Retailers are forecasting 2000 to 3000 malls to close this year!

[ddeclue]

If this breaks evenly by population, Florida will experience about 200 to 300 mall closings and the Orlando metro area where I live will by itself experience 10 to 15 such closings!

Doug D.
Orlando, FL

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/04/MN4R152QJ4.DTL&type=printable

Severe retail downturn forecast for 2009
James Temple, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, January 4, 2009


The new year is here and the retail party is over.

After years of aggressive expansion fueled by easy debt and plastic-wielding customers, the industry is in for a major correction in 2009, analysts predict. The shift could recast much of the Bay Area retail landscape, blighting shop-lined streets with boarded storefronts, clearing out shopping centers and doing in struggling malls.

After one of their worst holiday seasons in decades, few retailers are in expansion mode and few banks are eager to hand stores cash, so much of the space is likely to sit empty for the foreseeable future. That will place considerable pressure on landlords - especially those who bought or developed buildings near the top of the market.

Publicly traded mall real estate investment trusts hold more than $23 billion in debt coming due this year and next, according to a report by Newport Beach (Orange County) real estate research and consulting firm Green Street Advisors.

At least 200,000 stores and 2,000 to 3,000 malls will close in the United States this year, the bulk of them in the next few months, forecasts Burt Flickinger III, managing director of New York consulting firm Strategic Resource Group.

....

[rsmith6621]

1. I Did Not Know.....

.....there where that many malls in the US..

[ddeclue]

2. I guess there won't be by the end of the year.

:hide:

[xxqqqzme]

7. I was wondering the same

How many malls are there in the US anyway?

Is 2-3,000 12%, 8%? Where are the closings projected to occur?

[HeraldSquare212]

3. I think malls got overbuilt because cities were competing for the sales taxes

so they'd do anything they could to encourage construction in their city limits.

[PassingFair]

4. We are all Mal-Wart shoppers now!

:puke:

I HATE what has been done to our country.

:puke:

[blue_onyx]

8. You are right

Two malls in the Detroit area have closed in recent years. One is already redeveloped with a Walmart Supercenter being the main focus (there's a Target too). The other mall, that's actually only a couples miles down the same road, will be redeveloped and is rumored to include a Walmart Supercenter.

[smalll]

5. So I guess we need a Cinnabon bail-out plan, as well as one for the porn industry.

I could be OK with it, as long as Congress also requires all Cinnabons sold to be hybrids by the year 2020.

[Neshanic]

6. Encase them in Krispy-Creme doughnuts. Fill interiors with vanilla creme.

[AZBlue]

9. How many malls are in the US? And what percentage is that of the total?

And just how big does it have to be to be considered a mall?

Without all this info, I can't get too excited. There's a mall of sorts on every corner here - we could close 2000 in Arizona alone and no one would notice (well, obviously the workers would - but you get my drift).

I'm not saying things aren't bad - I'm just saying that this article may be a little misleading without the other info.

[JI7]

10. is it that bad a thing ?

i think there are too many malls. or at least most of the malls seem to have mostly the same stores.

it's bad that people will be out of work.

but is there any chance smaller businesses will be able to do better and more of those will start opening up ?