The view from our recession

[elfs]

The Landing at Renton

I've been doing the grim can't-look-away thing of photographing evidence of the recession, and exhibit #1 has to be The Landing, a four-square-block shopping complex down at Renton.

Renton tentatively opened up a big area between I-405 and one of the Boeing Commercial Airliner plants, which had for years been little more than an abandoned manufacturing wasteland, for commercial development. The first two big buy-ins were from a Frys Electronics and a Lowe's Hardware. Then a Target and a Joe's Sports Equipment big-box opened up across the street.

Bouyed by this success, Renton opened up The Landing, which has a multi-screen theater, an LA Fitness, and four full blocks of smaller retail space.

Well, the Joe's is going out of business, the LA Fitness isn't doing too well, and the smaller retail space is completely unused. There's more retail square footage per capita in the United States than anywhere else in the world, and apparently most retailers don't believe that we need more of it, not down in blue-collar Renton.

Nissan gone down.

The other exhibit of the day is the Nissan dealership. We hear all the time about GM and Chrysler, and how Ford is bravely sticking to its private plan even though it's not going to get any relief and is probably going to get screwed in the end. But the sales market sucks, and "foreign" car dealerships are having just as much trouble moving cars as the domestics.

The Nissan dealership in my town has been hurting for a while. The cars were all gone a few weeks ago, and now the service bays are shut down. Another major contributor to Burien's economy, fallen silent.

Comments

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Yes, soulless strip malls are having a hard time, unless they have well established customers. For myself, I'm grateful that neighborhood shopping districts are weathering the storm well. I know the 85th & Greenwood area is doing OK. The only businesses I have seen close in the past year or so have been the McDonald's (no loss there), The Tullys (again, no loss as there are 3 or 4 independent coffee houses in the neighborhood), a tiny hole in the wall scrap booking shop, The Northside Grill, and a small punk record store (Golden Shower of Hits). The McDonald's and the scrap-booking shop are still empty. The Tullys was replaced by the Pillagers Pub, The Northside was replaced by a little french bar called Gainsbourg, There's a new pho place where Golden Shower was, and Naked City Taphouse opened in a space that was vacant when I moved into the area.

On a separate note, I recommend both Naked City and Gainsbourg.

[tagryn]

For what its worth, I've read a couple of analyzes that say that where we're regressing back to in terms of retail space is actually towards "normal," and the explosion of stores over the past decade or so was the aberration.

[heofmanynames.livejournal.com]

When it comes to retail (and light office-industrial) space, developers and owner/managers seem driven by the "old-and-busted vs. new-hotness" equation - the idea that "business" will flee older properties in order to fill up the dazzling new centers.

One part of the problem is that those older properties WERE the new hotness recently enough to retain full functionality (which is why the 'dazzle' of the new is layed on so thick & played up so forcefully.

Another part of the problem is that rents soar at the new places...but do not fall in the older centers (strips or otherwise); at the same time, fewer resource dollars are allocated to maintenance, clean-up & security at the older places (hey, they're *supposed* to be less desirable, so who cares if they run down?). This puts additional financial pressure on businesses that are *already* small, and have no deep-pockets to carry them through the deterioration of their business habitat. This leads to a situation (starts slow, but ramps up) where "small-business" sees their costs driven up and their traffic driven down - and leases where summary vacation is the only recourse (and I don't mean a week at the beach).

The capper is that tax laws allow the owners/managers of these retail strips/zones/malls/etc to deduct the lost rent on spaces they can't lease from their taxes: This means that eeven the least efficient management of even the least-desirable properties to charge whatever they want - no matter how unreasonable - for empty space...because even though they CAN'T get it from the businesses they're "catering to", they WILL get it as a reduction in taxable income.

The big loser here - as always (this has been going on for DECADES) - is small business, the people with a product, a service, an angle who can't set up shop and go into that business...because only a fool would charge them rents they can actually afford.

The dynamic works the same w/ the big-box stores, too - but they DO have deep pockets - and political clout unmatched by the small, independent business-person - so their "consequences" from all this are simply passed on to the consumer...and business continues as usual.

I live in Atlanta - a big place (75 miles from end to end) - and there is almost as much empty / abandoned space here as there is tenanted space. Much of it is simply uninhabitable, either due to the deterioration of the space/context itself - or due to the deterioration of the area around it (and corresponding loss of traffic, access and basic services).

I think it would be a great stimulus to the economy simply to motivate landlords to adjust their rents to what people can pay.

'Course, NOT destroying natural communities & commercial areas - and NOT replacing them with huge commercial warrens anchored by big-boxes and topped w/ bling - would be good, too.