NEW YORK TIMES: …Premature obituaries for the shopping mall have been appearing since the late 1990s, but the reality today is more nuanced, reflecting broader trends remaking the American economy. With income inequality continuing to widen, high-end malls are thriving, even as stolid retail chains like Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney falter, taking the middle- and working-class malls they anchored with them.
“It is very much a haves and have-nots situation,” said D. J. Busch, a senior analyst at Green Street. Affluent Americans “will keep going to Short Hills Mall in New Jersey or other properties aimed at the top 5 or 10 percent of consumers. But there’s been very little income growth in the belly of the economy.”…
Instead, the fundamental problem for malls is a glut of stores in many parts of the country, the result of a long boom in building retail space of all kinds… (more)
EDITOR: Is history about to repeat itself, this time Park City going the way of downtown Lancaster?
We look around at the retail space constructed over the past decade and the recent sale and planning of huge commercial sites in the vicinity of Red Rose Commons. Plans are underway in various townships that cumulatively may double retail space in the region.
A half century ago there was a tacit understanding among the Lancaster Establishment and township boards to obstruct the development of community shopping centers in order to protect downtown Lancaster. Ironically, it was this huge built up demand that was the seed for Park City.
Today there seems to be little restraint when it comes to commercial land planning and zoning. Sites previously zoned agriculture and industrials have been rezoned commercial. As they are developed, we may reach a tipping point, where many prestigious and popular stores move out of Park City to new locations. Vacancies beget more vacancies; the mall ceases to be attractive and exciting.
Two things to keep in mind: Park City is in the City of Lancaster and both the city and the School District of Lancaster are heavily reliant upon its real estate assessment. Once vacancies begin to occur, the market value will drop, the assessments will have to be lowered, and tax revenue will fall off precipitously… entirely if the mall closes.
And as Park City declines, the attractiveness of stores and very uses of the space will alter. It might not take long for it to become a crime infested suburban ‘slum.’
The first step should be an understanding among the various local governments that there is to be no more large tracts commercially zoned .
NewsLanc has been warning about this for several years. It is important that LNP begins to pay heed.
