Depending on where you are, land is not actually that cheap where these suburban stores exist. The suburbs of New York and the suburbs of Cleveland look very di

Depending on where you are, land is not actually that cheap where these suburban stores exist. The suburbs of New York and the suburbs of Cleveland look very different in terms of land price. One contributing factor might be local tax policies. American politicians are all about bringing jobs to their local area, and so have been willing to cut very generous tax breaks in return for, say, opening a store that provides jobs. However, American metropolitan areas have very fragmented local areas, so suburb A and suburb B and suburb Z across town are all doing this. This basically encouraged a lot of these commercial developments to throw up cheap buildings that wouldn't last long; once it was showing its age they'd just take the next suburb's tax break and start over. You can only repeat this trick so much, though.