Since I had to wait for an inspector to check out my newly-installed sewer connection (all done but they paying, finally...), I took the morning off from work. It was a pleasant surprise when the inspector came relatively early, leaving me with a few hours of prime mid-workweek normal-business-hours time to burn. I decided to get a much-needed haircut, then hit the food court at Northtown Mall and have lunch like a normal human being (as opposed to my regular routine of snagging something at a drive-through to scarf down at my desk).
That done, I still had some time left, so I decided to meander the mall. Now, I know we've been in down times for a while, and I fully expected a number of vacant storefronts, as I've seen elsewhere. More interesting, though, were the odd "stores" that have taken root under these adverse conditions. Coffee-bars are barely worth mentioning, except how many there were. The gym was a bit odd, but suitably clean and "up-scale-looking" to not throw me too hard. The storefront that, I believe, serves as a staging area for indoor paintball games, that was more than a little odd. The strangest, though, had to be the convenience store right in the center of the mall.
Things have changed at Northtown, and are likely changing all over... what used to be a somewhat-exclusive locale for a shop, where shoppers were welcomed while loiterers (read: teenagers) were discouraged, is now desperate enough for foot traffic to set up an entire, manned soda-and-snacks convenience store in the heart of the mall to encourage loitering, on the off chance that somebody might decide to buy something. It's seems strange to me now, but I guess time will tell whether it's a strategy that pays off for the mall in the long term.
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2 comments:
The paint ball center still freaks me out the most. "Hey, let's meet at the paintball center next to Macy's"
Yeah, that's pretty high up there on the strange-o-meter, but I can sort of follow the logic... large space, being rented out for relatively cheap thanks to a desperate landlord, and easily findable, that adds up on the business side.
The convenience store... that says that there's enough traffic there that's there long enough to want to nosh, but even the food court is too pricey/healthy for 'em. On the part of the shop owner, it's a shrewd bet that they can fleece the teens that congregate there, in spite of various vending machines throughout the mall. On the landlord's side, though, I don't see how that helps them sell their remaining spaces to prospective tenants.
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