Why can't COS support a real mall?

[TachyonField]

Even Home Depot and Lowes are getting into the online retail market with other than building related items.

[TCHP]

Natural evolution. I recall my elders decrying the move away from downtown retailers to suburban strip malls, then from there to the mega malls. Now things are moving towards online. There will always be a percentage of retail that can't be done online and will require local distribution channels, but the percentages will change.

Perhaps the best answer for malls are how do they transform themselves to survive since they are such massive, imposing structures with huge overhead. Perhaps setting themselves up as low income housing centers with single family apartments, food courts or retail groceries, and childcare all in a single location. A percentage of parking can be converted to playgrounds and recreation space, and obviously there is sufficient parking for thousands of people.

[rochester_veteran]

Originally Posted by TCHP

Perhaps the best answer for malls are how do they transform themselves to survive since they are such massive, imposing structures with huge overhead. Perhaps setting themselves up as low income housing centers with single family apartments, food courts or retail groceries, and childcare all in a single location. A percentage of parking can be converted to playgrounds and recreation space, and obviously there is sufficient parking for thousands of people.

A developer is trying to do this with one of the famous abandoned malls, Irondequoit Mall, in Rochester, NY. It was a real nice mall when it opened in 1990, but problems with crime and the perception of crime plagued it as closeby, just over the city line, is one of the worst neighborhoods in Rochester and it closed in 2009. A local businessman bought the property with plans of converting it into a community center for the town, flex office space, senior housing and apartments. It's still a work in progress.

[Mike from back east]

Malls everywhere are suffering, not just in COLO SPGS. The city doesn't have the income demographics that makes Park Meadows a success.

Just today one big mall investment trust bought another when Simon Property Group bought Taubman Centers.

[Vision67]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

Malls everywhere are suffering, not just in COLO SPGS. The city doesn't have the income demographics that makes Park Meadows a success.

Just today one big mall investment trust bought another when Simon Property Group bought Taubman Centers.

I remember when the Chapel Hills Mall was built in the early 80s. At that time, Colorado Springs supported many middle class jobs in manufacturing at Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Honeywell, Inmos, and Digital Equipment.

Those employees benefited from good middle class wages that made spending possible at the mall stores such as Sears, Marshalls, JC Penney, and other toy and book stores.

What happened? Globalization. For example, HP, which in Colorado Springs became Agilent, had about 3300 employees in 1999. Many of those jobs paid a good wage to manufacturing employees and they included excellent benefits. The Dot-Com bust starting in 2000 and the subsequent out sourcing to Malaysia resulted in an employee count bottom in 2009 of about 300 employees at its successor company, Keysight Technologies. Most local manufacturers had similar stories.

Our current economic situation has eliminated many middle class jobs. People who used to shop at the mall most likely now shop at Wal-Mart. Their discretionary income has declined. Higher paying manufacturing jobs have been supplanted by lower paying jobs such as call centers and now warehousing.

Although there are still local jobs in engineering, accounting, IT, and healthcare, they require very high educational levels. These people do have discretionary income but the total amount is not enough to replace that which was lost.

This same effect has occurred all over America. Just try to find anything at Wal-Mart that is made in the USA.

[TCHP]

IMO, globalization is the result, not the cause. The domestic issues began in the Reagan era when financial regulations began being loosened to promote trickle down economics. The policies of revision and loosening continued through GHW Bush, Clinton, and GW Bush. Also overlay in this 40 year period the significant reduction of pension and retirement plans that were replaced with the 401k that has made millions of people financial managers demanding higher returns that drive corporations to deeper cost cutting measures that have promoted the globalization.

Disappointingly to me, no one demands that politicians address the variety rules that were changed and created to allow the rich to get richer and financial corporations to make increasing risky investments through decreased oversight and more variable investment tools. We are too busy yelling at each other about guns, abortion, socialism, and religion to pay attention to the people behind the curtain. We are now in a time of income inequality that is the greatest it has been in 100 years.

I do agree the middle class has been gutted in my lifetime.

[Wittgenstein's Ghost]

Originally Posted by Vision67

I remember when the Chapel Hills Mall was built in the early 80s. At that time, Colorado Springs supported many middle class jobs in manufacturing at Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Honeywell, Inmos, and Digital Equipment.

Those employees benefited from good middle class wages that made spending possible at the mall stores such as Sears, Marshalls, JC Penney, and other toy and book stores.

What happened? Globalization. For example, HP, which in Colorado Springs became Agilent, had about 3300 employees in 1999. Many of those jobs paid a good wage to manufacturing employees and they included excellent benefits. The Dot-Com bust starting in 2000 and the subsequent out sourcing to Malaysia resulted in an employee count bottom in 2009 of about 300 employees at its successor company, Keysight Technologies. Most local manufacturers had similar stories.

Our current economic situation has eliminated many middle class jobs. People who used to shop at the mall most likely now shop at Wal-Mart. Their discretionary income has declined. Higher paying manufacturing jobs have been supplanted by lower paying jobs such as call centers and now warehousing.

Although there are still local jobs in engineering, accounting, IT, and healthcare, they require very high educational levels. These people do have discretionary income but the total amount is not enough to replace that which was lost.

This same effect has occurred all over America. Just try to find anything at Wal-Mart that is made in the USA.

We can talk about the effects of globalization on the middle class, but even if we had millions more decent jobs, malls would still be hurting. Online shopping is what is killing them, not a lack of middle class jobs to support their customers.

Personally, I'm in favor of globalization and moving those jobs overseas, but that's probably a different discussion.