10 ms·

Reusing Abandoned Big-Box Superstores Across America

140 points by l33tbro 10y ago

davycro 10y ago
The biggest challenge to these box stores is that they lack any sort of natural light inside them. Even the fancy library in the article lacked windows, which in my opinion adds more to the comfort of a workspace than designer furniture. I wonder what strategies architects could come up with to open these giant dark boxes.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  Many of the projects added skylights.
- hga 10y ago
  People are perhaps deservedly ragging on Wal-Marts in this topic, but I can attest the ones in my home town of Joplin, including their first really big store that became their model for SuperCenters (well, two buildings later), have plenty of skylights, enough so that you notice it when the sun gets hidden by clouds. Can't think of any other big box store that does this, though. And while on this topic, one of the above mentioned new buildings was required by our 2011 tornado, which much more thoroughly wrecked our high school. The upper half of 11-12th graders were quickly (less than 3 months) ensconced in a failed big box next to our shopping mall, which all in all they were reported to like. (Better than the middle schoolers who were next to a dog food factory in an industrial park. :-)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
empath75 10y ago
I'd love to see some of those converted to old fashioned markets like you see in Latin American countries. Let all the small town entrepreneurs set up shop inside the skeletal remains of the business that tried to put them away.
- bluejekyll 10y ago
  I've been to farmer's markets where this is essentially what they've done. One problem is that the space is so large. I really like the idea of these become community centers, though I'd prefer the small downtowns get their identity back.
  - mikey_p 10y ago
    About 10 years ago, I was doing AV work and did a couple of gigs in an empty big box store that was either rented or owned by the small town in eastern Ohio. They kept a decent sized portable stage in the place, bought some curtains to divide the space in half, and tons of folding chairs. Beyond that, I think all they needed was a few electrical disconnects for audio/lighting (plenty of service already available in the building) and it was set for concerts. It had plenty of egress for around 800-1000 people or whatever was there, plenty of clear, unobstructed view, plenty of parking, nice loading dock for equipment, etc. Felt weird to me at first but made more sense the longer I was there.
- amyjess 10y ago
  This actually happened with a shopping mall in Dallas. Valley View Mall effectively died a few years ago. It got bought by a new owner who's been trying to get permission to demolish it and build something new in its place. While waiting, he decided to get creative with the mall's contents instead of leaving it dead. So he converted a good chunk of the mall (I think they used one of the anchors) into a big open Latin American-style market called "El Mercado". It's really cool looking, and the owner is definitely taking advantage of the fact that the surrounding neighborhoods are predominantly Latino. Another use was converting a good chunk of the empty stores into art galleries, which he leased to local artists for cheap in exchange for their participation in a monthly event called the Midtown Art Walk. And then he converted more stores into a boxing gym and an indoor soccer field. All of this is specifically to build a sense of community in the area that will carry over to the new development when he finally gets to bulldoze the mall and build his "Dallas Midtown" project (and the city finally authorized the demolition this month, so it should be soon), so it should launch with a well-established community. Here's an article about the creation of El Mercado: http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2012/07/as-valley-views-new-owners-get-settled-in-a-new-look-emerges-from-the-mega-mercado-to-food-truck-test-kitchens.html/ http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2012/07/as-valley-views-n... And another article about the current state of the mall: http://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/is-valley-view-mall-dead-7987962 http://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/is-valley-view-mall-dead-...
ideonexus 10y ago
I lived in a small town in Northeast North Carolina for years and watched the local Wal-mart turn a vibrant downtown there into a bunch of empty shops, then create another giant empty building when they relocated miles outside of town to capitalize on the interstate traffic, where they used their financial power to force the town to create an annex so they could get government services or they would move to the next town and take all the low-paying jobs with them. The people there have no choice, nowhere to go. They're conquered. Back in suburban Northern Virginia, when a Wal-mart down the street from me closed up, the local (mostly immigrant) community converted it into a mall. They setup dozens of shops separated with curtains, a huge thrift-shop, and an amazing indoor playground. It's become a wonderful community resource and it thrives despite all the big-box stores just up the street. I don't see how you could do this with every empty store, but where communities have the resources and will, this is a great idea.
- AJ007 10y ago
  Your reprieve may be coming. Leverage has allowed retailers to grow faster than normal, but it can also swing back and shrink them at an even quicker pace.
- chiph 10y ago
  There's a Walmart that closed near me, and I've been thinking about the idea of an indoor bazaar in the location. But I don't have the funds to do it.
- brudgers 10y ago
  People have observed a correlation between the arrival of a Walmart and changes to local downtown retail. I'm skeptical of assigning causation and even more so of assigning blame because retail was undergoing massive structural shifts in places where a new Walmart didn't matter or where there were no Walmarts. Way back when Walmart was mainly in Arkansas, I lived in Northern Virginia. The Springfield Mall opened bringing department stores outside the Beltway. Department stores have been in decline ever since. Malls have stopped being a thing just as downtown shopping had stopped being one before them. Through the 80's and 90's I watched department stores go belly up in the Orlando malls. Nothing to do with Walmart. The Publix was the nearest grocery store to the house I grew up in in Orlando. George Jenkins still set its tone from Lakeland even though it had begun growing across state lines. The tone old George set was 9-5 Monday to Thursday, 9-5:30 on Friday, 9-12 Saturday, Closed on Sunday. Stock boys got a nickel raise every six months. Tipping of the bag boys was encouraged. Tipping the cashiers [all women] was not. The other place women would work was the bakery. Around 1980, the Albertson's bought the corner lot next door. Hours: 9-11 every day. Heathens could shop on Sunday. Working people could buy groceries after work. It was practical for the California company to open in a cross country market for the same reason it was practical for the Jenkins's company to expand out of state: the deregulation of interstate trucking. It took a few years, but not all that many, for Publix to better serve the public. My beloved's family is from Kussuth County, Iowa. The small towns in their townships have been dying since German POW's encamped there abouts were repatriated in 1946. Tractors and modern mortgages and Monsanto and college educations are better candidates than Walmart. And local retail? Well piss off the owner of the only quicky mart in Lone Rock and the option is to buy your $3.00 can of beenie weenies and $2.00 roll of toilet paper in the next town over. People vote with their feet. Whatever it's negative impact, Walmart tends to take people as they are. It doesn't subject them to the whims or moral judgements of its owners. That's a broader change in retail that Walmart embodies. A man can by Legos for his daughter at midnight even if he's sweaty and stinky from an evening shift on the loading dock. His partner doesn't need to put on a pillbox and white gloves and take an afternoon off to shop downtown.
Shivetya 10y ago
Seen a few strip malls and even one small town downtown corridor converted to government services offices. While it is good to reuse an existing structure with a little help from zoning the land and supporting utilities can be re purposed to other uses that require good traffic qualities and location; schools, churches, car dealerships and even apartments. I would think the unmentioned issue is, did the area collapse around the store that supported it or was this simply caused by bigger and better nearby? If its the former then getting people back into the area could be challenging and makes it much more suited to government offices or such
- unit91 10y ago
  If done right, reutilization can really revitalize a dying area. When Rackspace bought an abandoned shopping mall, the City of Windcrest (very small San Antonio suburb) was on it's way out. [1, 2] With the Rackspace infusion, the immediate vicinity appears to be much improved. As a casual passer-by, I think the area looks better now than it did 15 years ago! [2] ETA: I don't work for Rackspace, and never have. I also don't own any stock. Just glad they bought the mall. Sources: 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace-revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rack... 2. My sensory experience :-)
  - pm90 10y ago
    Disclaimer: I worked for Rackspace not so long ago. Yes, they have an interesting strategy of buying abandoned malls and re purposing them into huge office complexes. The great thing is I guess they get a LOT of real estate for very cheap. If you ever get the chance, I would definitely recommend going inside the Castle, as the San Antonio headquarters is known. We had a lot of warnings to keep our cars locked and laptops secured in the trunks to prevent break-ins, but it seems like things have greatly improved now. AFAIK, it works for Rackspace because its culture is very very egalitarian: even the CEO has a cubicle (there are many private conference rooms and such for meetings). So basically, they take over a mall and divide the floor space into cubicles and voila, you now have an insane amount of real estate. They did the same thing with a dying mall in Austin as well. Many people I've met have been amused by this strategy but hey, all that space means that they have an office gym, yoga rooms and whatnot. All for very cheap. Personally I think its a brilliant idea.
323454 10y ago
I love the idea of putting affordable housing in the vast parking lots of these old megastores, prompting new businesses to set up shop in the abandoned space to service the new community. Seems like a win-win.
- nutheracc 10y ago
  On the subject of affordable housing, not to be argumentative, what is it? Why is that term used? If there was sufficient housing, it would be affordable. Seems to me affordable housing means crap housing, thereby cheap in the current environment where there is insufficient housing. Therefore people should stop talking about affordable housing, and start talking about more housing.
  - untog 10y ago
    Not entirely. Particularly in America, housing is made as absolutely huge detached houses with two car garages and a huge garden. Nothing wrong with that, but in the space of two of those houses you could build an apartment building with apartments that are a lot more, yes, affordable. Space is finite.
    - bryanlarsen 10y ago
      Building more McMansions makes McMansions cheaper, which means the upper middle class moves out of their mid-scale housing and into McMansions, making mid-scale housing more affordable. Regulations shouldn't be about affordability, they should be about density.
      - untog 10y ago
        But they still take up a lot more space. And that matters. Jobs are still usually centered on a specific area, the further you move from that area the less convenient it is to live there and travel to work. That's how we ended up with the suburbs in the first place. > Regulations shouldn't be about affordability, they should be about density. That's essentially a different label for the same thing. Affordable housing is dense housing.
shiftpgdn 10y ago
From an urban planning perspective the typical big box build of 100,000 sqft of box with 30 acres of parking lot is a disaster. I don't think retrofitting them is the correct answer. I've always felt that big boxes should have to put their demolition cost up as a surety bond before construction. Should the store close or go out of business the land could be returned to a field.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The problem is that they are often willing to ignore an area until they get the concessions they want. Vibrant areas might be able to get the store to do what they want, but they aren't the areas that are going to have a problem when it leaves.
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    That's why such a provision would have to be enshrined in law.
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      If the business can get adjacent jurisdictions to compete for the new store, it might not matter whether such a rule is enshrined in existing law or not. When I envision the big boxes around here, it's mildly unfortunate that they might end up unused, but there is so much open space that they aren't a particularly big concern. By area, most of the US is like that. In areas where there isn't a whole lot of open space, the redevelopment will be more likely anyway.
    - dpark 10y ago
      Unless you mean state or federal law, that won't do anything, because "The problem is that they are often willing to ignore an area until they get the concessions they want." Wal-Mart will just not build in SmallTown, Arkansas if they have to spend twice as much as in LittleTown, Arkansas 5 miles down the road. SmallTown can put whatever requirements they want into the law. Wal-Mart just won't build there until they change the law. Of course, whether SmallTown should want Wal-Mart is a valid question. Unfortunately, they probably do, because Wal-Mart moving into LittleTown will probably decimate the local retail economy anyway.
mangeletti 10y ago
I was recently describing my thoughts about the future of big box retail stores to my brother, except it's not as optimistic as to project our current state of affairs into the future. I imagine, at a point when hardly anybody can afford decent housing, that a lot of retail spaces will be squatted as housing. Take, for instance, a Best Buy. A Best Buy could potentially house hundreds, especially considering the vertical space (think bunk-style shelves for sleeping). I'm not suggesting this is good or that it would be comfortable, but we've got more than 4 million people working retail in the US, and retail is going nowhere fast. IOW, in the markedly more dystopian future that I imagine, a lot of the same people that work in these big boxes will live in these big boxes.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  >I imagine, at a point when hardly anybody can afford decent housing, that a lot of retail spaces will be squatted as housing. Typically residential and commercial areas are zoned differently. You can't just build a house, nor should you, on a strip mall or in an area that's unsafe for children due to four lane streets with high speed limits, lots of car traffic, no green spaces, no infrastructure to handle thousands of people, no parks, not enough sewage capacity, no public trans, etc. This would just create another Cabrini-Green style ghetto. Lets not repeat the mistakes of the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    You think there will be zoning enforcement in a world where people bunk up in a Best Buy?
- maxerickson 10y ago
  In Snow Crash, intrepid entrepreneurs construct coin operated bathrooms adjacent to self storage garages. I really hope we don't choose to do either one to ourselves.
  - sliverstorm 10y ago
lsiunsuex 10y ago
Similar problem in Western NY. Eastern Hills Mall - which by all accounts has been dieing for the last 10 years but for some reason, continues to be maintained. http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/07112015/lets-talk-about-eastern-hills-mall http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/07112015/lets-talk-about... Proposed changes with some renders. Would be a great alternative to the other 2 malls within 15 miles of it that thrive compared to Eastern Hills. Even the Dave and Busters cited in the article left and moved to the Walden Galleria. But - progress is very, very slow in Buffalo and it's suburbs.
- mcphage 10y ago
  Mmm... I would like that. Or anything, really, beyond what it is now. Although I'm not sure how much the Blvd. Mall will be thriving in a few years from now, if the Northtown Plaza successfully pulls in mall stores to go up near Whole Foods.
tmaly 10y ago
I think the biggest challenge is going to be maintenance. The buildings are not the highest quality, you are going to have issues with the metal and the roof. Supplying energy to heat of cool these are going to be an issue. The parking lots will have to be patched and repaved as the weather takes its toll. I think just removing the entire structure would overall be a less costly alternative in the long run.
- VLM 10y ago
  WRT to depreciation and maintenance costs, its telling that the worlds most successful retailer with enormous experience and information about their former stores, tends to demolish and rebuild rather than remodel. I mean they do HGTV style remodels where they throw a coat of paint up and rearrange the shelves and pat themselves on the back, but after two decades of deteriorating roof and obsolete HVAC and inefficient lighting and the parking lot needs a total replacement, its just time to demolish and start over. Walmart likes money. If they could remodel an old store into ... anything ... at a profit, they would. They don't. That says something about the anticipated lifetime of most of the schemes. Also explains why the contemporary examples are new or recent but walmart is an old company. All the alternative ideas tried a decade ago have long since failed so there's nothing to talk about except the more recent experiments that haven't run out of money yet. Remember a failed walmart is where the worlds most successful retailer could not or could no longer make a buck, for whatever reason. "I'm gonna outdo walmart at running a retail operation" is very unlikely for any value of retail operation. A side issue is the architecture and design of the building fixes in concrete and steel a certain minimum annual revenue per sq ft below which the structure and system has to fail sooner or later due to lack of income. Its easier to make a small store that generates a higher rate per sq but is limited in size, or a large market that generates a low per sq rate. That would imply whatever the newly built building looks like, its not going to look like a walmart because its already determined that doesn't work at that location.
  - coredog64 10y ago
    6 or 8 years ago the closest Costco to us moved locations. The old location had been there for maybe 8 years before that. At the time, it was in a good location for a Costco, but I can see how much better the new location is (closer to a newly built freeway, near a mall and other businesses). That's not to say that the old location is awful, as there are still thriving businesses (including a newly remodeled WalMart) nearby. We tend to think of WalMart as this cash flush behemoth, but the reality is that grocery is a very low margin business (on the order of 3%). They might squeeze a little more out of less efficient competitors, but it's possible that the location could work for a higher margin business or something that's not retail.
brudgers 10y ago
For me, in the general case empty big box stores in suburbia aren't worth much mental energy or expenditure of public resources. Obsolescence is the reason Walmart and other big box retailers abandon sites. Poor suitability for other uses is the reason the sites remain empty. An empty Walmart could house lots of server racks. The lack of power and bandwidth make the site unsuitable for that use. The lack of cooling equipment and electrical distribution equipment make the building unsuitable for that use. The sea of asphalt and road frontage that comes with it not only isn't worth paying for, it adds to the operating cost of the facility. These are custom tailored buildings that have reached the end of their viable economic life located on sites where the land was cheap. Their economics was based on operating at a scale that worked with a geographically large but low density catchment. The abandoned sites express the lack of market demand. In suburbia, there is a cap on demand for 100 acre retail sites. There is a political cost to down zoning high revenue parcels to lower revenue uses and there isn't much demand for those sites anyway: i.e. an industrial or residential use tends not to benefit from high visibility frontage...for an apartment complex it'd often be a detriment. Finally, the cost of converting a Walmart to a library or workforce housing or a warehouse or whatever is unlikely to vary much from building new. Construction required for conversion from one occupancy to another tends to be expensive. The building shell and asphalt tend to be significantly less costly than furnishings, equipment, and finishes. Sure there are unicorns where an abandoned retail mecca becomes a vibrant megachurch. But big boxes sit empty because there isn't market demand for another 200,000 square feet of space in that location. Repurposing Walmarts is like housing people in shipping containers. A desire to be clever trumps rational analysis.
- mangeletti 10y ago
  > A desire to be clever trumps rational analysis. Sometimes, a desire to be analytical trumps the desire to simply observe the unintuitive nature of economics[1,2]. > ...abandoned sites express the lack of market demand... Market demand is subject to the effects of price stickiness[3]. What was once an expensive building on an expensive piece of commercial real estate, might now be very cheap (thus earning demand), but the nominal price remains for some time (this is usually because the company (e.g., Walmart) has enough money that they can sit on an unused asset, rather than listing it at market price). IOW, there isn't market demand, because the nomial price hasn't reached the market price. 1. http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/4500256609/Greenfield-vs-brownfield-data-center-development-strategies http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/4500256609/Green... 2. http://www.containerhomeplans.org/2015/04/what-i-wish-id-known-before-building-my-shipping-container-home/ http://www.containerhomeplans.org/2015/04/what-i-wish-id-kno... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity
yardie 10y ago
The suburbs my family moved to is developing a downtown corridor. It's well known for its public schools and expansive homes, but now it's in a bit of a crisis. It now has to compete against the redeveloped downtown of the closest city. The kids are grown up and choosing to move to big cities. The empty nesters are downsizing their under-utilised homes. New families moving into the area are choosing smaller, newer homes. The city planners are in 2 parties: those that want to keep the bedroom community the way it is, and those that want to turn it into a walkable city. The first is caught in the past and sees the schools as the major draw. And kind of ignores DINKs as a whole. The latter sees a future where young adults prefer to move to cities, and don't come back.
- tssva 10y ago
  The area I'm in saw a big movement of young people into the downtown area. For the last decade the paper would have the occasional story about how the suburbs are done and millennials were moving to the city and were going to stay. Companies began moving to the city or close to public transport to be convenient to reach from the city, so they could attract employees. But guess what has happened in the last 3 years. Growth in the city has slowed and growth in suburbs has grown again. The first wave of the influx to the city have begun having kids and moving back to suburbs. So maybe the first group of planners isn't so wrong.
kasey_junk 10y ago
My favorite reuse is Ray's Indoor Mt. Bike Park. http://www.raysmtb.com/ http://www.raysmtb.com/
ja27 10y ago
One near me became a 50,000 sq ft fantasy-themed event location. It hosts a lot of sweet 16s, quinceaneras, engagements, weddings, etc. and an annual Doctor Who convention.
throwanem 10y ago
I don't know whether this is actually as good an idea as it sounds, but it sure does tickle the same sense of awesomeness in me that Virtual Light's Golden Gate first nurtured.
OliverJones 10y ago
There's a dead Walmart near me. They and the neighboring stores moved a mile up the road to a new location. It would be good for municipalities to require shutdown bonds from these big-box outfits. But any town that has the clout to extract that sort of concession from the retailer also has the clout to keep them out entirely, so that's not workable. Affordable housing? Manufactured housing sites? (meaning indoor trailer parks?) That sort of use might overcome the gross energy inefficiency of these things.
johnbrodie 10y ago
I know of a few former Wal-Marts that have been turned into indoor (electric) go kart tracks. Another former big box store near me was turned into a hospital. Great to see them reused instead of just blighting the neighborhood.

140 points by l33tbro 10y ago

The biggest challenge to these box stores is that they lack any sort of natural light inside them. Even the fancy library in the article lacked windows, which in my opinion adds more to the comfort of a workspace than designer furniture. I wonder what strategies architects could come up with to open these giant dark boxes.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
Many of the projects added skylights.
hga 10y ago
People are perhaps deservedly ragging on Wal-Marts in this topic, but I can attest the ones in my home town of Joplin, including their first really big store that became their model for SuperCenters (well, two buildings later), have plenty of skylights, enough so that you notice it when the sun gets hidden by clouds. Can't think of any other big box store that does this, though. And while on this topic, one of the above mentioned new buildings was required by our 2011 tornado, which much more thoroughly wrecked our high school. The upper half of 11-12th graders were quickly (less than 3 months) ensconced in a failed big box next to our shopping mall, which all in all they were reported to like. (Better than the middle schoolers who were next to a dog food factory in an industrial park. :-)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

empath75 10y ago

I'd love to see some of those converted to old fashioned markets like you see in Latin American countries. Let all the small town entrepreneurs set up shop inside the skeletal remains of the business that tried to put them away.

bluejekyll 10y ago
I've been to farmer's markets where this is essentially what they've done. One problem is that the space is so large. I really like the idea of these become community centers, though I'd prefer the small downtowns get their identity back.
- mikey_p 10y ago
  About 10 years ago, I was doing AV work and did a couple of gigs in an empty big box store that was either rented or owned by the small town in eastern Ohio. They kept a decent sized portable stage in the place, bought some curtains to divide the space in half, and tons of folding chairs. Beyond that, I think all they needed was a few electrical disconnects for audio/lighting (plenty of service already available in the building) and it was set for concerts. It had plenty of egress for around 800-1000 people or whatever was there, plenty of clear, unobstructed view, plenty of parking, nice loading dock for equipment, etc. Felt weird to me at first but made more sense the longer I was there.
amyjess 10y ago
This actually happened with a shopping mall in Dallas. Valley View Mall effectively died a few years ago. It got bought by a new owner who's been trying to get permission to demolish it and build something new in its place. While waiting, he decided to get creative with the mall's contents instead of leaving it dead. So he converted a good chunk of the mall (I think they used one of the anchors) into a big open Latin American-style market called "El Mercado". It's really cool looking, and the owner is definitely taking advantage of the fact that the surrounding neighborhoods are predominantly Latino. Another use was converting a good chunk of the empty stores into art galleries, which he leased to local artists for cheap in exchange for their participation in a monthly event called the Midtown Art Walk. And then he converted more stores into a boxing gym and an indoor soccer field. All of this is specifically to build a sense of community in the area that will carry over to the new development when he finally gets to bulldoze the mall and build his "Dallas Midtown" project (and the city finally authorized the demolition this month, so it should be soon), so it should launch with a well-established community. Here's an article about the creation of El Mercado: http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2012/07/as-valley-views-new-owners-get-settled-in-a-new-look-emerges-from-the-mega-mercado-to-food-truck-test-kitchens.html/ http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/2012/07/as-valley-views-n... And another article about the current state of the mall: http://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/is-valley-view-mall-dead-7987962 http://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/is-valley-view-mall-dead-...

ideonexus 10y ago

I lived in a small town in Northeast North Carolina for years and watched the local Wal-mart turn a vibrant downtown there into a bunch of empty shops, then create another giant empty building when they relocated miles outside of town to capitalize on the interstate traffic, where they used their financial power to force the town to create an annex so they could get government services or they would move to the next town and take all the low-paying jobs with them. The people there have no choice, nowhere to go. They're conquered. Back in suburban Northern Virginia, when a Wal-mart down the street from me closed up, the local (mostly immigrant) community converted it into a mall. They setup dozens of shops separated with curtains, a huge thrift-shop, and an amazing indoor playground. It's become a wonderful community resource and it thrives despite all the big-box stores just up the street. I don't see how you could do this with every empty store, but where communities have the resources and will, this is a great idea.

AJ007 10y ago
Your reprieve may be coming. Leverage has allowed retailers to grow faster than normal, but it can also swing back and shrink them at an even quicker pace.
chiph 10y ago
There's a Walmart that closed near me, and I've been thinking about the idea of an indoor bazaar in the location. But I don't have the funds to do it.
brudgers 10y ago
People have observed a correlation between the arrival of a Walmart and changes to local downtown retail. I'm skeptical of assigning causation and even more so of assigning blame because retail was undergoing massive structural shifts in places where a new Walmart didn't matter or where there were no Walmarts. Way back when Walmart was mainly in Arkansas, I lived in Northern Virginia. The Springfield Mall opened bringing department stores outside the Beltway. Department stores have been in decline ever since. Malls have stopped being a thing just as downtown shopping had stopped being one before them. Through the 80's and 90's I watched department stores go belly up in the Orlando malls. Nothing to do with Walmart. The Publix was the nearest grocery store to the house I grew up in in Orlando. George Jenkins still set its tone from Lakeland even though it had begun growing across state lines. The tone old George set was 9-5 Monday to Thursday, 9-5:30 on Friday, 9-12 Saturday, Closed on Sunday. Stock boys got a nickel raise every six months. Tipping of the bag boys was encouraged. Tipping the cashiers [all women] was not. The other place women would work was the bakery. Around 1980, the Albertson's bought the corner lot next door. Hours: 9-11 every day. Heathens could shop on Sunday. Working people could buy groceries after work. It was practical for the California company to open in a cross country market for the same reason it was practical for the Jenkins's company to expand out of state: the deregulation of interstate trucking. It took a few years, but not all that many, for Publix to better serve the public. My beloved's family is from Kussuth County, Iowa. The small towns in their townships have been dying since German POW's encamped there abouts were repatriated in 1946. Tractors and modern mortgages and Monsanto and college educations are better candidates than Walmart. And local retail? Well piss off the owner of the only quicky mart in Lone Rock and the option is to buy your $3.00 can of beenie weenies and $2.00 roll of toilet paper in the next town over. People vote with their feet. Whatever it's negative impact, Walmart tends to take people as they are. It doesn't subject them to the whims or moral judgements of its owners. That's a broader change in retail that Walmart embodies. A man can by Legos for his daughter at midnight even if he's sweaty and stinky from an evening shift on the loading dock. His partner doesn't need to put on a pillbox and white gloves and take an afternoon off to shop downtown.

Shivetya 10y ago

Seen a few strip malls and even one small town downtown corridor converted to government services offices. While it is good to reuse an existing structure with a little help from zoning the land and supporting utilities can be re purposed to other uses that require good traffic qualities and location; schools, churches, car dealerships and even apartments. I would think the unmentioned issue is, did the area collapse around the store that supported it or was this simply caused by bigger and better nearby? If its the former then getting people back into the area could be challenging and makes it much more suited to government offices or such

unit91 10y ago
If done right, reutilization can really revitalize a dying area. When Rackspace bought an abandoned shopping mall, the City of Windcrest (very small San Antonio suburb) was on it's way out. [1, 2] With the Rackspace infusion, the immediate vicinity appears to be much improved. As a casual passer-by, I think the area looks better now than it did 15 years ago! [2] ETA: I don't work for Rackspace, and never have. I also don't own any stock. Just glad they bought the mall. Sources: 1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rackspace-revitalizes-a-defunct-mall-into-an-unorthodox-tech-campus.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/31/realestate/commercial/rack... 2. My sensory experience :-)
- pm90 10y ago
  Disclaimer: I worked for Rackspace not so long ago. Yes, they have an interesting strategy of buying abandoned malls and re purposing them into huge office complexes. The great thing is I guess they get a LOT of real estate for very cheap. If you ever get the chance, I would definitely recommend going inside the Castle, as the San Antonio headquarters is known. We had a lot of warnings to keep our cars locked and laptops secured in the trunks to prevent break-ins, but it seems like things have greatly improved now. AFAIK, it works for Rackspace because its culture is very very egalitarian: even the CEO has a cubicle (there are many private conference rooms and such for meetings). So basically, they take over a mall and divide the floor space into cubicles and voila, you now have an insane amount of real estate. They did the same thing with a dying mall in Austin as well. Many people I've met have been amused by this strategy but hey, all that space means that they have an office gym, yoga rooms and whatnot. All for very cheap. Personally I think its a brilliant idea.

323454 10y ago

I love the idea of putting affordable housing in the vast parking lots of these old megastores, prompting new businesses to set up shop in the abandoned space to service the new community. Seems like a win-win.

nutheracc 10y ago
On the subject of affordable housing, not to be argumentative, what is it? Why is that term used? If there was sufficient housing, it would be affordable. Seems to me affordable housing means crap housing, thereby cheap in the current environment where there is insufficient housing. Therefore people should stop talking about affordable housing, and start talking about more housing.
- untog 10y ago
  Not entirely. Particularly in America, housing is made as absolutely huge detached houses with two car garages and a huge garden. Nothing wrong with that, but in the space of two of those houses you could build an apartment building with apartments that are a lot more, yes, affordable. Space is finite.
  - bryanlarsen 10y ago
    Building more McMansions makes McMansions cheaper, which means the upper middle class moves out of their mid-scale housing and into McMansions, making mid-scale housing more affordable. Regulations shouldn't be about affordability, they should be about density.
    - untog 10y ago
      But they still take up a lot more space. And that matters. Jobs are still usually centered on a specific area, the further you move from that area the less convenient it is to live there and travel to work. That's how we ended up with the suburbs in the first place. > Regulations shouldn't be about affordability, they should be about density. That's essentially a different label for the same thing. Affordable housing is dense housing.

shiftpgdn 10y ago

From an urban planning perspective the typical big box build of 100,000 sqft of box with 30 acres of parking lot is a disaster. I don't think retrofitting them is the correct answer. I've always felt that big boxes should have to put their demolition cost up as a surety bond before construction. Should the store close or go out of business the land could be returned to a field.

maxerickson 10y ago
The problem is that they are often willing to ignore an area until they get the concessions they want. Vibrant areas might be able to get the store to do what they want, but they aren't the areas that are going to have a problem when it leaves.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  That's why such a provision would have to be enshrined in law.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    If the business can get adjacent jurisdictions to compete for the new store, it might not matter whether such a rule is enshrined in existing law or not. When I envision the big boxes around here, it's mildly unfortunate that they might end up unused, but there is so much open space that they aren't a particularly big concern. By area, most of the US is like that. In areas where there isn't a whole lot of open space, the redevelopment will be more likely anyway.
  - dpark 10y ago
    Unless you mean state or federal law, that won't do anything, because "The problem is that they are often willing to ignore an area until they get the concessions they want." Wal-Mart will just not build in SmallTown, Arkansas if they have to spend twice as much as in LittleTown, Arkansas 5 miles down the road. SmallTown can put whatever requirements they want into the law. Wal-Mart just won't build there until they change the law. Of course, whether SmallTown should want Wal-Mart is a valid question. Unfortunately, they probably do, because Wal-Mart moving into LittleTown will probably decimate the local retail economy anyway.

mangeletti 10y ago

I was recently describing my thoughts about the future of big box retail stores to my brother, except it's not as optimistic as to project our current state of affairs into the future. I imagine, at a point when hardly anybody can afford decent housing, that a lot of retail spaces will be squatted as housing. Take, for instance, a Best Buy. A Best Buy could potentially house hundreds, especially considering the vertical space (think bunk-style shelves for sleeping). I'm not suggesting this is good or that it would be comfortable, but we've got more than 4 million people working retail in the US, and retail is going nowhere fast. IOW, in the markedly more dystopian future that I imagine, a lot of the same people that work in these big boxes will live in these big boxes.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>I imagine, at a point when hardly anybody can afford decent housing, that a lot of retail spaces will be squatted as housing. Typically residential and commercial areas are zoned differently. You can't just build a house, nor should you, on a strip mall or in an area that's unsafe for children due to four lane streets with high speed limits, lots of car traffic, no green spaces, no infrastructure to handle thousands of people, no parks, not enough sewage capacity, no public trans, etc. This would just create another Cabrini-Green style ghetto. Lets not repeat the mistakes of the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes
- maxerickson 10y ago
  You think there will be zoning enforcement in a world where people bunk up in a Best Buy?
maxerickson 10y ago
In Snow Crash, intrepid entrepreneurs construct coin operated bathrooms adjacent to self storage garages. I really hope we don't choose to do either one to ourselves.
- sliverstorm 10y ago

lsiunsuex 10y ago

Similar problem in Western NY. Eastern Hills Mall - which by all accounts has been dieing for the last 10 years but for some reason, continues to be maintained. http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/07112015/lets-talk-about-eastern-hills-mall http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/07112015/lets-talk-about... Proposed changes with some renders. Would be a great alternative to the other 2 malls within 15 miles of it that thrive compared to Eastern Hills. Even the Dave and Busters cited in the article left and moved to the Walden Galleria. But - progress is very, very slow in Buffalo and it's suburbs.

mcphage 10y ago
Mmm... I would like that. Or anything, really, beyond what it is now. Although I'm not sure how much the Blvd. Mall will be thriving in a few years from now, if the Northtown Plaza successfully pulls in mall stores to go up near Whole Foods.

tmaly 10y ago

I think the biggest challenge is going to be maintenance. The buildings are not the highest quality, you are going to have issues with the metal and the roof. Supplying energy to heat of cool these are going to be an issue. The parking lots will have to be patched and repaved as the weather takes its toll. I think just removing the entire structure would overall be a less costly alternative in the long run.

VLM 10y ago
WRT to depreciation and maintenance costs, its telling that the worlds most successful retailer with enormous experience and information about their former stores, tends to demolish and rebuild rather than remodel. I mean they do HGTV style remodels where they throw a coat of paint up and rearrange the shelves and pat themselves on the back, but after two decades of deteriorating roof and obsolete HVAC and inefficient lighting and the parking lot needs a total replacement, its just time to demolish and start over. Walmart likes money. If they could remodel an old store into ... anything ... at a profit, they would. They don't. That says something about the anticipated lifetime of most of the schemes. Also explains why the contemporary examples are new or recent but walmart is an old company. All the alternative ideas tried a decade ago have long since failed so there's nothing to talk about except the more recent experiments that haven't run out of money yet. Remember a failed walmart is where the worlds most successful retailer could not or could no longer make a buck, for whatever reason. "I'm gonna outdo walmart at running a retail operation" is very unlikely for any value of retail operation. A side issue is the architecture and design of the building fixes in concrete and steel a certain minimum annual revenue per sq ft below which the structure and system has to fail sooner or later due to lack of income. Its easier to make a small store that generates a higher rate per sq but is limited in size, or a large market that generates a low per sq rate. That would imply whatever the newly built building looks like, its not going to look like a walmart because its already determined that doesn't work at that location.
- coredog64 10y ago
  6 or 8 years ago the closest Costco to us moved locations. The old location had been there for maybe 8 years before that. At the time, it was in a good location for a Costco, but I can see how much better the new location is (closer to a newly built freeway, near a mall and other businesses). That's not to say that the old location is awful, as there are still thriving businesses (including a newly remodeled WalMart) nearby. We tend to think of WalMart as this cash flush behemoth, but the reality is that grocery is a very low margin business (on the order of 3%). They might squeeze a little more out of less efficient competitors, but it's possible that the location could work for a higher margin business or something that's not retail.

brudgers 10y ago

For me, in the general case empty big box stores in suburbia aren't worth much mental energy or expenditure of public resources. Obsolescence is the reason Walmart and other big box retailers abandon sites. Poor suitability for other uses is the reason the sites remain empty. An empty Walmart could house lots of server racks. The lack of power and bandwidth make the site unsuitable for that use. The lack of cooling equipment and electrical distribution equipment make the building unsuitable for that use. The sea of asphalt and road frontage that comes with it not only isn't worth paying for, it adds to the operating cost of the facility. These are custom tailored buildings that have reached the end of their viable economic life located on sites where the land was cheap. Their economics was based on operating at a scale that worked with a geographically large but low density catchment. The abandoned sites express the lack of market demand. In suburbia, there is a cap on demand for 100 acre retail sites. There is a political cost to down zoning high revenue parcels to lower revenue uses and there isn't much demand for those sites anyway: i.e. an industrial or residential use tends not to benefit from high visibility frontage...for an apartment complex it'd often be a detriment. Finally, the cost of converting a Walmart to a library or workforce housing or a warehouse or whatever is unlikely to vary much from building new. Construction required for conversion from one occupancy to another tends to be expensive. The building shell and asphalt tend to be significantly less costly than furnishings, equipment, and finishes. Sure there are unicorns where an abandoned retail mecca becomes a vibrant megachurch. But big boxes sit empty because there isn't market demand for another 200,000 square feet of space in that location. Repurposing Walmarts is like housing people in shipping containers. A desire to be clever trumps rational analysis.

mangeletti 10y ago
> A desire to be clever trumps rational analysis. Sometimes, a desire to be analytical trumps the desire to simply observe the unintuitive nature of economics[1,2]. > ...abandoned sites express the lack of market demand... Market demand is subject to the effects of price stickiness[3]. What was once an expensive building on an expensive piece of commercial real estate, might now be very cheap (thus earning demand), but the nominal price remains for some time (this is usually because the company (e.g., Walmart) has enough money that they can sit on an unused asset, rather than listing it at market price). IOW, there isn't market demand, because the nomial price hasn't reached the market price. 1. http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/4500256609/Greenfield-vs-brownfield-data-center-development-strategies http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/4500256609/Green... 2. http://www.containerhomeplans.org/2015/04/what-i-wish-id-known-before-building-my-shipping-container-home/ http://www.containerhomeplans.org/2015/04/what-i-wish-id-kno... 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity

yardie 10y ago

The suburbs my family moved to is developing a downtown corridor. It's well known for its public schools and expansive homes, but now it's in a bit of a crisis. It now has to compete against the redeveloped downtown of the closest city. The kids are grown up and choosing to move to big cities. The empty nesters are downsizing their under-utilised homes. New families moving into the area are choosing smaller, newer homes. The city planners are in 2 parties: those that want to keep the bedroom community the way it is, and those that want to turn it into a walkable city. The first is caught in the past and sees the schools as the major draw. And kind of ignores DINKs as a whole. The latter sees a future where young adults prefer to move to cities, and don't come back.

tssva 10y ago
The area I'm in saw a big movement of young people into the downtown area. For the last decade the paper would have the occasional story about how the suburbs are done and millennials were moving to the city and were going to stay. Companies began moving to the city or close to public transport to be convenient to reach from the city, so they could attract employees. But guess what has happened in the last 3 years. Growth in the city has slowed and growth in suburbs has grown again. The first wave of the influx to the city have begun having kids and moving back to suburbs. So maybe the first group of planners isn't so wrong.

kasey_junk 10y ago

My favorite reuse is Ray's Indoor Mt. Bike Park. http://www.raysmtb.com/ http://www.raysmtb.com/

ja27 10y ago

One near me became a 50,000 sq ft fantasy-themed event location. It hosts a lot of sweet 16s, quinceaneras, engagements, weddings, etc. and an annual Doctor Who convention.

throwanem 10y ago

I don't know whether this is actually as good an idea as it sounds, but it sure does tickle the same sense of awesomeness in me that Virtual Light's Golden Gate first nurtured.

OliverJones 10y ago

There's a dead Walmart near me. They and the neighboring stores moved a mile up the road to a new location. It would be good for municipalities to require shutdown bonds from these big-box outfits. But any town that has the clout to extract that sort of concession from the retailer also has the clout to keep them out entirely, so that's not workable. Affordable housing? Manufactured housing sites? (meaning indoor trailer parks?) That sort of use might overcome the gross energy inefficiency of these things.

johnbrodie 10y ago

I know of a few former Wal-Marts that have been turned into indoor (electric) go kart tracks. Another former big box store near me was turned into a hospital. Great to see them reused instead of just blighting the neighborhood.