10. Empty Stores Are a Hard SellEmpty stores are a hard sell
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Friday, February 2, 2001 Go to: S M T W T F S
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Empty stores are a hard sell
Retail behemoths leave behind acres of useless apace
for towns.
By Evan Haiper
INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
The suburban landscape is littered with
these rotting carcasses - big, boxy,
wide-aisled reminders of stores that once
teemed with wild-eyed bargain hunters.
They went by names such as Hechinger, Weeds grow in the outdoor
Caldor and Service Merchandise - garden area of an empty
Hechinger's, one of 3 vacant
expansive stores that ushered in an age of sites in Bucks county. (John
seemingly unlimited discount purchasing Stavin/Inquirer)
potential.
But the jobs -hungry communities that ardently lured them, that
believed the corporate mantra of the 1980s that "economies of
scale" made those companies indestructible, now find themselves
faced with the graffiti -strewn mess left behind when the economy
rolled right over them.
The towns are saddled with the prospect of spending millions to
demolish the buildings, letting them rot or tackling the nearly
impossible task of peddling them to someone else. And the
salvation being dangled in front of these hard-pressed communities,
once again, is even more gigantic models.
Today's cavernous Home Depots and Costcos average more than
120,000 square feet, or at least twice the size of the last wave of
"big -box" stores, so large that they are not interested in moving into
the previous generation of boxes.
Some towns have seen enough.
Officials in Bucks County's Buckingham Township, where no big
boxes even exist yet, are so alarmed that they have a defensive
requirement that anyone who wants to build such a project must put
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requirement that anyone who wants to build such a project must put
money in escrow to cover demolition costs should the structure
ever become vacant.
"Large, vacant buildings are not a good thing for a community to
have," Buckingham Supervisor Henry Rowan said.
Just ask officials in Middletown Township, Bucks County. They are
stuck dealing with three of the abandoned monsters. Bradlees,
Hechinger and Best stores have all bailed out in recent years,
leaving a wake of unsightly vacancies.
"You have these buildings that were built for a single use and
nobody else wants them," said Middletown Township Manager
John Burke.
From the deserted Caldor in Wilmington to the desolate Carrefour
in Voorhees, more than 4.5 million square feet of abandoned
superstore space sits empty in the nine -county region, according to
a local survey by CB Richard Ellis, an international commercial
real-estate brokerage.
That is the equivalent of about 62 standard -size old Hechinger
stores - more than 100 acres of indoor space.
The number does not take into account the latest casualties since
Christmas: 10 Bradlees, two Office Depots and a Sears will close in
area suburbs in coming weeks.
"Too many big boxes," says a November report warning of a market
glut by the Lend Lease Group, one of the country's largest
real-estate management firms.
"There are five different places to get 100 pounds of dog food."
That big -box glut has forced many aging stores to go belly -up. And
after the merchandise is cleared off the racks, their buildings sit
behind.
The abandoned behemoths have become an eyesore on the
landscape and a financial and security liability for local
governments helpless to do much about them.
"It's not easy to find substitute uses once these boxes are
abandoned," said Patty Elkis, a senior planner at the Delaware
Valley Regional Planning Commission.
"They make the whole area look bad and people stay away."
Even some thriving chains are dumping their outgrown buildings in
pursuit of bigger spaces, leaving the empties behind.
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Wal-Mart Stores is trying to rent or sell 388 vacant sites
nationwide, 30 of which went on the market in the last six months.
They include three stores in Maryland, one in Delaware and one in
Western Pennsylvania.
"Wal-Mart has buildings for sale all over the country," a company
Web site boasts (www.wal-martrealty.com). Wal-Mart spokesman
John Bisio says the vacancies are "the sign of a healthy economy"
and a company providing more jobs than ever as it creates
200,000-square-foot regional supercenters.
Critics do not see it that way.
"It's extremely wasteful and harmful to quality of life to have all
these empty stores sitting around," said Al Norman of Sprawl
Busters, a Massachusetts -based national advocacy group.
Wal-Mart so far leads the way in dumping outgrown empty stores.
But the nation's leading retailer is by no means the only one.
Empty Hechingers, Bests, Bradlees, Caldors, Service Merchandises
and others are spread over the Philadelphia region.
Consider Voorhees. It has been struggling to find uses for its
gigantic empty Carrefour store for years. The old I. Goldberg there
also is empty, and Sears announced early this month that it was
leaving town.
Planners say the empties produce barely any tax revenue, yet they
are security risks, attracting vandals and vagrants.
And the empties are unsightly. Parking lot pavements are cracked
and filled with holes and landscaping is littered with weeds. Torn
marquees and faded paint leave sites looking like gritty industrial
warehouses amid what are supposed to be bustling commercial
districts.
Kevin McClernon, vice president of CB Richard Ellis, says the
problem is not overbuilding but the failure of the box chains to
think outside the box.
"Until people get creative, you are going to have these boxes sitting
around," he said.
His company tried to get Lowes Home Improvement Centers to
build its planned Middletown store on a lot where old Hechinger
and Best stores now sit empty. Lowes chose to start from scratch on
an empty field on the other side of town - a site just across from the
abandoned Bradlees.
Burke said the township would like to see Lowes move into the
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vacant store but was powerless to do anything about it. Company
officials say they have no interest in moving into someone else's old
shell.
"We build from the ground up," Lowes spokeswoman Suzanne
McCoy said. "Existing facilities just don't fit our prototype."
McCoy said every Lowes store was exactly the same size and shape.
The only variation is what side the garden center is on.
It is not just other retail stores that are loath to occupy the
abandoned sites. No one else wants them, either.
"These are not like old buildings in the middle of Philadelphia that
can be reused as condos," says Donovan Rypkema, an economic
development consultant in Washington, D.C., who warns
communities about the sprawl risks big -box stores can bring. "They
are crappy buildings. There is no logic in reinvesting in them at all."
There have been a few exceptions, however, to that rule.
Willingboro is transforming an old eyesore of a shopping center
into an economic anchor for the community. Tenants will include a
$6 million town library, a satellite campus of Burlington County
College and a mail-order pharmacy operation. .
Life also is being infused back into the mostly abandoned
Levittown Shopping Center.
A New York developer is tearing down the dilapidated structure to
rebuild a brand-new shopping plaza.
And some creative chains have been able to move into the old,
smaller boxes.
Kohl's refit nine abandoned Clover stores here with its shiny,
modern layout.
"If you're creative, you can do things," said Elkis of the regional
planning commission. But she and other planners say such
redevelopment is becoming the exception lately when it comes to
big boxes.
"They are often just left as white elephants," Elkis said.
Evan Halper's e-mail address is ehalper(a-phillynews.com.
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