Retail Apocalypse- May 2018- Sears closing 72 more stores

In this just out CNBC article, the department store that clothed me in Toughskins as a kid, Sears, is shutting down another 72 stores.  That's after 1,000 Sears/Kmart locations that have already closed.  According to the article, many industry people think that Sears is close to filing for bankruptcy.  Here's a map of those stores closing down.  The closest to here seems to be either Charlotte or Spartenburg, SC area (hover isn't working right now).

That could hit home here in this area.  The local mall here in Winston-Salem, Hanes Mall, is one of the "average American malls" that's still doing really well.  In the struggling shopping mall world, the high end, luxury malls are mostly doing well.  The malls in really small cities are often the ones in the "dead mall" world.  There's no official designation for what constitutes a dead mall, but one with 70% or less of the shops filled (or 30%+ empty), is the sort of accepted threshold.

The Hanes Mall here is in the middle, which is why I refer to it as an"average American mall."  Some of these across the country are really struggling, some are doing just fine.  Hanes is one that's doing well.  But three of its anchor stores are Sears, J.C. Penney's, and Macy's.  J.C. Penney's has been struggling for years, and many people think its days are really numbered.  Now Sears has industry people thinking it might be close to bankruptcy.  Macy's has closed a lot of stores in its downsizing, but is definitely in better shape than those two.  If Sears and Penney's bite the dust, malls that are now doing well, like Hanes Mall here, will find themselves quickly in a tough spot.

What would you do with an empty store in a mall?  Or a whole Dead Mall?  The retail world is looking for really good ideas.  Your idea might be one.  My best ideas look something like this.  Yes, that's a store in a mall, The Block of Orange in Orange, California.  But that's just MY idea.  Throw your ideas in my comments on Facebook.  They may be much better than mine.  Here's a little contest that takes place in this same mall "store" every year.

What will we do with all those empty buildings?

This still of the thrashed escalator area at Rolling Acres Mall is iconic to many now.  This 2014 clip was an early look at what's now called the Retail Apocalypse.  A quick online search will show a consensus of articles and videos listing thousands of stores that have closed and people expecting about 400 entire shopping malls to close within the next five years.  That's if we DON'T have a recession anytime soon.  On a timeline basis alone, we're due for a recession any time now. 

While thousands of new stores have opened, more than 6,700 retail chain stores have closed in 2017 alone.  There were thousands more in the past few years.  There are a bunch of different reasons for this.  This Bloomberg News article (Nov. 2017) adds crazy amounts of debt to the picture of retail stores losing ground to online sales, and the millennials' penchant for seeking experiences over piles of material goods.  Any way we look at it, there are tens of millions of square feet under roof becoming empty.  That's in addition to all the old factories and warehouses from decades of manufacturing decline. It looks like that this year's closing stores are just the beginning.

I happened to be born just a few miles from Rolling Acres Mall, the one in the clip above, in Akron, Ohio.  I followed my parents around that mall, and many others, as a kid.  This mall has been demolished.  But hundreds more are still standing, and the term "dead mall" is part of our vernacular now.  There's a dead mall, completely empty, fifteen miles from me right now.  I'm sitting in the McDonald's in the parking lot of another mall that's packed right now with Christmas shoppers.  But it's definitely not packed the rest of the year.  The mall behind me is doing better than most.  But two of its anchor department stores are Sears and J.C. Penney's, which are both struggling.  For now, though, it's still alive and kicking. 

My point here is that we have a HUGE amount of buildings of all kinds standing empty in this country.  We have a lot more buildings that will become empty in the coming years.  So...

What are we going to do with all that space?

Here are some of my favorite ideas:

Indoor Skatepark- Van's store/skatepark- Orange, CA- large, two story mall store
Indoor Skatepark with Amazing Art- Iianera, Spain- old church
Art Colony- Santa Fe Art Colony- Los Angeles, CA- old industrial buildings
Indoor Mountain Bike/BMX Park- Ray's MTB- Cleveland, Ohio- 100,000+ sq.ft. factory
Indoor Dirt BMX Park- Burlington Bike Park- Burlington, Washington- warehouse
Indoor (underground) Mountain Bike Park- Louisville Mega Cavern, Louisville, KY- old mine
Indoor Ropes Course/Zip Lines- Lousiville Mega Cavern
Indoor Wood BMX Park- Daniel Dhers Action Sports Complex- Holly Springs, NC- warehouse
BMX/Skateboard/Gymnastics Summer Camp- Woodward East, Woodward, PA- warehouses
Indoor Climbing Gym- Allez Up- Montreal, Quebec, Canada- old sugar silos
Martial Arts Tricking Practice Gym- Various dojos/gyms- warehouse/industrial spaces
Indoor Parkour/Freerunning Course- Unknown location, warehouse
Indoor Slack Line- Somewhere in Canada, eh- dining room
Indoor Snowboard Park- Montana Snow Center- Westerhoven, Netherlands- warehouse
Indie Art Gallery/Performance space- AAA Electra 99- Anaheim, CA- industrial space
Independent Theater- Center Stage Theater- Naperville, IL- warehouse
Public Library- McAllen, TX- old Walmart store
$1000 Movie Stage- Unknown- old barn
Privately Owned Movie Studio- Tyler Perry Studios- Atlanta, GA- decommissioned Army base