Posted Sep 2, 2012, 12:10 PM
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Join Date: May 2011
Location: St. John's
Posts: 1,650
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If shopping malls are dying, why can't I get a parking space?
An interesting article about retail shopping in St. John's
Source: CBC, Sept 2, 2012
Quote:
On Tuesday morning, I made a coffee run and — perhaps because of the caffeine — gained a little insight into the retail scene in St. John's.
I had headed out for Starbucks on Kenmount Road, to pick up a latte and a few coffees for coworkers. The drive back took a little longer than I would have liked; even though it was a Tuesday morning, circling around the Avalon Mall was a slow-motion conga line of cars.
While inching along, I noticed the long queues of vehicles hoping to take a turn into the lots off O'Leary and then Thorburn, and how all the spaces seemed to be filling up.
And it struck me: if shopping malls are dying, why are the parking lots at the Avalon Mall so often packed? I'm exaggerating in the headline about not being able to find a space, but I've more than once had to drive around to find one, even outside of the mayhem that is the Christmas shopping season.
In the last few months, I've read one news article after another that have used words like "dinosaur," "dying," "dwindling" and "moribund" to describe that all-too-familiar component of modern life, the shopping centre. Granted, most of the headlines are coming from the U.S., where the retail industry has been in more of a tailspin than in Canada.
Yet it is assumed in the business press that the very idea of the enclosed shopping centre has been in decline for years, and is ready to expire.
When the research company Green Street Advisors produced the sobering prediction that as many as 10 per cent of the 1,000 or so malls in the U.S. would disappear in the next decade (many of them to be bulldozed), the industry responded by saying the call was too conservative.....
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfou...malls-902.html
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