The Dirt Lawyer's Blog Archive

Here's a neat little piece about renting kiosks in the LA Times. I don't really remember seeing them in malls as a little kid, but installing them made so much sense. By putting them in what was once common area of the center you essentially create found money. (There are also common area carts, which is a slightly different beast; contact me if you want to know more.) It can also be a win-win for both parties. As the article says, kiosks can be a cheaper way for beginning retailers to get into the business, perhaps with a cheap(er) and short(er) term lease. And for landlords, while the rent may be cheap, on a per square foot basis the kiosk can be great. But if you are thinking about opening a bead shop for the holidays, remember a few things. The break-even costs are not low, the hours can be brutal (you have to be open whenever the mall is, which can be 70+ hours a week), and there's plenty of competition even in a recession. But if you have an itch to do retail, ...

Assuming anyone is still there, if you work in the development group at Simon Properties, you may want to polish your resumes. While David Simon tried to assure analysts about the dividend, he also said the company doesn ’t plan to begin construction on new projects or major redevelopments in 2009 and there will be little new U.S. retail construction for years to come. “The new development business is dead for a decade,” Simon said on today’s call. “Maybe it’s eight years. Maybe it’s not completely dead. Maybe I’m over-dramatizing it for effect.” That's probably overdramatic and hopefully limited to regional malls. But for big deals in the exurbs? It may be a while. In spite of rosy predictions in this article where I live, I doubt we'll see much dirt pushed this year. H/T Traffic Court .

The Economist has an interesting story on the rise and fall of the indoor retail shopping center and its replacement (I guess) by lifestyle centers. Some old malls have outlived their usefulness and either no longer exist or sometimes function half-open or with community-type uses such as senior centers, etc. Here's one interesting theory: [Lifestyle centers try] to re-create a kind of prelapsarian downtown where there is no crime or homelessness. [R]omantic evocations of city centres are possible only because people have forgotten what downtowns used to be like. And they have forgotten, of course, largely because of the suburban shopping malls.... It was necessary to kill the American city centre before bringing it back to life. It could also be that these centers can function as a downtown in places where there wasn't one before. Many of the newer suburbs just don't have an old-fashioned downtown. The lifestyle center can serve that purpose in part. Indoor malls ar...

Sorry, all you folks in the Show Me State, but Westfield made a great move in my opinion by dumping four malls in St. Louis and buying two in Florida . I am personally not the biggest fan of Florida (the humidity just kills me), but it is the fourth largest state now and poised to grow even more. St. Louis? As Borat says, not so much. (Don't get me wrong, it is a nice town, the presence of the Cardinals notwithstanding.) Westfield appears to trying to consolidate its holdings in certain growth markets, perhaps with an emphasis on the Sun Belt. So what about Chicago, which is definitely not Sun Belt? One could point to the fact the the Shops at North Bridge is on the market , but let's not forget that (a) Westfield only owns one-third of it together with John Buck Co. and Morgan Stanley and may or may not be selling its stake (my guess is that it will try to stay put), and (b) Westfield owns five other malls in the area: Hawthorn, Old Orchard, Fox Valley, Chicago Ridge and...