The Park View Pavilion Coming Soon

[CityLife]

The sooner the thoughts of getting national retailers (other than a drugstore) in either DT or Springfield are forgotten, the sooner a real revitilization can begin.

Only after a respectable number of locally owned businesses have found success, will you see any GENUINE interest by the nationals.  

If Borders was truly interested in Springfield, that goes a long way toward explaining why they are in bankruptcy.

LaCena, Chamblins and the like are the future of DT Jax, not Publix, Trader Joe's or Whole Foods.  

The sooner that is realized, the better.  

DT has a very long way to go before national chain stores will be interested.   The only reason drugstores are the exception is 1) Shands=Hospital Walgreens/CVS=pharmacy and 2) high traffic counts on State/Union with no competition nearby.     

Exactly. Most retail growth in Springfield and DT will have to come organically as it has in recent years.

Most people involved in these areas are aware of that, but it is very difficult to make a market with an awful lending situation and unreasonable demands/expectations from property owners.

[billy]

I was only speaking of the overall Jax market regarding Trader Joes....
and comparing the viability of Trader Joes vs. Whole Foods

I've never been inside of an ALDI's.....

[billy]

they just announced the closing of the Buckhead Triangle's Borders, that was pretty much what I would have considered a flagship store

[wsansewjs]

The sooner the thoughts of getting national retailers (other than a drugstore) in either DT or Springfield are forgotten, the sooner a real revitilization can begin.

Only after a respectable number of locally owned businesses have found success, will you see any GENUINE interest by the nationals.  

If Borders was truly interested in Springfield, that goes a long way toward explaining why they are in bankruptcy.

LaCena, Chamblins and the like are the future of DT Jax, not Publix, Trader Joe's or Whole Foods.  

The sooner that is realized, the better.  

DT has a very long way to go before national chain stores will be interested.   The only reason drugstores are the exception is 1) Shands=Hospital Walgreens/CVS=pharmacy and 2) high traffic counts on State/Union with no competition nearby.     

You really do raise a good point that I didn't realize. I only fear that once those small awesome business are up and running, then the national retailers comes in to kill them off.

-Josh

[thelakelander]

Speaking of Walgreens and CVS, I used to do site layouts for them as well.  Once an area meets their demographic requirements, they prefer locating at signalized intersections along heavy volume corridors.  So without a doubt, this is an ideal location for either one of them, considering neither has a presence in the downtown area.

[thelakelander]

The national chains never get the chance, Josh.  They are killed by the local policies first.

Downtown Parking enforcement, homeless policies, and traffic control, combined with real estate speculators, neighborhood boycotts, and code enforcement harrassment have managed to kill the small shops before any chains would ever want to open.

Downtown's policies have a larger impact on smaller chains than larger ones like CVS, Publix, Target, etc.  When they come in, if working with a development firm, that firm typically purchases a parcel of property and designs it to the specifications of the anchors and tenants they desire.  For example, the fact that the Park View parking garage is being preserved, means they will have a ton of dedicated parking already in place to serve them (something they require and something that the landing doesn't have).  Thus, they won't be impacted by regulations like parking enforcement that have a tendancy to kill off smaller businesses.

[PeeJayEss]

+1, Vic.

I see your +1 and raise you a +9!

Borders is a national chain that originated in the Midwest, that like all media based retailers is suffering from online media distribution.  between readers, Ipads and the general economy, the media content available online will eventually destroy the major book retailers as we now know them.

It has nothing to do with their Malthusian Expansion strategy.

Borders didn't go bankrupt because of online media distribution, they went bankrupt because they were a poorly run company. Its been poorly run for nearly 2 decades. I'd dare say once Kmart touched it, it was doomed. And its been ready to fail since. Nearly half of Barnes and Nobles stores are college bookstores, putting them in a better position to weather a tough economy as well as the growth of online content. Also, their website and in-store cafes are better. And, it follows from their continued existence, they are better managed.

Not sure I get the connection to Malthus regarding vic's statement.

The same goes for Best Buy and Circuit City. Both were experiencing the same strains, but one is a well run company and one was a poorly run company. And Circuit City's problems were a direct result of their poorly executed expansion.

Yes you are correct, there is a hospital (with three existing pharmacies, incidentally) in one of the areas, and a high traffic count on the corner or Main and Union.  Are you under the thunderously shortsighted impression that those two demographic details cease existing once you build a Walgreens?

I believe his main point about the success at State/Union was the lack of competition. So that business would be hurt by another pharmacy (I'm not saying it couldn't support them though, because I don't know).

Downtown's policies have a larger impact on smaller chains than larger ones like CVS, Publix, Target, etc.  When they come in, if working with a development firm, that firm typically purchases a parcel of property and designs it to the specifications of the anchors and tenants they desire.  For example, the fact that the Park View parking garage is being preserved, means they will have a ton of dedicated parking already in place to serve them (something they require and something that the landing doesn't have).  Thus, they won't be impacted by regulations like parking enforcement that have a tendancy to kill off smaller businesses.

+1

ditto!

[vicupstate]

I've seen Charleston's Downtown (King Street) morph from utter abandonment to the Rodeo Drive of South Carolina.  It occurred in stages, with the Local merchants proving the market before the national chains came in and drove rents to Chicago-Loop levels.  The locals that BOUGHT early, stayed and prospered, the ones that LEASED got priced out of their buildings and had to move on.  

I have been a part of efforts to recruit a grocer to DT Columbia that went nowhere for years, even though USC was nearby with 20,000+ students, not to mention tens of thousands of office workers. Only a ratty Food Lion (think the Market Street Winn-Dixie of 5 years ago) was in place to serve a 5-7 square mile urban core.

Finally, Publix filled the void, but only with a big subsidy from the city.  

Greenville's DT is quite successsful and has a Publix and a Staples and a mid-sized regional retail store. An urban storefront CVS is now under construction. All of that came after 25 years of ONLY locals powering DT revitilization.

Yet, even with that DT environment, both Whole Foods and Trader Joe's built at Greenville's equivalent to SJTC.  They must have known what they were doing, because both are doing very well.    

National chains are not 'pioneers', quite the opposite.  They take their cues from each other and  stay pretty close to their M.O. demographics.  I've heard it from people in the business, and I have seen it happen just that way in several cities.

Such is the basis for my opinions on this subject.

And yes, Josh, as I mentioned above, the national's will drive out the locals that LEASE (rather than OWN) their locations.  Once the market is PROVEN, and DT is obviously fertile ground (thanks to the local's entreprenurial efforts), the national's will rush in.  

Charleston's King Street is a prime example of that. Uptown Charlotte is fast becoming another.

[PeeJayEss]

Well, PeeJay, considering the KMart hasnt owned Borders since 1995, (16 years ago)  http://www.borders.com/online/store/BGIView_bgiabouthistory , it seems unlikely that KMart managed it badly for the past two decades.

In the following link, you will see that the industry itself cites online competition and the rise of 'readers' as part of the reason for the decline, exactly as I detailed.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/borders-files-for-bankruptcy/

Yes, KMart hasn't owned it in 16 years, hence why I said "touched it" and not "bought and held it until it went bankrupt." It was just a death touch.  When KMart merged Borders (a successful company) with Walden (a failing company) they lost most of the Borders management. When that happened, a good company turned into a bad company, and their performance over the subsequent decade and a half after KMart spun them off bears this out.

Maybe even if I said "bought it" and didn't explicitly state that they later spun it off, you'd have an argument, but I think the intention of "touched" is fairly clear - it doesn't sound very permanent. Regardless of KMart's involvement, Borders as a business was not well run after 1992. 

All the things you highlight in the article demonstrate how Borders was poorly managed in relation to B&N, Amazon, and others. So I stand by my statement that they went bankrupt because they were poorly managed. If every single physical storefront chain went bankrupt when they started competing with online shops, you'd be absolutely correct. But there are plenty still around, and some of them have adapted to online sales. So it stands to reason that some (those not bankrupt) are doing something that the others (the bankrupt) are not. Hell, they stocked 6 different e-reading devices (dumb and confusing) rather than putting out one and pushing it like mad (smart)? They deserve bankruptcy for that reason alone? The e-reader itself was a fairly obvious evolution for books, why didn't Borders figure that out and produce it first? Because they were poorly run. They didn't produce one at all, or even team up with a company to offer a signature device.

Video didn't kill the radio star. There are still radio stars. Borders (now I'm being metaphorical) was never one of them.

This has gone on a tangent. Vic's original assertion that you refuted was basically that Borders was dumb, and that's why they're bankrupt. I think that's a fair thing to say.

[Timkin]

....sign of the times ....

[mtraininjax]

White's Bookstores saw the "writing on the wall" and changed their format to a store with less books and more home accessories, changed the name to Cowford Traders too.

[urbaknight]

Any word on anything happening on the site yet?

[letters and numbers]

Yeah man it looks like there's going to be a walgreens for sure and maybe other stuff too

[Timkin]

Awesome news !  

[urbaknight]

I hope de-construction, then re-construction, starts soon.