Quote:
Originally Posted by anthonyk
I hear of lots of dead malls in the US, curious what causes the difference in vacancy rates between US & Canada.
|
What causes the difference in vacancy rates? Population size is a big driver. The last 20-30 years have seen major consolidation and bankruptcy in US retail. It used to be they had several mid-high end department stores like Macy's but through mergers and consolidations they became a single brand. As a simple example Dayton's was one brand, Marshall Fields a second brand, and Macy's a third brand. In some cities you may have ended up with all three being in the same regional shopping area and possibly two or more even being within the same mall. Well you don't need a Macy's anchoring every corner of a mall so some vacancies happened that way.
Also 2008 was brutal on US retail. I recall seeing a secondary shopping center in one city that had smaller anchors Borders, Circuit City and Linen and Things. Two of those three didn't escape 2008 and the third wasn't far behind. Add in those sort of developments also commonly had a Blockbuster...
So yeah the US was a lot more overbuilt to start with before consolidation happened. But Canada has a much smaller population base, less than just the state of California, and a much wider geography there was less opportunity for stores to develop here. The closures of Zeller's, Eaton's and Sears though definitely still was felt, it was just a lighter gut punch than what happened in the USA.