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Alex's View of the World
I don't know about you, but I am sad every time I hear of another mall closing.
The 16-month-old Recession, of course, is the killer. So are changing trends on where, when, why and how and why consumers shop today.
Green Street Advisors Inc., a real estate research firm based in Newport Beach, CA, has a data base of 1,032 malls owned by publicly traded landlords.
Eighty-four are considered 'dead malls' so far this year. Green Street labels any mall that can't generate sales of at least $250 per square foot a dead mall.
That 84 number could climb to 100 by Dec. 31. If it does, it would mark the largest number of failures since the enclosed malls concept surfaced in the U.S. in the 1950s.
By comparison, in 2006, before the Recession began, only 40 malls failed.
Having bored you with all that trivia, I often wonder if personnel themselves at some of these dead malls also share a portion of the blame for their property's demise.
I'm talking about how management and staff greet and assist customers entering and leaving the store.
In all the years I have been shopping at local malls, I have never had a store representative give me a "hello" and a smile as I entered and left the store.
Of course, not too many folk give me a "hello" and a smile outside the store, either. But that's a story for another time.
Now I know many shoppers don't give a hoot about being warmly greeted as they start their shopping day in the store. But national big-box discounters like Walmart, Target and Kohl generally have hired door greeters who make you feel as if they really want your business.
And, of course, a big plus for the discounters is that they are not positioned in malls. Their stand-alone stores often are near malls but not part of the actual mall family of stores.
As an example of how stand-alone retailers are doing compared to their mall counterparts, J.C. Penney Co., which, along with other national retailers, has seen sales plummet this year, is now reporting higher sales at stand-alone sites versus their stores at mall locations.
If that fact alone doesn't tell you where enclosed malls are eventually headed, then hear what The Wall Street Journal reports: Only one enclosed mall has opened in the U.S. since 2006 -The Mall at Turtle Creek, a 750,000-square-foot, 100-store location in Jonesboro, AK.
But getting back to the personnel at mall stores.
Many, but not all, of course, don't even know a thing about the merchandise they have been hired to sell. I don't know if that is management's fault or just plain ignorance on the part of the clerk.
But it sure ticks me off when I have to ask a clerk about the make or manufacture of an item or even where a certain product is located in their own store, and they can't even provide that basic information.
Glum grouch? Crusty curmudgeon? Yes. I plead guilty to both.
Now I know even a non-greeting wouldn't bother most shoppers who look for only one criterion - price. And that brings me back to the main thrust of this opus - why many malls are failing.
I have found their stock is often over-priced, even on so-called sale days. In this Recession, shoppers have rushed to local church and animal humane society thrift stores, consignment shops, big-box discounters and the Internet to buy items at a fraction of the tagged price at malls.
Do I think malls will ever regain their former popularity with shoppers, residents and visitors alike? No, I do not.
It is the end of an era for the malls. They have had a good run and I, for one, am sad to see them go.
And that's the way I see it - for now.
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