What Retail Would You Bring to Huntsville? (Madison: houses, buying)

[Charles]

Originally Posted by tammie2

I am in Chicago right now where I have EVERYTHING at my disposal, last week I purchased spring clothes for the kids from Gap and Old Navy, both of which are less than 10 minutes away, instead I ordered online.

This week I purchased a few things from American Girl-20/30 minutes from here, I ordered them all online.

It takes me a TON less time, I don't have to worry about hearing my son complain about how many pairs of pants my daughter tries on, I can even order extra sizes and return the rejects in less than 5 minutes.

We did go browse at Barnes and Noble, but that happens once, maybe twice a year, online is VERY convenient, they never close, I can order things when I get a bout of insomnia, I can order in my jammies, life is good

Exactly. I even bought two cars (and this was back in 1997) and several sets of tires (Tirerack) online.

Originally Posted by Charles

If it isn't available at Wal Mart or Costco or Lowes Depot or a supermarket I go online. It's almost always cheaper and the shipping is cheaper than gas and my time.

Who goes to malls anymore? Probably the same people who read paper newspapers, own a typewriter, buys CDs and DVDs retail, get their news from television, pay their bills with envelopes and stamps, wait in line on Friday afternoon at the bank to deposit their checks, and know where an actual yellow pages is in their house.

[Capt. Dan]

A whorehouse would bring me to Huntsville. Oh! Never mind. Thats not retail. Thats holesale.

[Southlander]

Originally Posted by Charles

Exactly. I even bought two cars (and this was back in 1997) and several sets of tires (Tirerack) online. Who goes to malls anymore? Probably the same people who read paper newspapers, own a typewriter, get their news from television, pay their bills with envelopes and stamps, wait in line on Friday afternoon at the bank to deposit their checks, and know where an actual yellow pages is in their house.

Just wait 'til your power goes out!

[tammie2]

Originally Posted by Charles

and know where an actual yellow pages is in their house.

YELLOW PAGES?!?!?!?!?

Do they really make those anymore???

[SouthernBoy205]

I get everything that you guys are saying, but just because y'all don't think that situations will work, and situations aren't working for y'all, that doesn't mean that everyone sees eye-to-eye on situations as y'all. There is more than 300,000 people in the Huntsville area; somebody is going to shop at these malls. Personally, I think that these centers will get built! I also feel that the reason why these centers are in the state that they are in is because of the economy!

KE
an extraordinary-minded Alabama person!!!!

[tammie2]

This isn't field of dreams, if we build it, they won't necessarily come.

[DavidH74]

Have you been outside of HSV, KE? Retail follows rooftops. I don't care if we have 300K people. As MANY have noted (not that it's not obvious), that is a wee bit less than Tampa or Houston or Chicago. And, there is a reason our own Governor calls Huntsville an "oasis" within the state. If you expand our MSA, you get into impoverished areas. We aren't a suburb of DC. Southern TN, East MS, Western GA are our borders. And, what's in between is not high-income. Furthermore, as Huntsville secede mentioned very astutely, I also work with the high-paying engineers. The vast majority is doing well to comb their hair in the mornings much less sport a Lacoste or Burberry shirt. And as he said, it applies to men and women. We may be affluent (RELATIVELY), we may be growing (RELATIVELY), but we can't change our location on the map and we have to take into account other things. AND ONCE AGAIN, disregarding the economy, disregarding our population and the FACT that retail follows rooftops (not the other way around), where are all these new retailers coming from? As the previous poster wrote, just cause we build does not mean people will come.

[mimpdaddy]

I dont think Huntsville is mint or suppose some kind of glamorus or large city.
The suppose of Huntsville is the military and NASA, so the city might not want to attract large numbers of people. For one reason the city is not on the interstate, cities like Mobile and Montgomery are doing the opposite of Huntsville, while going down i-65, i-20 , and i-10 you see bass pro shops and those things stay packed.Montgomery and Mobile have RSA hotels that you can see from the interstate.Montgomery is has old style steamboat on the Alabama river, plans on new downtown aquarium, an alley restraurant/club project.And Mobile has to much to name going on.But who knows.

[DavidH74]

KE, have you ever been somewhere new here? Anything new? A new restaurant opens and it is packed constantly for months. Let's use Panera as an example. During this time, McAlisters is suffering horribly. Theeeen, people get sick of Panera and you see the crowds thin down a great deal and you see people start showing up to McAlisters again. It takes a while for things to settle out and to see the true affects of growth and competition. This is a silly example, but it's not a bad one. It's, inevitable, always clear that not everyone survives or flourishes. Something new comes at the expense of the old. Parkway Place opened -- people's shopping shifted. Bridge Street opened -- people's shopping shifted. It's EASIER for restaurants to survive because we have to eat everyday and we are an eating-out city for lunch and dinner. It's harder for shopping complexes to survive, because as I said AND AS IS FACT, retailers depend on sticking together. Alot of retailers have agreements with others that they will only enter a new market or a new center if so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so also does. That FACT being said and the FACT that our population is not large enough to fully support everything only means that anything new is going to come at the expense of the old. It's about change. Do we want what we have to last or do we just want to keep shifting? It is FACT that we just do not have enough people to go around and there are not enough stores to go around to support what we already have. Development is only great if done smartly. Smart gorwth is also slow. It takes five to seven years for a new lifestyle center to be fully realized. As we wrote about The Summit, a smart developer builds in small quanitites and then waits for the shifting to simmer down to see what the reality is, and then adjusts accordingly -- either through repurposing or expansion or whatever. You just do not plop down two million sq ft of anything without being smart about it...or WE suffer, the city suffers, and what we already have suffers.

[DavidH74]

I will go on record to be extremely confident that more than a handful of what is at Bridge Street now will not be there next year -- for a combination of reasons.
I will not go on record to say all these "Water" developments won't get built, because I've seen a lot of unwise development. But, I WILL go on record as being more than extremely confident that they won't be what you or the naive developers imagine them to be.