I mentioned yesterday that the crowds were thinning somewhat towards the JCPenney end of the mall, but that area looks packed compared to the side corridor that used to lead towards Sears. Suddenly, the whole vibe of the mall shifts from thriving to dead, with few people in sight and plenty of empty spaces. This area would look a little better today as there's now a door to the parking lot instead of just a blank wall at the end, but it doesn't appear that things have gotten any better when it comes to the number of vacancies. I guess it was a good thing that Sears was tacked onto the side, so it's just this small, isolated area feeling the effects of its closure.
I'm not surprised this kind of sad looking corner of the mall does not have a lot of traffic. For various reasons, Houston malls with former and unused Sears buildings in them, at least successful malls. are mostly not having this problem. In most cases, it is because the malls are former Homart/Sears malls and Sears gave themselves the best anchor spots at the most accessible parts of the malls. At my local mall, the Sears wing has long had the children's playground in the Sears wing, even before the Sears closed, so that brings a lot of traffic to the now-dead Sears area.
ReplyDeleteThat said, in most cases, it is not good for mall traffic when there is a dead anchor. Those areas thin out and tend to get the weakest retailers at the mall. It looks like that's what is going on in Tacoma.
Yeah, for sure -- if I'm understanding the mall's online directory correctly, there are nearly as many vacant stores in this little corridor as in the entire rest of the mall (with the other empty spaces concentrated at the Nordstrom end, which seems a little strange). The access to the new outdoor shops probably brings some foot traffic to this area that was lacking when it was a complete dead end, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference in terms of vacancies.
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