By David MacDonald T raditionally, when your child goes off to college you have some redecorating to do. Maybe you have a home office in mind. Maybe a gym. A guest room. A games room. Maybe a complete remodel and you give yourself that green- house-spa you’ve always dreamed of. The bottom line is, you’ve got plans. But what happens when Sears or Toys R Us or Best Buy moves out of the local mall? According to Amanda Nicholson, a professor of retail practice at Syracuse University, these nest fliers are leaving behind millions of square feet of unoccupied mall space and scrambling property managers. But there is a simple solution.
“We don’t need all the mall space we have just for shopping,” Nicholson told CNBC’s Kellie Ell in March.
For Nicholson, the future of many North American shopping malls lies in adopting a mixed-use experience which integrates residential units, health clubs, grocery stores and upscale restaurants.
There still is life in brick-and-mortar stores despite the fact that so many consumers are happily lost in the Amazon. In 2017, retail sales across the board grew just over four percent.
“The fact is that people are still spending money on eating and going out and shopping,” Nicholson explained. “They want to socialize. They’re still human. “But they want to do it in a way that is fundamentally different than what we were doing 40 years ago in a one-level mall with a smelly food court in the center.”
21
MAY 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs