Recession takes toll on shopping centers
Strip malls and stand-alone shopping centers across the Washington area are turning into near-wastelands pockmarking major thruways, as the recession wreaks havoc on retailers.
In Virginia, Route 1 from Alexandria to Prince William County is rife with run-down strip malls, “for lease” signs, and empty storefronts — including a former Chuck E. Cheese in a lot near North Kings Highway. Farther south, Marumsco Plaza in Prince William features a vacant Giant Food store — and blackening snowpiles do nothing to help the center’s aesthetic.
Route 355, which runs the length of Montgomery County into Frederick County, is in a similar pinch. A $100 ticket adorns the front door of one empty car dealer showroom on Rockville Pike for failing to remove the snow from the front of the building. The large Anthropologie women’s clothing store, at Rockville Pike and Nicholson Lane, has been emptied.
“[It’s] more of an eyesore to see all these stores that are just sitting there, empty, you know, where the space could be used for something good,” said Felicia Black, standing in the White Flint Shopping Center parking lot in North Bethesda.
Three businesses have been shuttered at the shopping center next to White Flint mall.
“I mean … the major stores are still open, it’s just there’s less competition,” she said. “You have Best Buy and you have Best Buy — there’s no longer Circuit City.”
Although holiday sales picked up slightly from December 2008, that is cold comfort to retailers that didn’t attract enough customers to pay the bills. Now, shoppers and businesses are faced with more empty storefronts and shuttering shops from Wheaton to Lanham to Fairfax, as January and February typically bring in a wave of closings.
“I think [strip malls are] certainly taking a hit,” said Elizabeth Norton, vice president of Delta Associates, a local real estate consulting group.
For some, the struggling strip mall is not merely an economic cycle, but a problem on a much larger scale.
“There’s too many, honestly,” said Dick Kirkland, standing in the Woodlawn Shopping Center on Route 1 in Alexandria.
Local leaders are working to fix the problem. Montgomery County is negotiating its White Flint Sector Plan to promote better development and access to Metrorail, said Council President Nancy Floreen.
The plan, which focuses on “mixed-use” development that combines residential, retail and office space, “will change the look and feel of that part of the county,” she said.
But Anita Kramer, senior director of retail and mixed-use development for the Urban Land Institute, said “single-use” centers such as strip malls can work, if done correctly. Further, while mixed-use developments are in vogue, they do not cure all ills, she said.
Still, smaller stores that typically populate strip centers have another foe that they didn’t have 20 years ago: the Internet.
“To tell you the truth, a lot of [the] shopping has moved onto the Web for me,” said Jim Owens of North Bethesda.
But, like Kramer, Owens was not about to write off the strip center.
“I think the strip malls may come back a little bit faster” than large malls, he said. Many older people “don’t want to walk 300 feet to get to the closest store.”
And local residents still have money to spend, despite the recession, Norton said.
It’s just a matter of when — or if –they will.
Examiner Photographer Andrew Harnik contributed to this report.
