Regency Court Closings

[IrvAdams]

Maybe Regency Mall could be re-purposed successfully such as the short-lived Grand Boulevard Mall which is now mostly an educational institution.

[tlemans]

I wonder if the Regency Square Mall became an outlet mall with upscale outlets like Neiman Marcus Last Call sort of like the Dolphin Mall in Miami. What if it had stores that are not offered at SJTC or The Avenues. I wonder if that would bring it back to life.

[thelakelander]

This was done with Philips Mall in the late 1980s/early 1990s and it failed miserably.

I think the outlets in St. Augustine already have this need covered on a regional basis.  The growth of places like Ross, TJ Maxx, Stein Mart, Marshall's, etc. probably don't help either.

[tlemans]

Thanks Lakelander. I wasn't aware that this had been tried before.

[Glenn Caton]

Several of the commenters pointed out the particular causes:

Decline in national economy due to the poorly considered move toward globalism is destroying the economies of the developed world while overwhelming that of economies in the undeveloped world.

Continued bottom feeding of the local economy. Political leadership here works to attract jobs at any cost. These businesses do not add tax revenues due to the sweetheart deals made to attract them. They pay such bad wages that their employees gravitate toward low cost existing housing which add to neighborhood tax funded burdens like conversions and expansion to waste water systems, and reconstruction of streets. These poorly paid employees do not patronize shops like Dillard's.

Continued toleration of sprawl, both residential and commercial continues to deteriorate Jacksonville. Defocussed development makes sustainability in property values difficult to impossible. Adding new development in this time of delusional economics is very poorly considered, at best, and continues to massively burden all infrastructure at a time where there is ever less money to deal with those burdens.

SJTC and its Northside counterpart are doomed to go the same way as Regency, in time.

The salvation of Regency Point, and Arlington, will come from home owners determining to stay in place and improve their homes and neighborhoods. It was that attitude that saved Riverside. It is an attitude that continues to struggle in Springfield. Densifying and redevelopment is what saves legacy development.

Unless their is a major change in our political system, nationally, I do not see a resurgance in the national economy that will drive rapid redevelopment and local economic strengthening. The major focus points of capital are too invested in the speculative crapshoot of the stock market to put their money to work to produce anything of substance that meets the needs of the only remaining body of workers that have the cash left to buy. We have permitted the capitalists to outsource more than twenty-five trillion dollars over the last fifty years in return for getting about four trillion in profit stuck in accounts outside the country. They won't repatriate that money because it would be badly eroded by taxes. If we are to re-industrialize, based on renewable energy, it will require the citizens working through the government to do it. If we don't, the economic slide will continue and accelerate. As that happens, the deterioration of Regency Point will be a trivial consideration.

[pierre]

I am surprised that Sports Authority stayed open that long. Went there a few times and it was a ghost town.

[Glenn Caton]

I was just thinking that one of the problems with the stores in the Regency Court and Regency Point areas were that they seemed to lack major differentiation from other stores in other locations. For instance: what was Sports Authority doing that wasn't being done as well or better by Dick's, Gander Mountain, and Acadamy.

Does anyone else think that the race to the bottom only produces losers?

[pierre]

I was just thinking that one of the problems with the stores in the Regency Court and Regency Point areas were that they seemed to lack major differentiation from other stores in other locations. For instance: what was Sports Authority doing that wasn't being done as well or better by Dick's, Gander Mountain, and Acadamy.

Does anyone else think that the race to the bottom only produces losers?

I think for that shopping center, it is/was convenience or lack thereof. I don't know what it was like 10-15 years ago. But now it is not the easiest shopping plaza to get to. If you are on Southside going north, you don't see any of the storefronts. And as you drive by, there are no exits for a mile or so. If you are going south on Soutside, I can't think of the easiest way to get there.

[fieldafm]

I think for that shopping center, it is/was convenience or lack thereof.

Regency used to be a regional draw.  It drew shoppers from not only the Arlington area, but also from Nassau County and into South Georgia. 

Now, River City Marketplace fills that niche.  Regency didn't re-invent itself when it had the opportunity, and RCMP is now one of the hottest new retail centers in the Southeast.

[thelakelander]

^Pretty much. RCM and the new power centers are doing to Regency what Regency did to Gateway in the 70s/80s.

[thelakelander]

I'd look it up but I'm on my way to Miami at the moment. In 1967, you also had a lot less competition. Then, Regency was the cream of the crop. Now it won't crack the top five of viable regional centers in Jax.

[thelakelander]

Oh, it's in competition. Just look at the anchors and who they compete against. That area can't support a million square foot mall by itself. It couldn't in its heyday and it sure can't now.

[Glenn Caton]

Good points, Stephen!

Excess retail space in the face of a contracting retail sector.

One of the things that has driven retail out of the malls has been the cut out of gross sales that mall developers take.I have no idea what it is now, but it used to exceed 5% of gross. When you are in an 11% business, and you have to cough up 6-8% plus 3% for credit cards, you are now in a 1% business. Even if your rent is higher in a strip center, your landlord may not want a taste of the gross. At those profit levels, you have to do a hell of a lot of volume.

Additionally, you are not running your customers past a bunch of potential competitors.

The transportation problems you bring up are the natural and inevitable byproducts of sprawl. Think of the benefits of four twenty story parking garages and a climate controled regional bus terminal at Regency. You could use all those acres of parking for additional floorspace, as needed.

The downside to this strategy: you have to turn down a developer.

[coredumped]

But if you took all the retail expansion into regency court, and the area behind regency (Ross, Bealls, Home Depot, Lowes, all the restaurants, etc, and the unwise development over where books a million is (tgifridays, starbucks, panera, best buy) and you compressed it back into regency mall, then you would actually have a superpower of a shopping experience again.

That is an excellent and important point - there's still a LOT in the Regency area, I would argue more than the avenues. The problem is that it's so far spread out. I think you're on to something Stephen, if something drastic were to happen like plowing down the old part of the mall and maybe talking in to a lot of those retailers to move to the new regency mall you'd have quite the retail outlet.

I don't know what the incentive would be for them to move over there. There's quite a bit of traffic on the expressway where it meets atlantic, so from a visibility standpoint it's a no-brainer.

[thelakelander]

What's around Regency isn't unlike what you would encounter around most malls across the country that have been open longer than a decade (except half of the strip malls near Regency have high vacancy rates themselves). While consolidation into the mall would be cool for Regency's sake, it's pretty unrealistic.  You won't find many malls anchored with a Home Depot, Lowes, or Bealls. These chains are more likely to tear down old malls and build their stores over the old footprints. These chains and the owners of the strip centers they are located in have no financial desire or incentive to consolidate into a +40 year old enclosed traditional mall.

I think Regency is done, as far as it being 100% filled with retail in its current footprint. Sears and JCPenney (as retail chains) are on their last leg, Dillard's already gave up on operating a regular store and Belk is about to leave for Sleiman's new center at Atlantic and Kernan.  At this point, I don't know what the right mix is for the center but I seriously doubt it's 100% retail.