Malls that buckled due to e-commerce or suffered during the pandemic are being given new life by the very entity that precipitated their decline — Amazon…Over the last several months, the retail giant has gone on a shopping spree of its own, buying up disused malls across the country and turning them into distribution centers.
Between 2016 and 2019, Amazon converted around 25 shopping malls … “The reality is that the cash flow at these lower-quality malls is declining rapidly,” said Vince Tibone, lead retail and industrial analyst at the real estate analytics firm Green Street. “You have to decide, ‘Do I want to do something myself to invest a lot of money to transform this dead retail into thriving retail or put up offices?’ Selling a dead mall as land is a more attractive option.”
Poisonally, I think the GOUSA is facing a tough economic forecast … for individual cities and towns that don’t figure out what to do with dead malls. Online shopping and the pandemic have pushed lots of diminishing-margin businesses to the wall. My wife and I still shop groceries, week by week, over a range including several stores. A couple of heavies like Walmart or Target, smaller stores like Sprouts or Trader Joe’s. That’s what fits the budget of a couple of retirees.
Goodbye, Knoxville Center Mall: Crews begin demolition for Amazon https://www.knoxnews.com/story/money/2021/04/08/knoxville-center-mall-aka-east-towne-demolition-begins-amazon/7137772002/ The 961,000-square-foot Knoxville Center Mall closed its doors on Jan. 31, 2020, after more than 35 years in operation.
Mall vacancy rate hits all-time high : Stores sit vacant as retail sector claws back from pandemic https://therealdeal.com/national/2021/04/08/mall-vacancy-rate-hits-all-time-high/
Mall department stores were struggling. The pandemic has pushed them to the edge of extinction. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/16/half-countrys-remaining-mall-based-department-stores-are-expected-shutter-by-2025/
Department stores, once a middle-class mainstay of convenience and indulgence, had been spiraling downward long before the pandemic turbocharged online shopping and helped tip a number of big-name retailers into bankruptcy. Nearly 200 department stores have disappeared in the past year alone, and another 800 — or about half the country’s remaining mall-based locations — are expected to shutter by the end of 2025, according to commercial real estate firm Green Street.
Those closures, analysts say, will have a cascading effect on American shopping malls, which already are battling record-high vacancy rates and precipitous drops in foot traffic, as well as on the commercial real estate market and the broader economy.