Cityplanner

I don’t see what about Hall House is worth saving AS LONG AS a high-quality new building is built on the site. Neither the interior nor the exterior is interesting, and a block in a commercial area in Manhattan is likely to have numerous buildings like that (and many older and more elaborate ones). Old doesn’t automatically mean good.

Looks like the ground-floor renovations are approaching completion. Any news about possible tenants or public access to the ground floor? This could be a beautiful or at least charming building.

I’ve been inside Hall House (church volunteer event) and I didn’t find it memorable. Nor is the exterior memorable. A better building could be built there. But affordable housing? On a prime street? That’s not the best use of valuable real estate. Sell the land to a developer and use the profits to build more or nicer public housing on less-expensive land.

Maybe this is off topic, but how in the world is merging JCPenney and Belk a good idea for Belk? It'll be expensive: spending $1.75B is more than others are offering for JCPenney, and there will be costs incurred in shutting down the JCPenney stores that will close. It'll bring Belk into markets where it has minimal name recognition. While JCPenney isn't doing well, at least people have heard of it and know what it stands for, so there is value in the JCPenney brand. There's no shortage of vacant retail space. If Belk wants to expand, surely adding stores bit by bit is safer, and mall landlords would surely welcome it as it expands. It should invest the $1.75B purchase price into improving its online presence.

The 1200-seat sanctuary is remaining. The issue that's being addressed with this expansion is the huge growth of First Pres's contemporary service, which now meets in Fellowship Hall. There's no more space for it. So an additional worship center is being created, in addition to the current sanctuary, current chapel and current Fellowship Hall. It's refreshing to see a church grow so much these days, particularly a pretty mainline one like First Pres. It just keeps growing and growing. It's even better to see two Presbyterian churches growing so much: Downtown Presbyterian (which I've never been to) and First Pres.

Wear a mask. Period.

I'd say Von Maur is a possibility, even if it's remote. It's in plenty of cities similar to Greenville. Parisian was in town for a while, and it was probably a similar chain in terms of target demographics.

I keep reading about Belk having problems (as shown by layoffs at its headquarters). Department stores are a declining industry. Does Belk really want to pay $1.75B for 250 JCPenney stores (which are likely not too strong financially) and the costs involved in shutting down the remainder of the chain? Wouldn't $1.75B be better spent in upgrading Belk's e-commerce capabilities and renovating stores? That seems wiser. But I digress. Haywood will be down to 3 anchors, unless Von Maur moves in. Nordstrom certainly isn't in expansion mode and Greenville wouldn't fit its desired demographics anyway.

Or maybe an Amazon warehouse. Haywood isn’t closing anytime in the near term or the long term but it is being affected by the retail apocalypse. Maybe if Simon had invested in the mall instead of leaving its exterior and parking lot frozen in 1980 it could have attracted some of the higher-end stores that went elsewhere. Not too late to improve, Simon.

Looks like Belk might be merging with JCPenney. Surely that would lead to a quick closure of one anchor at Haywood, as 250 JCPenney stores are proposed to be converted to Belk stores in non-overlapping markets and the rest of the JCPenney stores would be closed. That could mean the downfall of Belk (one company that has problems merged with another company that has even more problems; we’ve seen that before).

Yes, you're both right. I see that there are some redevelopment plans for the Sears in Asheville. The Haywood Sears doesn't show up in the list of available properties on the Seritage website. If the website simply hasn't been updated, that's understandable, but if it indicates that Seritage doesn't have or won't have the property, that indicates that negotiations are ongoing with another owner, perhaps. In any event, Simon would need to take part in any redevelopment of the Sears and JCPenney anchors, so hopefully it wasn't taken by surprise by the Sears closing, and hopefully it already had been thinking about what could be done with the space.

Wonder why no redevelopment plans for the Sears space have been announced. Surely Simon expected that store to close and had already prepared for it. Kind of odd for Greenville to go from 3 regional malls (or 4 for a few years in the early 80s) to just one regional mall that has growing vacancies. Who'd have ever thought that downtown would be the center of upscale shopping and that Haywood would be having some issues?

Would a "heritage" trolley or vintage/museum railroad ever generate interest in Greenville, and possibly as a spur to increase transit? Charlotte had an old-style streetcar running between Uptown and the South End, which generated interest in transit (although the light rail line was already on planning boards by then). Nashville had a museum-style passenger train, which ran on a route similar to the route that its current commuter train takes. If Greenville had an operating railroad museum or, better yet, a "heritage" streetcar along Main Street and the West End, would that generate interest? Main is already so narrow that it might be tough to fit, but perhaps somewhere downtown-ish- maybe from August Road all the way to North Main?

Agreed, in the immediate future, yes, there won't be any new shopping centers built unless it's a TJ Maxx and a Dollar Tree (which I have no use for). But in the longer term, it looks like the Gaffney outlets are heading towards deadmalls.com, and Greenville continues to grow. Off-price shopping is growing. So maybe at some point? I don't care for outlet malls, so this is more a question out of curiosity.

“Need” is subjective, but I was surprised to see that the outlets in Gaffney are down to about 50% occupancy- I’d guess due to Charlotte having both Concord Mills and a second outlet mall near the airport, and Asheville also having an outlet mall. (Or are there other reasons that the Gaffney outlets are going downhill?) Could Greenville support an outlet mall and, if so, where would it go? Good highway access always is important, but the new one in Charlotte is hidden away off I-485. Or do the Gaffney and Commerce, Georgia outlet malls dominate the market?

Now Ascena Retail (Ann Taylor, Justice, etc.- all stores that I've never set foot in, being a guy) is closing slews of stores. The Gaffney outlets seem to be losing one store after another in retailer bankruptcies, more than Haywood is losing them. I wonder if the Gaffney closures will weigh in favor of the same retailer keeping a store at Haywood (on the basis of wanting one store in the general market area)? I also wonder if the new-ish outlets near the Charlotte airport have eliminated a lot of traffic from the Charlotte area to the Gaffney outlets. If so, that's too bad.

Well, the full closing list isn't out yet, so I wouldn't celebrate quite yet. It is surprising how immune Greenville has been from the "retail apocalypse"; the only large loss I'm aware of is Sears, and it survived for a long time. But we'll see.

It's not listed on the list of 38 closed stores available at Business Insider, but that means either 13 or 51 more. The Gaffney outlet and Asheville location closed. Hopefully Brooks Brothers figures that keeping the Greenville location is now necessary because people from western NC and upstate SC will have it as the only store within range now. Hopefully Brooks Brothers doesn't close it as part of pulling out of the whole upstate SC/western NC market. I'd expect to see the Northlake Mall one in Charlotte gone, since that mall hasn't panned out as expected, but I don't see it on the closing list.

Good points, thanks. Yes, department stores are an attraction at Haywood- Mast doesn't suffice for me except for random things.

Thanks. That makes sense. I counted 18 vacancies on the mall directory plus the vacant Sears, which is a lot. I never have cared for Haywood, but I would want it to do well. Losing J. Crew and Abercrombie & Fitch is not great, either: lots of other malls and downtowns kept them. When I looked at the Haywood directory, there aren't a lot of higher-end stores there.

I haven't been to Haywood in ages (downtown is more convenient and closer for me), and am curious: If you look at the Haywood directory online (at shopsimon.com), there seem to be a bunch of vacant stores all around the map, in addition to the vacant Sears. Losing Sears probably won't matter one bit as that store was nearly empty even when it was still open, but what's with the numerous vacancies? Covid-19 related, losses of national, desirable retailers or "mom and pop" stores that closed...or is the map simply inaccurate? The only time when Haywood has had a significant amount of vacancy at this level was in the first few years after it opened, and even then it was mostly in the corridors leading to exits.