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Old Posted Jun 11, 2010, 10:09 PM
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America is Over-Retailed - Too Many Stores

Too Many Stores


27 May 2010

By Bruce Fisher



Read More: http://artvoice.com/issues/v9n21/too_many_stores

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American civilization has its perfect expression in Union Road, in the entirety of its run from Orchard Park to Williamsville. Union Road is a succession of strip malls that link the marquee suburbs of Western New York. It is what the anti-suburbanites call “Generica,” and it is a refutation of every fond hope for “smart growth,” “new urbanism,” “transit-oriented development,” and “green infrastructure,” because Union Road is all about automobiles. If gasoline spikes in price again as it did in 2008, whether because Goldman Sachs speculators bid oil futures up, or because the BP disaster in the Gulf gets worse, or because Sarah Palin and Ron Paul’s racist spawn win the mid-term elections, Union Road will be just one more suburban commercial thoroughfare clogged with angry consumers with not enough money to shop because their cars ate all their discretionary disposable income.

Union Road exists in the form that it does because since the mid-1950s, it has been the connector between consumers and retailing. At its north end, the traditional retail establishments in the Village of Williamsville predominate. Driving south toward Genesee Street brings one to the wide-setback strip plazas of the 1960s, where nowadays the somewhat downscale stores are. Further south, there is layering: regionally owned grocery chain stores are mixed with various national big-box stores in a plaza that was well established more than 40 years ago, while opposite, some locally owned stores and service centers predominate up until the entrance roads to the region’s largest shopping mall. Past the next big intersection at Walden, which is itself a mile of big-box stores intermixed with discount houses and a few relatively downscale stores that are not to be found in the premium-rental malls, there is a gap of only two miles before the 1960s strip mall pattern repeats.

The village centers have a vestigial existence as retailing zones; of the 16 villages in Erie County, only Kenmore, East Aurora, Hamburg, Williamsville, and Orchard Park look like villages, but even they have shopping plazas that have more retail space than each of their main streets does. Springville’s village center is obsolete as the area’s center for commerce, having long since been supplanted by the cluster of big boxes and Wal-Mart on Route 219. Angola village’s drugstore succumbed long ago to the big boxes on Route 5. Lancaster is a curious amalgam. Akron still looks like the New England Yankee place its Civil War veterans knew when they erected the tall pole to show support for Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign, because Akron still has a village commons of the type English settlers established before they came to the Niagara Frontier when it really was a frontier—but Akron shoppers shop like Angola, Lancaster, Sloan, Clarence, and also Buffalo shoppers shop: on big roads, at big-box stores, at gigantic grocery stores, and at the Galleria, Boulevard, Eastern Hills, and McKinley malls. That’s where the retail trade is. Change the names of the roads and the municipalities, and you could be anywhere in the contemporary United States.

But there’s increasing evidence that behavioral changes driven by the internet and by age-specific consumer preferences will change all this. At the Urban Land Institute and at many other institutes and think tanks, and in the real-estate industry’s own publications, there’s a growing consensus that there is way, way too much square footage devoted to retailing.



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  #2  
Old Posted Jun 11, 2010, 10:26 PM
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I say riddance to Big Box consumerism. So damn ugly. I have absolutely no enthusiasm when I venture out to Target or any other strip mall like shopping area. At least downtowns offer an actual community pedestrian feel that the urban engineers of the last 50 years wrote off as obsolete. Who's obsolete now?
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Old Posted Jun 11, 2010, 10:28 PM
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U.S. suburbia is so over-retailed, it's amazing.

Metro Detroit has basically had a stable population for the last few decades, but it seems like the retail space has tripled during the same period.

Even today, there are WalMarts, Targets and Meijers going up everywhere in Michigan. Major malls are still being built (Partridge Creek Mall) and existing ones are expanded (Twelve Oaks Mall), and new department store chains have entered the market (Parisian, Nordstrom).

How is this possible? Isn't everyone just cannibalizing everyone else? How can you have a stable or declining population and declining incomes, and there are new retailers going up eveywhere?
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Old Posted Jun 11, 2010, 11:14 PM
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If we stop building the economy would stop.
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Old Posted Jun 11, 2010, 11:33 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
How is this possible? Isn't everyone just cannibalizing everyone else? How can you have a stable or declining population and declining incomes, and there are new retailers going up eveywhere?
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  #6  
Old Posted Jun 11, 2010, 11:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by liat91 View Post
I say riddance to Big Box consumerism. So damn ugly. I have absolutely no enthusiasm when I venture out to Target or any other strip mall like shopping area. At least downtowns offer an actual community pedestrian feel that the urban engineers of the last 50 years wrote off as obsolete. Who's obsolete now?
They all are--downtowns and big boxers alike--because I hardly ever buy anything locally anymore. For $50 a year I can have an Amazon premier account and have it all: prices as cheap as you can get, free second day shipping and no tax (buy it at a store in CA and you pay another 9.5%).

As far as I'm concerned, only the strip mall (and it's urban equivalent--"neighborhood retail") may survive as a place to get take-out food and things you can't even wait 2 days for (sold mostly by Ace Hardware).
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 3:25 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
U.S. suburbia is so over-retailed, it's amazing.

Metro Detroit has basically had a stable population for the last few decades, but it seems like the retail space has tripled during the same period.

Even today, there are WalMarts, Targets and Meijers going up everywhere in Michigan. Major malls are still being built (Partridge Creek Mall) and existing ones are expanded (Twelve Oaks Mall), and new department store chains have entered the market (Parisian, Nordstrom).

How is this possible? Isn't everyone just cannibalizing everyone else? How can you have a stable or declining population and declining incomes, and there are new retailers going up eveywhere?
Ahh dude, most of the stores have been full going up. So why are you complaining? There's more than enough business. The population is really only declining in Detroit...which doesn’t have ANY big retail stores.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 3:26 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by liat91 View Post
I say riddance to Big Box consumerism. So damn ugly. I have absolutely no enthusiasm when I venture out to Target or any other strip mall like shopping area. At least downtowns offer an actual community pedestrian feel that the urban engineers of the last 50 years wrote off as obsolete. Who's obsolete now?
Wow, very biased opinion! More stores equals more jobs, maybe you need to go back to economics 101. Ugly has NOTHING to do with anything.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 3:40 AM
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There is no doubt North America is over retailed.
And to be honest, I don't know how all the stores make a profit. How you can have three gaps all within 5-10 minutes of each other, and have them all make money seems weird.

The over retailining is a reason so many chain stores are in financial problems. They just have way too many stores and they are cannibalizing their own stores.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 5:05 AM
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Wow, very biased opinion! More stores equals more jobs, maybe you need to go back to economics 101. Ugly has NOTHING to do with anything.
more $8 an hour jobs, yes but nothing of substance to crawl out of this recession with.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 5:15 AM
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Originally Posted by miketoronto View Post
The over retailining is a reason so many chain stores are in financial problems. They just have way too many stores and they are cannibalizing their own stores.
Many of the retailers aren't in trouble though, they aren't being bailed out by the government. I think most large stores are doing pretty darn well, certainly Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Marshall Fields are. They are not in serious trouble during the recession.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 5:18 AM
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Originally Posted by JMancuso View Post
more $8 an hour jobs, yes but nothing of substance to crawl out of this recession with.
We already have a 14 trillion dollar economy (most of which comes from consumer spending) and one of the highest GDP per capita's in the world, what more do you want?? I don't think it gets much better than it already is.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 5:23 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Onn View Post
Many of the retailers aren't in trouble though, they aren't being bailed out by the government. I think most large stores are doing pretty darn well, certainly Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Marshall Fields are. They are not in serious trouble during the recession.
Yes, but what about all those medium sized retailers that fill out all those boutique mall and lifestyle center shops? Most of those companies are just barely skating by.

I design alot of boutique clothing stores and have been continually shocked at how razor thin the profit margins are on each location, even in the best of times.

The model is generally broken.

But I guess since Wal-Mart and Target are doing OK it's all good.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 5:49 AM
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Originally Posted by plinko View Post
Yes, but what about all those medium sized retailers that fill out all those boutique mall and lifestyle center shops? Most of those companies are just barely skating by.

I design alot of boutique clothing stores and have been continually shocked at how razor thin the profit margins are on each location, even in the best of times.

The model is generally broken.

But I guess since Wal-Mart and Target are doing OK it's all good.
That may be true, but most people...well where I am at least, don't shop at somewhere like that for their general needs. If you live in a more upscale area or a downtown that may be true. As someone said earlier though, here in Metro Detroit they’re building new shopping centers with major stores and restaurants, and they all seem to be pretty successful. Malls and strip malls have kind of been in decline here for sometime, I'm not sure the recession was the beginning of anything. The death of the smaller retailers has probably been going for 10 years now. Michigan's economy went into recession in 2000 and never came back out again. But I think the trend is true for much of the Midwest, outside of Chicago.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 6:53 AM
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speaking of "big box consumerism"...

(photo is mine)

I don't know if this is a major chain or what, but come on... "buy buy baby"??? Nice & subtle.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 7:50 AM
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there's no such thing as "over retailing" if its too much, it will fail and be gone.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 8:11 AM
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The beauty of our economy is that it responds to changes in consumer preferences.

It's sad that it's taken so long for the US to realize the sense in, and convenience of, more dense development. It's really catching on. When you see new developments integrating themselves carefully into local infrastructure and using smart growth ideas in the South, you know there's truly something going on!
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 9:48 AM
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Well so many places in America (auto-centric sprawl) lack any type of culture or history to the point that all there is to do (besides either dying of boredom or getting the hell out of SprawlDodge) is mindlessly consume cheap junk from China.
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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 2:38 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Onn View Post
We already have a 14 trillion dollar economy (most of which comes from consumer spending) and one of the highest GDP per capita's in the world, what more do you want?? I don't think it gets much better than it already is.
our economy is a house of cards as we have for the past few; our economic well being depends on people buying big ticket items they may or may not be able afford.


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Old Posted Jun 12, 2010, 3:27 PM
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One factor that plays into this is if an area's municipalities don't participate in any kind of regional revenue sharing effort.

For example, in Cuyahoga County alone (Greater Cleveland consists of 6 counties which have their own fiefdoms), there are something like 59 different municipalities (38 cities ranging from 10K to 400ishK), each with their own economic agendas and revenue streams. So when one smallish city builds a new shopping center; adjacent cities lose revenue to their neighbor so what do they do to recapture that revenue? Build their own, of course! Play that scenario out and is it any wonder you have strip plazas every other mile, and regional malls within 5 miles of each other? And yes, they often cannibalize off each other, especially in metros with a stagnant or shrinking population.
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