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If you read the opening section of the article, the writer clearly exposits that more traditional retail stores closed down as the cities were subject to deindu

by jaspax 6y ago

If you read the opening section of the article, the writer clearly exposits that more traditional retail stores closed down as the cities were subject to deindustrialization and suburban flight. The dollar stores are what's left. And there we have our answer: what discount chains do to poor communities is act as the only provider of goods. But the headline and the general tone of the article is desperately trying to make it seem as if the dollar store is somehow the cause of urban decay (especially the middle section of the article, which tries really hard to blame the dollar store for the fact that it gets robbed). One of the clearer examples of the headline and tone trying to sell the writer's preferred narrative even when the actual facts presented undermine that narrative.

nrp 6y ago
I started reading the article with the same viewpoint you have, but I found the arguments reasonably persuasive. Dollar General and similar are willing to sell goods (apparently profitably) to communities that would otherwise have access to little to nothing locally. This is good. At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. The key question left unaddressed in the rather long article is whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe, or whether it's callousness and profit optimization on the parts of the companies. "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities.
- lopmotr 6y ago
  Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime? Perhaps they just need more policing. How does a shop prevent a person from shooting somebody else in its carpark? Even then, won't they just shoot each other in the street outside the carpark instead? Without the shop, won't they shoot each other at home? It's hard to see that it's causing crime rather than just being the place where inevitable crime happens more often.
  - chii 6y ago
    > prevent violent crime? well, i don't think that's ever the mandate of the police - they are there to punish after the fact, not prevent before the event.
    - lordnacho 6y ago
      This is like saying the health authorities have no interest in what you eat, they just treat you after you show up with a heart attack.
    - ARandomerDude 6y ago
      This is an overly simplistic view. If law enforcement isn't a deterrent, even in principle, why do it?
      - baddox 6y ago
        The fact that the view leads you to ask “why do it?” does not mean that it is an overly simplistic view.
    - cheesecracker 6y ago
      What a nonsensical belief.
      - donw 6y ago
        A belief upheld by the supreme court: Warren v. District of Columbia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...
        aliante 6y ago
        Nope. Just that police are not liable for failing to prevent crime.
- fuckyah 6y ago
  Is it the job of the store to keep people safe or your underfunded/defunded police?
- core-questions 6y ago
  > At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. Have you seen some of the very glassed-in sorts of "safe" stores that exist in high crime areas? Tons of bulletproof glass, nothing directly accessible without asking the cashier. It doesn't scale to any kind of a store where sales are made by people walking around and seeing items and being inspired to buy them. It only works for gas stations and restaurants, for the most part, and even then it's a hassle for the staff. > whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe Never mind economics, it might just be logistically impossible unless you invest heavily in security personnel, who really won't do very much in the event of any kind of more serious criminal action. Food deserts, etc. form in high crime areas because the crime drives them away. The current anti-police attitude is going to make this worse in the short term; I would like to hear what people are actually suggesting as an alternative to enable these stores to stay without continually suffering so much shrink as to make it hard to make payroll. > "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities. What does that last bit actually mean? How do stolen items "externalize as violence"? It sounds like GPT-3 regurgitated a sociology textbook.
  - austhrow743 6y ago
    Externalities are costs of doing business that you the business don't directly pay. Their point seems pretty straight forward to me. What part of it is confusing?
    - core-questions 6y ago
      Could you maybe just restate it? How are stolen items costs that businesses "don't directly pay"?
      - CharlesHorsey 6y ago
        OP said: > "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities. So they're saying that the business does pay the cost of stolen items ("shrink") but not the cost of the violence, which is borne by its victims.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  Retail has terrible margins. It's financials are public, see the single digit margins: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/... It obviously is economically infeasible to make the stores safe. Any store in the neighborhoods where the dollar stores are would find it economically infeasible.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Still way better margins than a grocery store (1-3% IIRC). Do you have any idea how turnover might compare?
- kgwgk 6y ago
  > The key question left unaddressed in the rather long article is whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe, or whether it's callousness and profit optimization on the parts of the companies. Anyway, if they did more they would be criticized for treating all their customers as criminals and creating a self-perpetuating threatening environment or whatever.
  - malux85 6y ago
    What a load of rubbish. Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door, and nobody is claiming they are treating all customers as criminals. Everyone understands they are there to stop the few malicious people from stealing or causing trouble.
    - kgwgk 6y ago
      "Is receipt checking a practice that violates civil rights while treating customers as criminals until proven otherwise, or are retailers simply trying to cut shrink and avoid passing on the related costs to the same people who are loudly complaining?" https://securitytoday.com/blogs/reaction/2011/03/the-right-and-wrong-of-receipt-checking.aspx https://securitytoday.com/blogs/reaction/2011/03/the-right-a...
    - rascul 6y ago
      > Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door I have only ever seen this at Best Buy. Perhaps it varies from on area to another, though.
      - blaser-waffle 6y ago
        Even then that guard isn't going to try to stop people, even obvious offenders. They're there to get a good look at you on the way out, and spook the low-effort thieves who may chicken out. Workers comp for 3-5 stitches and a day or two off of work would cost way more than just letting someone walk out with a couple Nintendo games or some headphones.
    - 6y ago
- zozbot234 6y ago
  > At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. Making the dollar store a "safe space" for customers would mean having lots of armed guards around and bulletproof glass everywhere. Also every item behind the counter, like in a general store of old. You just know that the New Yorker would find ways to complain about that, too.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    But that can't be an acceptable solution, can it? If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country. You might as well not pay taxes then.
    - r8ru4rbfhfu 6y ago
      I'm not clear on why any responsibility falls on dollar store here either way. Dollar store didn't place unsafe individuals in the community and dollar store didn't have a say in structuring the police force. Is the idea that if you're going to do business in a crap neighborhood then you become responsible for fixing it?
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      None of those points follow or make sense. > If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country Welp might as well just move the dollar general to mexico! Those poor people will have to travel there to buy things. > You might as well not pay taxes then That makes sense if you're a charity, but dollar general is a for-profit org -- and does make a profit.
- curryst 6y ago
  > At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. One thing I'm curious about is the liability for having armed security guards. I'm operating under the assumption that unarmed security guards are unlikely to have a real impact on the armed robbery rate, so I'm assuming that armed guards are what we're discussing here. Quick Googling says Dollar General generates $2.3 billion in profit per year, across "over 16000 stores" from their site. So the average yearly profit per store is roughly $143k (which is surprisingly low to me). A security guard per store is going to eat a lot of that, but it's probably feasible to do. I think the bigger question is whether Dollar General could potentially bear any liability in the event one of their security guards shot someone, and I would be stunned if they didn't bear any liability. Even the legal costs associated with winning a wrongful death suit could eat an entire year's profits. I strongly suspect that is the reason why they fire any employee who is carrying a handgun. As an agent of Dollar General, Dollar General probably assumes some liability for shootings that happen while on the job. I also suspect the violent crime is part of the reason other groceries moved away. Being undercut certainly doesn't help, but other groceries were faced with the same economic decision regarding customer safety, as well as damage to their brand from being associated with violent crime. One solution would be to place police officers at or very near these stores. I lived in a college neighborhood at one point, and there was a convenience store that was well known for being robbed almost weekly. The police set up a substation there, and it basically vanished. On the other hand, that was one store, not an entire chain, and it was the campuses PD that set it up. And campus PD had precious little else to do at night other than rounding up underage drinkers.
  - edmundsauto 6y ago
    It's also unclear whether the police substation discouraged the crimes or pushed them down the street.
liptongreentea 6y ago
> One of the clearer examples of the headline and tone trying to sell the writer's preferred narrative even when the actual facts presented undermine that narrative. So... fake news?
fzeroracer 6y ago
This is the Walmart problem made worse and I'd recommend you read this article [1]. The problem is multi-faceted: When a discount chain comes in, it often does so at the cost of what remaining local business exists. Because discount chains operate at a much larger scale than local businesses, that means not only can they sell things at far lower rates but they can also do things that would destroy a local business. The example brought up in the article is that having people steal your goods and money is baked into your losses. They can operate with little security or care about the store itself, increasing revenue and further pushing out local businesses. When cities suffer from industrialization and suburban flight, discount chains swoop in like economic vampires, draining and destroying what's left until there's either nothing left or they're the sole business in town. This isn't an easy problem to solve because both of the answers to it would require doing something that Americans seem to generally hate. The first would be subsidizing smaller businesses so that they can compete with larger ones or opening local government-owned store [2] but that tends to invoke cries of socialism or complaints about taxes. The second option is to admit that these cities are dying and encourage people to instead move to economic centers, but people are stubborn and there's growing resentment towards larger cities. So what's left is the problem illustrated in the parent article. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happened-when-walmart-left https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happene... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-florida-food-desert-city-owned-grocery-store/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-flo...
- prostoalex 6y ago
  Some US cities have moved to ban dollar stores entirely https://psmag.com/social-justice/to-save-a-neighborhood-ban-a-dollar-store https://psmag.com/social-justice/to-save-a-neighborhood-ban-...
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
> what discount chains do to poor communities is act as the only provider of goods competing in an environment dominated by multinational corporations which all utilize complex supply chains (offshore companies / transfer pricing aka tax avoidance) , there is only 1 strategy left for competing. It dates back to 2 brothers[1] from the UK meatpacking industry in 1915. This strategy is: Squeeze both the consumer and the producer and siphon profits from the middle: From "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World"[2] > The Vesteys’ basic formula for gaining market power—squeeze them at the producer end, squeeze them at the consumer end, and push all the proﬁts into the middle—was a philosophy that they also deployed, with astonishing success, in the area of tax. It is a formula that underlies the size and power of multinational corporations today. In those early days the tax haven world was in its infancy, and governments were groping in the dark to understand and to tax emerging multinational corporations. (They still are.) Relatively few tax havens existed then, focusing mostly on the ﬁnancial aﬀairs of extremely wealthy individuals. Rich Europeans looked primarily to Switzerland, while wealthy Britons tended to use the nearby Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. what is described in this thread is just a symptom of this. What is so damaging is that if you want to compete against multinationals and be more than just a mom-and pop shop it is now the _only_ game in town. [1] Vestey Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestey_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestey_Group [2] Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_and_the_Men_Who_Stole_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_a...
armonraphiel 6y ago
From personal experience, there are plenty of communities with options that still see dollar stores moving in. Each one I’ve seen built was an attempt to drastically raise the value of zoned lots before selling it off as part of a package deal.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  Yeah, personally it seems dollar stores seem to often appear as "gap fillers" to prevent strip malls from dying like bleaching corral after the anchor store closes. The only other "empty blight stopgap" I have seen are storage places which essentially mean the place gave up on retail traffic anyway.

by jaspax 6y ago

nrp 6y ago

I started reading the article with the same viewpoint you have, but I found the arguments reasonably persuasive. Dollar General and similar are willing to sell goods (apparently profitably) to communities that would otherwise have access to little to nothing locally. This is good. At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. The key question left unaddressed in the rather long article is whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe, or whether it's callousness and profit optimization on the parts of the companies. "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities.

lopmotr 6y ago
Isn't it the police's responsibility to prevent violent crime? Perhaps they just need more policing. How does a shop prevent a person from shooting somebody else in its carpark? Even then, won't they just shoot each other in the street outside the carpark instead? Without the shop, won't they shoot each other at home? It's hard to see that it's causing crime rather than just being the place where inevitable crime happens more often.
- chii 6y ago
  > prevent violent crime? well, i don't think that's ever the mandate of the police - they are there to punish after the fact, not prevent before the event.
  - lordnacho 6y ago
    This is like saying the health authorities have no interest in what you eat, they just treat you after you show up with a heart attack.
  - ARandomerDude 6y ago
    This is an overly simplistic view. If law enforcement isn't a deterrent, even in principle, why do it?
    - baddox 6y ago
      The fact that the view leads you to ask “why do it?” does not mean that it is an overly simplistic view.
  - cheesecracker 6y ago
    What a nonsensical belief.
    - donw 6y ago
      A belief upheld by the supreme court: Warren v. District of Columbia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...
      - aliante 6y ago
        Nope. Just that police are not liable for failing to prevent crime.
fuckyah 6y ago
Is it the job of the store to keep people safe or your underfunded/defunded police?
core-questions 6y ago
> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. Have you seen some of the very glassed-in sorts of "safe" stores that exist in high crime areas? Tons of bulletproof glass, nothing directly accessible without asking the cashier. It doesn't scale to any kind of a store where sales are made by people walking around and seeing items and being inspired to buy them. It only works for gas stations and restaurants, for the most part, and even then it's a hassle for the staff. > whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe Never mind economics, it might just be logistically impossible unless you invest heavily in security personnel, who really won't do very much in the event of any kind of more serious criminal action. Food deserts, etc. form in high crime areas because the crime drives them away. The current anti-police attitude is going to make this worse in the short term; I would like to hear what people are actually suggesting as an alternative to enable these stores to stay without continually suffering so much shrink as to make it hard to make payroll. > "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities. What does that last bit actually mean? How do stolen items "externalize as violence"? It sounds like GPT-3 regurgitated a sociology textbook.
- austhrow743 6y ago
  Externalities are costs of doing business that you the business don't directly pay. Their point seems pretty straight forward to me. What part of it is confusing?
  - core-questions 6y ago
    Could you maybe just restate it? How are stolen items costs that businesses "don't directly pay"?
    - CharlesHorsey 6y ago
      OP said: > "Shrink" is of course accounted for in the economics, but not worker and customer safety, which is externalized as violence and loss in the communities. So they're saying that the business does pay the cost of stolen items ("shrink") but not the cost of the violence, which is borne by its victims.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
Retail has terrible margins. It's financials are public, see the single digit margins: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DG/dollar-general/... It obviously is economically infeasible to make the stores safe. Any store in the neighborhoods where the dollar stores are would find it economically infeasible.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Still way better margins than a grocery store (1-3% IIRC). Do you have any idea how turnover might compare?
kgwgk 6y ago
> The key question left unaddressed in the rather long article is whether it's economically infeasible to make the stores safe, or whether it's callousness and profit optimization on the parts of the companies. Anyway, if they did more they would be criticized for treating all their customers as criminals and creating a self-perpetuating threatening environment or whatever.
- malux85 6y ago
  What a load of rubbish. Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door, and nobody is claiming they are treating all customers as criminals. Everyone understands they are there to stop the few malicious people from stealing or causing trouble.
  - kgwgk 6y ago
    "Is receipt checking a practice that violates civil rights while treating customers as criminals until proven otherwise, or are retailers simply trying to cut shrink and avoid passing on the related costs to the same people who are loudly complaining?" https://securitytoday.com/blogs/reaction/2011/03/the-right-and-wrong-of-receipt-checking.aspx https://securitytoday.com/blogs/reaction/2011/03/the-right-a...
  - rascul 6y ago
    > Most medium and large retail stores have a security guard at the door I have only ever seen this at Best Buy. Perhaps it varies from on area to another, though.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Even then that guard isn't going to try to stop people, even obvious offenders. They're there to get a good look at you on the way out, and spook the low-effort thieves who may chicken out. Workers comp for 3-5 stitches and a day or two off of work would cost way more than just letting someone walk out with a couple Nintendo games or some headphones.
  - 6y ago
zozbot234 6y ago
> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. Making the dollar store a "safe space" for customers would mean having lots of armed guards around and bulletproof glass everywhere. Also every item behind the counter, like in a general store of old. You just know that the New Yorker would find ways to complain about that, too.
- chmod775 6y ago
  But that can't be an acceptable solution, can it? If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country. You might as well not pay taxes then.
  - r8ru4rbfhfu 6y ago
    I'm not clear on why any responsibility falls on dollar store here either way. Dollar store didn't place unsafe individuals in the community and dollar store didn't have a say in structuring the police force. Is the idea that if you're going to do business in a crap neighborhood then you become responsible for fixing it?
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    None of those points follow or make sense. > If you have to hire armed security to keep your place of business and your customers safe, you're doing business in a dysfunctional country Welp might as well just move the dollar general to mexico! Those poor people will have to travel there to buy things. > You might as well not pay taxes then That makes sense if you're a charity, but dollar general is a for-profit org -- and does make a profit.
curryst 6y ago
> At the same time, they are unwilling or unable to create an environment that is safe for the folks in the communities working or shopping there. One thing I'm curious about is the liability for having armed security guards. I'm operating under the assumption that unarmed security guards are unlikely to have a real impact on the armed robbery rate, so I'm assuming that armed guards are what we're discussing here. Quick Googling says Dollar General generates $2.3 billion in profit per year, across "over 16000 stores" from their site. So the average yearly profit per store is roughly $143k (which is surprisingly low to me). A security guard per store is going to eat a lot of that, but it's probably feasible to do. I think the bigger question is whether Dollar General could potentially bear any liability in the event one of their security guards shot someone, and I would be stunned if they didn't bear any liability. Even the legal costs associated with winning a wrongful death suit could eat an entire year's profits. I strongly suspect that is the reason why they fire any employee who is carrying a handgun. As an agent of Dollar General, Dollar General probably assumes some liability for shootings that happen while on the job. I also suspect the violent crime is part of the reason other groceries moved away. Being undercut certainly doesn't help, but other groceries were faced with the same economic decision regarding customer safety, as well as damage to their brand from being associated with violent crime. One solution would be to place police officers at or very near these stores. I lived in a college neighborhood at one point, and there was a convenience store that was well known for being robbed almost weekly. The police set up a substation there, and it basically vanished. On the other hand, that was one store, not an entire chain, and it was the campuses PD that set it up. And campus PD had precious little else to do at night other than rounding up underage drinkers.
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  It's also unclear whether the police substation discouraged the crimes or pushed them down the street.

liptongreentea 6y ago

> One of the clearer examples of the headline and tone trying to sell the writer's preferred narrative even when the actual facts presented undermine that narrative. So... fake news?

fzeroracer 6y ago

This is the Walmart problem made worse and I'd recommend you read this article [1]. The problem is multi-faceted: When a discount chain comes in, it often does so at the cost of what remaining local business exists. Because discount chains operate at a much larger scale than local businesses, that means not only can they sell things at far lower rates but they can also do things that would destroy a local business. The example brought up in the article is that having people steal your goods and money is baked into your losses. They can operate with little security or care about the store itself, increasing revenue and further pushing out local businesses. When cities suffer from industrialization and suburban flight, discount chains swoop in like economic vampires, draining and destroying what's left until there's either nothing left or they're the sole business in town. This isn't an easy problem to solve because both of the answers to it would require doing something that Americans seem to generally hate. The first would be subsidizing smaller businesses so that they can compete with larger ones or opening local government-owned store [2] but that tends to invoke cries of socialism or complaints about taxes. The second option is to admit that these cities are dying and encourage people to instead move to economic centers, but people are stubborn and there's growing resentment towards larger cities. So what's left is the problem illustrated in the parent article. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happened-when-walmart-left https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happene... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-florida-food-desert-city-owned-grocery-store/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-flo...

prostoalex 6y ago
Some US cities have moved to ban dollar stores entirely https://psmag.com/social-justice/to-save-a-neighborhood-ban-a-dollar-store https://psmag.com/social-justice/to-save-a-neighborhood-ban-...

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

> what discount chains do to poor communities is act as the only provider of goods competing in an environment dominated by multinational corporations which all utilize complex supply chains (offshore companies / transfer pricing aka tax avoidance) , there is only 1 strategy left for competing. It dates back to 2 brothers[1] from the UK meatpacking industry in 1915. This strategy is: Squeeze both the consumer and the producer and siphon profits from the middle: From "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World"[2] > The Vesteys’ basic formula for gaining market power—squeeze them at the producer end, squeeze them at the consumer end, and push all the proﬁts into the middle—was a philosophy that they also deployed, with astonishing success, in the area of tax. It is a formula that underlies the size and power of multinational corporations today. In those early days the tax haven world was in its infancy, and governments were groping in the dark to understand and to tax emerging multinational corporations. (They still are.) Relatively few tax havens existed then, focusing mostly on the ﬁnancial aﬀairs of extremely wealthy individuals. Rich Europeans looked primarily to Switzerland, while wealthy Britons tended to use the nearby Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. what is described in this thread is just a symptom of this. What is so damaging is that if you want to compete against multinationals and be more than just a mom-and pop shop it is now the _only_ game in town. [1] Vestey Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestey_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestey_Group [2] Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_and_the_Men_Who_Stole_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_a...

armonraphiel 6y ago

From personal experience, there are plenty of communities with options that still see dollar stores moving in. Each one I’ve seen built was an attempt to drastically raise the value of zoned lots before selling it off as part of a package deal.

Nasrudith 6y ago
Yeah, personally it seems dollar stores seem to often appear as "gap fillers" to prevent strip malls from dying like bleaching corral after the anchor store closes. The only other "empty blight stopgap" I have seen are storage places which essentially mean the place gave up on retail traffic anyway.