Lately, I have needed to go inside several malls to do some shopping. Gone are the days where the mall was busy most of the day. Now, if you're "lucky", you might bump into a single shopper while walking aimlessly in the mall. No, it's not that bad, but it seemed that way when I window shopped in some local malls.
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Years ago, the White Plains Galleria was busy from the moment it opened to the moment it closed. Abraham & Strauss anchored one end of the mall, while J.C.Penney anchored the other. At lunch or dinner time, one could not find a seat in the dining area. Each and every storefront was rented out with goods available for sale. Today, the two anchor stores are gone, and the mall's owners are covering up vacant storefronts to keep the few people shopping at the mall from doing the rest of their shopping online.
White Plains is not alone in the decay of the modern mall. In Kingston, NY, the Hudson Valley Mall is effectively vacant, with all of its major anchors gone. (I don't want to include Target here, as it is off to the side, and easily severed from the rest of the mall.) In Yorktown Heights, NY, the local mall lost its Sears, and is in danger of losing Macy's. There is only one store that I patronize there (Ulta), and I'll bet that it may break its lease (along with other stores) if/when Macy's decides to shut down. Danbury, CT is doing a little better, as at least two of its anchor stores survive. But in JC Penney, they have carefully hidden vacant space no longer being used inside the store, pruned in-store stock to the bone, and made one of the two checkout counters into a general customer service area. This makes me think that this store may soon be gone. Will any of the remaining tenants want to stay after that?
However, it's not just the big malls that are hurting. Local strip malls are hurting too. When I first started to commute to a job in Westchester, I passed by this strip mall. All of the storefronts were rented out during the first few years I worked at the bank. I'd stop by in the morning, pick up a buttered bagel at the bakery, a newspaper at the stationery store, and drop off my shirts/suits at the dry cleaners. In the evening, I might pick up some fruit and veggies from the small market there and then go to the butcher shop a couple of doors down. None of these shops are there any longer; most of the storefronts on this property have been vacant for years. I wonder how the owner pays his taxes on this property, as I don't see the restaurant (not in photo) doing enough business to cover all property expenses.
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Several years, I wondered why someone might sell off a commercial property. Today's real estate market has given us the answer. In an era of informality, we don't need much formal wear or the places that service those garments. In an era where fresh food is delivered to the house, why shop at a small market when you can either have it shipped to your door from Whole Foods, or go to Wegman's to pick out the foodstuffs yourself? In an era where one reads the daily newspapers online, why stop into your local store for your newspapers or magazines?
I expect that many shopping centers will be repurposed in the near future, some of them bulldozed for a small number of big box stores (as happened in Poughkeepsie), or to develop new housing projects. What do you think is going to happen? Do you think this process was accelerated by the pandemic?
