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Anecdotally, the Westchester mall in White Plains, New York is starting to show a fair bit of softness in terms of keeping tenants. There are many empty stores

Anecdotally, the Westchester mall in White Plains, New York is starting to show a fair bit of softness in terms of keeping tenants. There are many empty stores and it seems to be getting worse. This is the same mall with many luxury brands and even a Tesla store. It once had a thriving food court, but it has been closed for years and only recently seems to be ready for business once again, hopefully not too little too late.

Dirlewanger 9y ago
The crappy mall down the road (forget the name) will probably go before the Westchester does.
- partisan 9y ago
  Yeah, that's the Galleria. I haven't been in there for at least 20 years, but it seems to be doing well enough. I think that they have lower rent and a more central location that factor in to staying afloat. I also thought they would disappear, but it seems that the Westchester will have to go down market to fill their space and that would be counter to the image they are trying to project. It's a tough place to be. They do have quite a few more kiosks around nowadays, but still without making the place less classy.
nostrademons 9y ago
Also anecdotally, from Silicon Valley - Vallco in Cupertino and Target/Macy's in Sunnyvale are dying, Stanford Shopping Center is kinda humming along ... but Santana Row in San Jose and San Antonio Center in Mountain View are thriving. Both of the latter are in (historically) poorer areas than the former, so you would expect them to do significantly worse. I suspect that it's a combination of outdated brands and car-centricness that does malls in. People don't want to drive to go shopping anymore, when they can just get stuff online and have someone else drive it to them. But malls that are built new mixed-use developments, or ones that go up near walkable downtowns, tend to do fairly well. The local residents provide a critical mass of foot traffic, which makes the area seem like a "scene" where it's cool to hang out, which draws out car traffic from the surrounding area.
- defen 9y ago
  Was Vallco ever alive? Serious question; it's seemed dead ever since the mid 90s
  - jdeisenberg 9y ago
    It was very much alive in the early 1980s. (I worked in Cupertino from 1979-1985, and Vallco was a place we often went for lunch.)
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    My wife (Cupertino native) tells me that it was semi-alive when she was a teenager; her first job was there. That would've been the mid-late 90s. Other than AMC, it's certainly been dead since I moved out to the Bay Area (2009). My wife was living elsewhere for the whole decade of the 00s, so she doesn't really know when it died.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    It's under reconstruction, finally. It was always a weak mall - but it had some niche offerings and I liked that my kids could run around there on hot summer evenings without having a press of people nearby. Apparently there was a sort of ownership struggle, and now I think that's been resolve in one way. Hopefully the new design will a) reach fruition and b) eliminate some of the bad feng shui about the place.
kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
This is a problem with all the greater NYC malls. They're packed with upscale stores an have limited offerings for the proles.

Dirlewanger 9y ago

The crappy mall down the road (forget the name) will probably go before the Westchester does.

partisan 9y ago
Yeah, that's the Galleria. I haven't been in there for at least 20 years, but it seems to be doing well enough. I think that they have lower rent and a more central location that factor in to staying afloat. I also thought they would disappear, but it seems that the Westchester will have to go down market to fill their space and that would be counter to the image they are trying to project. It's a tough place to be. They do have quite a few more kiosks around nowadays, but still without making the place less classy.

nostrademons 9y ago

Also anecdotally, from Silicon Valley - Vallco in Cupertino and Target/Macy's in Sunnyvale are dying, Stanford Shopping Center is kinda humming along ... but Santana Row in San Jose and San Antonio Center in Mountain View are thriving. Both of the latter are in (historically) poorer areas than the former, so you would expect them to do significantly worse. I suspect that it's a combination of outdated brands and car-centricness that does malls in. People don't want to drive to go shopping anymore, when they can just get stuff online and have someone else drive it to them. But malls that are built new mixed-use developments, or ones that go up near walkable downtowns, tend to do fairly well. The local residents provide a critical mass of foot traffic, which makes the area seem like a "scene" where it's cool to hang out, which draws out car traffic from the surrounding area.

defen 9y ago
Was Vallco ever alive? Serious question; it's seemed dead ever since the mid 90s
- jdeisenberg 9y ago
  It was very much alive in the early 1980s. (I worked in Cupertino from 1979-1985, and Vallco was a place we often went for lunch.)
- nostrademons 9y ago
  My wife (Cupertino native) tells me that it was semi-alive when she was a teenager; her first job was there. That would've been the mid-late 90s. Other than AMC, it's certainly been dead since I moved out to the Bay Area (2009). My wife was living elsewhere for the whole decade of the 00s, so she doesn't really know when it died.
- r00fus 9y ago
  It's under reconstruction, finally. It was always a weak mall - but it had some niche offerings and I liked that my kids could run around there on hot summer evenings without having a press of people nearby. Apparently there was a sort of ownership struggle, and now I think that's been resolve in one way. Hopefully the new design will a) reach fruition and b) eliminate some of the bad feng shui about the place.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago

This is a problem with all the greater NYC malls. They're packed with upscale stores an have limited offerings for the proles.