csedwards72

There have been some really good points made about Eastland but I don't see the place becoming a dead mall anytime soon; it certainly won't be a regional mall like a Carolina Place once a few more years have passed but it won't be dead like Midtown Square is. Since I like shopping centers I have gone to Eastland a few times just to visit it; there were always plenty of people there, and the urban-type stores there seemed to be doing OK. People who shop at Eastland are looking for urban apparel and moderately-priced things. They aren't looking for things that Tiffany or Brooks Bros. sell. Even if Belk's and Dillard's and every remaining typical mall chain at Eastland closes, there are still plenty of people who live around Eastland who won't have anywhere else to shop for the things they want to buy and stores like Burlington Coat Factory, Fred's, Harold Pener Man of Fashion and other stores will fill vacant spaces. There are 2 deteriorating malls on North Tryon Street that were apparently typical 1970s malls years ago but that came upon hard times when their surroundings declined: Tryon Mall and Northpark Mall. Those malls are still there, even though their original anchors and typical mall stores fled. They are now mainly filled with 99 cents stores and inexpensive, mom-and-pop and ethnic stores. They are still doing OK. Eastland Mall will just become a bigger Northpark Mall in a few years. It will survive, but just in a different format than its current one.

Yes- and when it left the mall it planned to move somewhere else on Woodruff Road.

A few predictions: 1. Sears will leave Eastland and will go to Northlake. 2. Eastland will survive as an inner-city mall since no other Charlotte regional malls cater to urban shoppers. 3. Uptown retail will increase in scope over the next few years, but the stores that will come will be mainly the types of stores that are already in uptown, catering to office workers who need to shop during lunchtime and to people who live uptown and who don't have time to drive to a mall. Since people do destination shopping where they live, not where they work, mall-type stores won't come uptown for many years. Northlake didn't necessarily cause this; Belk's and Ivey's closed uptown even when the only regional malls were SouthPark, Eastland and Carolina Place.

What's coming to the Woolworth's building? It's such a good location- and the Woolworth's operated until the early 1990s, even when downtown was a complete wasteland, so surely another retailer could do OK there.

I think that one thing that differentiates Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus are that some of the styles at both places are cutting-edge. I like flashy-looking shirts and ties at work, straight off the fashion show runways, and the only places I can find what I like are at places like those two stores; Belk and Dillard's and other mid-market department stores sell clothes that are less edgy and that appeal to broader groups of people. Compare the downtown Bloomingdale's in New York City to Dillard's in a typical mall and the styles at those stores differ dramatically. I don't know if the clothes at Neiman Marcus are higher quality, but the store can charge a premium since its styles are more exclusive.

With the US's rapid demographic changes (soaring minority population), surely one of these days someone will come up with an urban-theme department store anchor for urban malls, perhaps just as Magic Johnson movie theaters have done for the movie theater industry. Eastland seems to attract large crowds still- they just aren't the crowds that would shop at Nordstrom, Dillard's or Parisian. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to see an opportunity there.

JCT- you made some really excellent points. When I read "Downtown," I realized that US downtowns were pretty much doomed from the day that they were built; naturally, people would get sick of long commutes from suburbs into CBDs and would want stores and offices nearer their houses. I think that the trend of building housing in CBDs is really exactly what CBDs need to become vibrant. European centers didn't die as much as US ones did (although European cities do have some problems competing with suburbs) because people lived in them and there was plenty of nice housing in city centers. Not so in the US. I'd also hope that US cities would build lots of low-rise mixed-use buildings around downtowns; I completely agree with you about high-rise buildings. Uptown Charlotte, for example, has tons of parking lots around a few streets of skyscrapers. It seems as if plans are in the works for most of those parking lots, but it seems to me to make sense to build European-style 5-10 story buildings containing housing/offices/stores in the same buildings on them. Gateway Village in Charlotte is a good example of what I think is good development.

Paris and Prague have vibrant centers without tall buildings because the buildings there serve different purposes than they do in Greenville and other places in the US. US downtowns are almost exclusively commercial; until recently, almost nobody lived in downtowns but people lived in suburbs, so the buildings in US CBDs are designed to maximize office and accompanying retail space with minimum land costs, which means skyscrapers with shoe shine parlors and the like in the bottom. In European cities, lots of buildings all over town have both commercial and residential space in them; people and live and work all over town, and areas aren't divided into either residential or commercial space like they are in the US. La Defense near Paris (the office/commercial district built in recent decades outside tourist/classic Paris) and the City of London are like US-style "downtowns" with limited residential areas, but most European cities don't have those types of areas. There is a really interesting book called "Downtown" about CBD development and history that came out a few years ago; it's fascinating.

Even if Birkdale loses some tenants, I'd guess that they could be easily replaced with restaurants and neighborhood-type stores. Birkdale is such a nice place that I'd think that it could be a thriving entertainment/dining place like the Irvine Spectrum in Orange County, CA is, even if it loses some stores.

Good points. I don't see Harold's or Brooks Brothers moving to Eastland anytime soon. Speaking of Eastland, if there are others who'd like to do a group excursion there, that would be fun. I don't really feel safe going there by myself, and I couldn't lure my girlfriend or any of my other friends out to visit a dying shopping center just to visit the shopping center, and I can't say that I'd go there to actually shop, since the stores don't appeal to me and my friends know that.

I wouldn't expect any regular department stores, even Macy's, to head to Eastland anytime to fill any vacant anchor spots. The one on Fulton Street in Brooklyn was opened a long time ago when the area was still a middle-class area, and I'd guess it does a decent amount of sales due to the lack of competition and high population density, but I wouldn't expect Macy's to open in an area like that these days. Odd that no retailer has set up a department store chain for urban neighborhoods, with prices and selection geared for the market, as Magic Johnson has done for movie theaters. Eastland seems to do a decent amount of business since its in-line tenants are well-suited for an urban location; surely a department store targeting the same demographics could do OK.

Agreed. But I don't think that Belk and Dillard's are the ideal anchors for a mall in that part of town. Something more urban, like the Fulton Street Macy's in Brooklyn, would probably be a better fit.

There's an article in today's Charlotte Business Journal about Eastland's potential sale; there is even a mention of Glimcher's having considered completely leveling Eastland and starting over.

Which mall in Columbia, SC is being sold?

I don't know what percentage of GTA's expenses are covered by its farebox revenues, but I'd imagine that just making the system free would increase ridership and wouldn't cost an unreasonable amount in additional subsidies. That option should be explored. Too bad City/County Council don't seem particularly willing to adequately fund GTA.

I'm surprised that deadmalls.com hasn't discovered Westland. I got a real kick out of that directory! PITIFUL! BTW, http://columbus.bizjournals.com has some articles about Westland being redeveloped as an outdoor mall. Looks as if Von Maur is coming to Polaris, based on a news release on the Glimcher website.

Have the in-line tenants started to leave Polaris Fashion Place? Speaking of Columbus malls, what's up with this one that is a competitor to Polaris? The owners didn't want to do a traditional directory on the website?! http://www.westlandmallcolumbus.com/directory.html

Which mall? Which anchors closed or are struggling? That's where mall issues get really interesting-- once the anchors start fleeing, it can be difficult to bounce back (look what happened to Greenville Mall!).

Target is not owned by a French company. It is American, based in Minneapolis. Check out the website- http://www.target.com for corporate info.

I've noticed that ever since the Nordstrom wing opened, the new stores coming to SouthPark, especially in the Hecht's wing, are pretty mid-market. Aren't there other high-end tenants waiting to come, especially with Neiman Marcus coming next year?

I remember seeing it in 1995, right after it closed, with the fixtures still in the store and the signs still up. It looked kind of run-down.

I went to Richland as well. Richland was sad; I went there 10 years ago and thought it was a nice but quiet mall; now it just looks like an aging and dying mall, with Dillard's and a lot of stores gone. The remaining anchors will soon need to be remodeled, unless they are going to eventually close as well; they look somewhat dated. The Columbiana Centre billboard in front of Richland Mall is a real slap in the face to Richland; I'd guess that it targets people who drive out of the Richland parking garage, disappointed to have shopped in a dying mall.

What's the history of Dutch Square Center/Mall? I went there yesterday and am surprised that what must be a small circa 1970 mall along a boulevard of 1970s-era sprawl still seems to be doing fine; McAlister Square in Greenville, which seemed to be a larger and somewhat nicer version of Dutch Square, suddenly died several years go due to competition from Haywood Mall, although Columbiana Center hasn't killed Dutch Square. Did Dutch Square used to have more upscale stores? Was it ever a very thriving center? Hopefully it'll be around for many years to come; it seems to be a decently successful mall that is well maintained. Thanks.

There were trollies in downtown Greenville in the 1980s, if not later as well. I don't recall them being particularly well-patronized. Then again, back then there really wasn't much downtown to go to, apart from some run-down wig shops, government buildings and some offices.

These are all good points. I would expect that Glimcher isn't investing much in Eastland Mall these days because the company has analyzed its portfolio and has concluded that investments in other properties would offer higher rates of return than an investment in Eastland would. With new malls opening in north Charlotte and Mint Hill, and with Eastland's location in an area that perhaps isn't experiencing the income and population growth that other parts of town are, Glimcher probably is hedging its bets on how Charlotte's retail scene develops. I think Eastland can still stay in business for a long time to come. The mall is in pretty decent physical condition (ie, it's not falling apart, even though it has a somewhat dated appearance) and it still seems to do a decent business perhaps because its tenant mix has shifted towards what its shoppers want: urban-style stores. I'd guess that Eastland is probably pretty profitable: investment in the mall may be minimal, but it still does a good business and has a pretty decent occupancy rate. I went to Eastridge Mall in Gastonia a few days ago; it seems to have a good number of vacancies and some of its in-line tenants have a pretty dated appearance as well. It and Eastland have some things in common, although I'd think that Eastridge would probably have more investment potential than Eastland.