (drive by Apple HQ to see it and stopped at Alexanders).

Re: Mall landlords struggling to find takers at a price they’ll accept

#90

Post by perkee »

Chinjut wrote: post #53
codingdave wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be a whole new flavor for YC or other incubators - don't come to SF and fight to find housing... come to the new Coding Mall - offices are in the East Wing, apartment in the West Wing, demos and sales kiosks in the former Sears, VC offices in the former JC Penney, and everyone meets up in the food court (which is still running, btw, to keep everyone fed) for informal discussions.

Love too live in the VC mall, "The Company Town, But Tech!™".

Yeah convenient as having your residence, work, and some shopping in one building would be, it's got paid-in-scrip written all over it. Also where do you meet new people? Where do you go on dates? Malls are rarely walkable from other places.
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