For Lease/Available/Fore Lease/Available
 

What's going to become of all this empty commercial space, commercial strip centers, vacant store buildings all across the country? How much of it can be converted/rezoned for housing, if at all? And with more online shopping and an upcoming recession, God forbid, there'll even be more empty space.

It's unlikely that a big vacant Kmart can be converted to housing, but who know, perhaps it's possible or an innovative type of housing.

Lol compared to when? Are you too young to remember vacancy rates back in 2009?

The retail meltdown was not so obvious in 2009. Shopping centers even in vibrant places like Austin are hollowing out, not just indoor malls but also large neighborhood strip malls and super centers. I can't imagine what it must be like in cities already struggling with weak economic performance. Add a real recession to that mix, and you have the makings of a commercial real estate bust. In cities or metros with growing populations, one alternative would be to tear down that vacant K-mart or whatever and use the well located real estate for housing or mixed use of some kind. Here in Austin lot of strip shopping along certain corridors have already given way to large four and five story apartment houses. Most try to have some sort of ground floor retail, but many of the tenants tend to be small businesses rather than retail. We have also converted one large inner city shopping mall(Highland Mall) into the flagship campus for Austin Community College and added a lot of housing to the mix. I expect to see more of that going forward as long as the local economy supports the housing market.

For a second there I thought this was a spam thread.

There is nothing you can do about e commerce, that is a cat that is well out of the bag, but, feel free to search for yourself, something like 80% of consumer sales are still done in person at the store.

Its not like this is a new or surprising change, online retailing has been coming for a long time and if your store cant cope then I dont really have sympathy.

Find other uses, find new ways to get people to the store, the days of throwing random junk on shelves and expecting people to show up is never coming back.

I think the topic of this thread is supposed to be about the forest rather than the trees. Reforestation with innovative retailing seems rather unlikely to me.

More will be revealed!

For dead malls in some cities, like Alexandria, VA's Landmark, there are plans to redevelop the valuable land into mixed used developments - retail, entertainment and housing. I think this will happen for many cities, especially in high price areas on the coasts.

How I remember, in Las Vegas, in 2009, the city hit the hardest during the last great recession!

In my neighborhood, a vacant commercial Strip, the evangelical ministers moved in, 4 store front churches right next to one another, all pleading for "customers". Down the street, in another commercial Strip, 2 more storefront churches. A big 2 story Bank of America building was converted into a church.

The economy recovered, and the churches closed their doors, except one.

So that should leave a hint or 2 about how to survive the next recession?;)

The malls will be replaced by Light manufacturing factories to replace cheap Chinese imports. fully automated facilities using state of the art technology, funded by the vast profits American companies realized with outsourcing

The next deep recession, will likely be much worse for commercial/retail space given the evolution of technology and the growth of online shopping/banking/investing/food delivery services/even pharmacies -- even gas stations with plug-ins gaining market share.

Nobody is safe.

LOL. And then you woke up.

I think they should be torn down and turned into butterfly meadows.

Vineyards for urban woke folk to wine taste and post selfies?