The Tolling of the Bell
On the afternoon of Independence Day Matt and I paid a visit to Flatiron Crossing, a Denver-area shopping mall. I was going to post this when I got back, but I was lazy, and kept putting it off until now.
Flatiron Crossing, your days are numbered.
This is a young mall, as malls go. It opened in the summer of 2000, to much fanfare. Located in the then-growing high technology corridor along US-36 between Denver and Boulder, the mall's neighborhoods include the headquarters of Level3, a fiber-optics company, Sun Microsystems' second-largest facility outside of their California headquarters, and StorageTek, a maker of computer backup systems (soon to merge with Sun). The demographics were marvellous--the mall would pull from highly-educated Boulder, where the aging Crossroads Mall would soon be closing, and from the vast new affluent subdivisions in Boulder County, Jefferson County, and even Weld County. These subdivisions--Rock Creek chief among them--are "planned" communities, which means they're sprawl, but they're pretty sprawl, with lovely parkways planted with trees and dramatic ornamental shrubs and grasses, and bronze sculptures of small white children at play. When you drive over the hill on US-36 just past Flatiron Crossing, you see vast miles of rooftops filling what were, until about 10 years ago, empty green fields. Former Coloradoans who come back for a visit are of course appalled at this sight. So are those of us who haven't moved away.
But back to the mall itself. When it opened, Flatiron wasn't 100% leased--most new malls aren't. Even in the golden era of enclosed malls--those 20 or so years between 1965 and The Cosby Show--they were never 100% full. But, everyone assumed, more new stores would open, and the mall would become the new economic engine for the northwest quadrant of the Denver area (replacing the aging Westminster Mall). But something went wrong. In the aftermath of the dot-com crash (which happened a few months before the mall opened), not many new stores opened beyond the original mix. The mall started missing its sales projections (of course, mall ownership put the best face on the bad news, and most mall shoppers really didn't care about how well the merchants were doing anyway).
Now the mall itself is showing serious signs of decline. One of the anchor spots is empty, because Lord & Taylor (a division of the seriously ailing May Company) decided that it shouldn't be in Colorado at all, and closed all three Denver area stores). When you see the former L&T space, it's a black void--they didn't bother to cover over the glass front. Outside the mall is "The Village," a "street" of shops that aren't connected by an enclosed space but instead face onto a landscaped block-long passageway. This was the most difficult part to lease, because it's cold in the winter, and this part of the Denver area is prone to especially high winds year-round thanks to its location near the foothills and its high elevation. But now the "Village" is emptying out in a serious way. It still has its AMC 14-plex, and its Borders. But Organized Living is having a going-out-of-business sale. Several other stores have closed too; the entire "street" is only about 55% full. The mall ownership is trying to fight back by re-doing the landscaping, and upgrading the paving from plain cement to colored cement bricks.
Back inside the mall, it's clear the owners are desperate to fill the space with anything they can. A former high-tech electronics store (I think it was Bose, but it could have been Bang & Olafsen) is now filled with ugly sparkly party gowns for big-haired suburban Republican divas to wear to their Junior League balls. The shop owner didn't even bother to remodel the space--it looks like it should be selling speakers, and the carpet looks worn out. The mall is starting to get several of these kinds of tenants--locals who try, but will probably fail, at making a go of it in what have to be fairly expensive spaces. And the kiosks that so irritatingly fill the mall's corridors (irritating because they get in everyone's way) are starting to look especially junky. One is devoted entirely to Tupperware, another to $10 sunglasses. In front of Restoration Hardware the mall has allowed a local kitchen remodeler to set up a mock kitchen counter. In short, the mall--carefully designed to look like a giant mountain lodge, with tasteful slate floors, grand wooden columns, and whimsical light fixtures--is turning into an "anything goes" environment.
Of course, that's nature's way. Weeds will fill the spaces in between your petunias seemingly overnight if you let them. And even if they're likely going to fail, I say "more power" to these local entrepreneurs who think they can make a go of it in a place filled with national chain stores that primarily cater to fickle teenagers.
But what this highlights is the ultimate unsustainability of the amount and variety of retail choices we Americans have. Since much of what gets bought is paid for years later--average credit card debt is more than $10,000--at some point most people will have to get off the decades-long spending spree we've been on, and start paying for better schools and better transportation systems, and, for that matter, paying for the stuff they've bought, taken home, used, and thrown away.
That this is happening so soon at Flatiron--it used to be that most malls were good for 15-20 years before being torn down--may be an indication that the process is accelerating, that the chickens are coming home to roost (to use that Ward Churchillian phrase--he teaches just 10 miles away) (and no, I'm not a fan) sooner rather than later.
Yesterday the New York Times carried an article about how strong the retail sector was for the month of June, led (for a change) by Wal-Mart. Sure it was strong--there was, according to the retail gurus, a "pent-up demand" leftover from May, when the weather around the country was less conducive to shopping. But it won't be strong forever.
1 Comments:
Malls are the cathedrals for modern americans.
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