The agenda-pushers infer and insinuate to prepare you:
"Ailing malls shopping for a new identity; Woes surfacing amid decline in spending" by Jenn Abelson, Globe Staff | March 22, 2009
KINGSTON - Independence Mall should be celebrating its 20th birthday this year with fanfare. Instead, the shopping center here, pocked with empty storefronts like missing teeth and rattled by rumors of its demise, has postponed the festivities and is simply trying to survive.
In the past year, the mall has lost two major stores to bankruptcies - Steve & Barry's and Linens 'N Things - and other closings have sent its vacancy rate soaring. Traffic is down and Independence is struggling to attract tenants with the recession and the recent opening of nearby Colony Place, a vast new shopping plaza with more restaurants, convenient parking, and specialized shops....
Never works. Others have tried it, and unless you MANUFACTURE SOMETHING PEOPLE NEED nothing can save towns.
Across the country, ailing malls are attempting to reinvent themselves amid cutbacks in consumer spending, massive store closings, and overbuilding by merchants.... Signs of distress are apparent across Massachusetts....
General Growth Properties, the nation's second-largest mall operator, is on the verge of bankruptcy and has put up for sale a marquee property, Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston....
Malls, the sprawling shopping meccas that Americans first fell in love with 50 years ago, saw its heyday in the 1970s and '80s when hundreds of them were built. These enclosed shopping prairies were the "it" place to be. But malls have faced threats for years with the consolidation of department stores, growing popularity of online shopping, and the emergence of new outdoor venues, such as lifestyle centers. No new enclosed malls have opened in the United States since 2006.
"The mall as we know it is in survival mode," said Robert F. Sheehan, vice president of research at KeyPoint Partners in Burlington. "Some will survive. But how many, how well, and for how long? It's anyone's guess."
In recent years, easy money fueled consumer spending and Americans who tapped out home equity lines and maxed out credit cards helped the country's roughly 1,100 malls thrive and even grow. During that time, mall operators poured billions of dollars into expanding their properties, adding condos and movie theaters.
Not anymore (see Part I)!
But the recession has pounded malls, which concentrate on the kind of discretionary shops that cash-conscious consumers have abandoned. And now, problems that have been festering for years are in the forefront. Developers and mall operators have hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due just as mall merchants - from KB Toys to Wilsons Leather - close shops at an unprecedented pace....
Once again, it ALL COMES back to MONEY SUPPLY, DEBT and BANKS!!!!!!!
But (always a but, if, could be, maybe, still, with thee "newspaper reporters." What is with the EDITORIALIZED NEWS? It's a.k.a. AGENDA-PUSHING ) executives at the Pyramid Cos., which runs Independence Mall, rebuff the notion that the shopping center is closing and say they are planning for a bright future. Some office workers are supposed to move into the space left empty by Linens 'N Things and a local eyebrow threading salon opened in a former Cingular shop. And the mall is hosting its first prom fashion show this afternoon to try to lure customers.....
Yeah, those will SAVE THE MALL and the American economy -- especially the EYEBROW THREADING BUSINESS (pfft)!!!!
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