What happens when the anchor leaves? Pretty much the same thing that happened to downtown when its anchors left.
QuoteWhat happens to shopping centers when a big store like Publix or Winn-Dixie leaves? Nothing good.
By Roger BullStory updated at 1:00 AM on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2010
The new Publix at the corner of University Boulevard West and St. Augustine Road is a bustling place. The parking lot always seems to be full of cars, the aisles full of shoppers.
Across the street, things are a little quieter. The space where Publix left stands empty. Most of the parking lot is empty, and Stein Mart has a "We're open" banner hanging in front.
Up at Monument and McCormick roads, the Food Lion is gone from Monument Landing shopping center. And so are most of the other businesses.
Walmart and Winn-Dixie moved out of the San Pablo Family Center on Beach Boulevard, and most of the spaces in-between now stand empty.
It's not an unusual site around Jacksonville. The main anchor in a strip shopping center either closes or moves to build something newer and bigger and leaves a big, black hole, like front teeth missing from a broken smile.
And the rest of the center struggles.
"Anything that creates traffic creates business," said Toney Sleiman, president of Sleiman Enterprises, which owns a couple of dozen shopping centers around Jacksonville. "If anyone tells you it doesn't affect it, they're wrong.
"The impact is bad."
Not only do the anchor's customers not come anymore, but its employees are gone. A typical Publix, he said, has 300 employees.
"But you try to get other tenants," Sleiman said. "You try to do something with it."
It's not always easy. It's been almost 14 years since all the Pic N' Save stores closed in Jacksonville, and some of those still aren't fully occupied.
"You've got to find somebody who will create traffic and keep the energy there," Sleiman said. "Groceries are hard to replace because they're usually moving just down the street. Then you can't replace it with another grocery."
Often, the big spaces are broken up. When Winn-Dixie moved out at the corner of Beach Boulevard and St. Johns Bluff Road, Sleiman put a gym in part of it, but the rest is still vacant.
Half of the Walmart on Beach Boulevard became a Hobby Lobby, but the rest of that is vacant, too.
"But I think it's turning around," Sleiman said. "We're starting to see some retailers back in the market and they're looking. Last year, they weren't."
Nancy Cook, owner of Round Robin consignment store, has seen an anchor leave Mandarin Landing and another move in. When Publix moved out almost three years ago to take over the former Albertson's on the other side of San Jose Boulevard, Cook expected her business to fall off.
"I expected maybe a 20 percent drop," said Cook, who has owned the store 13 years. "And I budgeted for it. But it was probably 30 percent. No, I guess it was 34 percent.
"And my expenses picked up. I had to increase advertising because people thought we were closed."
Cook also had to endure the construction of the new Whole Foods Market. But when that opened a little more than a year ago, her business picked up almost immediately and quickly got back to where it was before Publix left.
"It's a whole different clientele, more upscale," she said. "Publix has weekly shoppers. The family goes to Publix and then stops by here afterward. Whole Foods doesn't really have regulars, but its shoppers are higher-end.
"Publix shoppers look at the price and wait for it to go on sale. Whole Foods shoppers just buy it."
Town and Country Shopping Center off Arlington Expressway (that's where Pic N' Save first opened in 1955) has the Plush nightclub entertainment complex at one end.
Winn-Dixie left the other end a few years ago. Dollar General has taken some of that space, but most of it still sits empty. So does most of the center. There's a few stores - beauty supply, nail salon, jewelers, one of those Internet sweepstakes places that are showing up everywhere - but most of the spaces are just empty glass fronting empty rooms.
Tucked back into one corner is Arlington Bait and Tackle. Bill and Carmen Lamb moved their store there a couple of months ago from just up the road where it had been for 17 years.
The Lambs had only three parking spaces at the old location, plus Carmen Lamb wanted a little more room for a sandwich shop inside the bait shop.
"She put up with a lot for me to have this," Bill Lamb said. "She deserved that."
Business has been a little slow, part of which they blame on the economy.
"We've had people who normally buy a pound of shrimp only get a quarter-pound," he said.
And a cold winter hasn't exactly beckoned more people onto the water. And then there's the traffic.
"A lot of people still don't know we're here. If there was a grocery store there," Bill Lamb said, nodding toward where Winn-Dixie once stood, "then maybe more people would see us."
Johnny Jada saw sales at his Sahara Liquors drop off pretty significantly when Food Lion moved out of Monument Landing several years ago. But that was also when Walgreen's came in, took his spot on the corner and moved Sahara farther back in the center.
"It's definitely worse," said Jada, a pediatrician. "We're surviving. We're not making much money, and I'm not sure it makes sense to stay open."
But there is hope. A Bailey's Powerhouse Gym is moving in where the grocery was.
"It's not going to be the same influx of people like Food Lion," Jada said. "And a grocery brings everyone. Some people who go to a gym don't even drink."
http://jacksonville.com/business/2010-02-21/story/this_was_once_a_busy_place
Interesting story. We're in that area a lot and we were just commenting the other day how sad that entire shopping center looked with just Steinmart and a drive-thru cleaner visible now.
That whole Town & Country center should be razed and a better designed, more walkable shopping center be installed. High hopes and all that. Plush is gross and I think one reason no one's taken over the Winn Dixie is because before they closed they seemed to have some serious sewage issues. We used to shop there a good bit and the last few months they were open, there was something seeping up from under the pavement and you could even smell it inside the store by the fresh foods that smelled just like an open septic tank. It was horrid and one of the managers was over there all the time pretty much just apologizing to people for the stench.
As for the Whole Foods center thing- that place still feels kinda sad and dead even if businesses are reopening over there. I kinda wonder how WF is doing, I'm guessing they're busy on the weekends but I've made a couple of trips during the week and I think there are two employees for every shopper in there. On the other hand, I think Fresh Market's move has helped them- I get most of my meat there and they're steadily busy during the week and it tends to get pretty crowded on the weekends.
Older shopping centers all over town are half empty or more ... then someone comes along and builds a brand new strip center within a mile of several of them, and after a year has 2 or 3 tenants. Is this a good economic model?
Agreed. I don't think it's a good economic model at all. Bigger (newer) is not always better. Is it really a best practice to continue to build while sucking the life out of older (not even that much older) abandoned stores? Why not improve upon what is there rather than running off and leaving empty spaces for homeless people to congregate? Hell, might as well do some good and turn them into (legal and safe) homeless shelters at the very least. Instead, people follow the new and shiney like lemmings to water. Opening one to close another isn't helping the economy.
Have to agree with Burn to Shine. Jacksonville is infamous for abandoning places once they're a few years old for the next "new" thing. The cycle repeats itself every few years in different areas. And companies are all too eager to clear-cut plots of land and build new shopping centers rather than use old, abandoned strip malls and shopping centers. Cheaper, I guess...
I am kind of impressed that Publix is re-using the site at Atlantic and Bartram. A shame they had to tear town the old store, but they at least left the rest of the center alone. I guess they really didn't have a choice over there, though.
The business that will dwindle in the old Publix lot could very easily jump ship as well over to a shop behind the new Publix if that's what they need to stay in business. The old property will probably be dead space until some kind soul remembers that it's not tainted ground or anything and snatches it up with a strong business. Say, a nicer chain restaurant like Carabbas, maybe a bar, and a few retail shops (that aren't Stein Mart). I rememebr at one time there were talks of turning the Pic N Save on Old St. Augustine by Baymeadows into a skate park or something of the like, but now it sits stagnant. If someone had done that I think it would have fared well, and I think that could work in the old Publix locale too. A Big open space, a city that is full of skateboarders and already ahs a reputable nationally recognized skate park that is a bit of a drive away... it could do pretty well.
What they DONT need is another supermarket there. Publix has put two out of business in that intersection alone. They've won that area. Unless some in vogue chain like Whole Foods comes along I dont see it working out.
Will SJTC suffer this same fate?
Regency did. Maybe Avenues is next, being closest. STJC? Who knows in twenty years. Seems that these places don't live forever.
Makes you think of the old nomads in both hemispheres. Squat in one place until you've hunted out all the game and filled up the area with your trash and feces, then move on. Our way just takes longer.
Malls mirror the human way of living......young to middle age to elderly! Wheel allways turns.....malls are no different!
Quote from: buckethead on May 06, 2010, 12:50:02 PM
Will SJTC suffer this same fate?
I don't think so. If trends at UNF continue in a few years most of the shops there could sustain themselves on their traffic alone. That's pure estimation on my part, but I don't see why it wouldn't work out like that.
QuoteWill SJTC suffer this same fate?
The answer is no, SJTC has something that Avenues does not have, nor Regency, it has housing as part of its plans, it has condos and apartments within walking distance, a constant foot traffic. It also is close to UNF, for easy access to additional feet. SJTC was built where it is because it capitalizes on traffic all the time. So you have the big stores, restaurants. The new mall on Airport road did the same thing, residential, light commercial, and access to the airport. They also have the hotels from airport to assist them.
The demographics of Malls and strip centers are changing because people don't want to drive 20 miles for a tank top, they want to shop, if not online, in their own neighborhood. Sleiman and his strip malls are in for a drastic, and not so good change over the next generation. One thing old Pic 'n Saves are good for are churches. Not much other good comes from 20-25k feet of space.
The only old Pic-N-Save building that I can think of that's currently being occupied as a supermarket is the newly opened Save-A-Lot on Lem Turner, which had relocated from nearby Edgewood & Smyrna.