October, 2006 - Labelscar: The Retail History Blog

Carousel Center; Syracuse, New York

The main course in the Syracuse area is the Carousel Center, the Pyramid Companies‘ 1.5 million-square-foot, seven-level flagship mall built in 1990 on Syracuse’s lakefront; the mall that caused a half dozen others to close. Don’t let the Carousel Center’s relatively-modest square footage fool you: this is a very, very large mall complete with its own zip code and possibly the biggest tourist attraction in all of metro Syracuse.

Carousel Center exterior spire At its core, the Carousel Center is organized in a relatively typical fashion, with two main long levels spanning between two large anchors, and a trio of cross hallways leading to other anchors, a food court, and movie theatres. There’s also a basement level only in the mall’s center court that provides access to the parking lot tucked underneath the mall and also hosts a slew of junior anchor tenants. More unusual is the mall’s upper floors, which only appear in the center court. The mall towers seven stories high, and the upper floors of the Cathedral-like spire are reserved for rentable event space called DestiNY USA. There was once also a skydeck on the top floor but this apparently was turned over to office space for DestiNY USA employees at some point.

One of the coolest design elements was one that proved difficult to photograph. Most of the main corridor of the mall featured a canopy-styled canvas roof, which we’ve seen a couple of times before. But this was punctuated on each of the cross hallways by a lightbulb-studded skylight that was actually higher than in the main mall, creating a very strange (and neat!) effect. If you look at the satellite image, you can sort of make out how the ceiling for the cross hallways is notably different than for the main concourse.
The mall’s current anchor roster is very impressive: Macy’s, JCPenney, Lord & Taylor, The Bon Ton, a two-level H&M, Sports Authority, Old Navy Borders, DSW Shoe Warehouse, Regal Cinemas, Best Buy AND Circuit City all occupy space within the mall. In addition, the mall has in the past been the home of Hill’s/Ames, Chapell’s, Lechmere, Steinbach, Kaufmann’s, Nobody Beats the Wiz, HomePlace, Bonwit Teller, and CompUSA, the latter of which was in the midst of a closing sale during our visit.

The Carousel Center’s Wikipedia page has a lot of the coolest information on the mall already, but retail buffs would be interested to know that Carousel Center was the home of the very last Bonwit Teller store. Mall developer Pyramid Companies purchased the struggling retailer in 1990 when Carousel Center was under construction to prevent them from folding, and thus costing Carousel Center its most upscale marquee tenant prior to even opening. The store closed in 2000 and was replaced by H&M.

We visited this big, bustling mall on a Saturday night, which made it nearly impossible to take any exterior photos. It was worth it, however, because there’s just nothing quite like hanging out in a big, bustling mall on a weekend night, and in the Syracuse area, Carousel Center is clearly “it.” I was prepared to hate the place for no other reason than that it killed off so many other malls, but I admit that I was somewhat weak in the face of its charms.

Astoundingly, Carousel Center’s future as a mall is in question. In 2002, The Pyramid Companies announced a plan to expand the Carousel Center to be the largest entertainment and shopping destination in the United States, surpassing The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota. Called DestiNY USA, the overall expansion would bring the center’s total square footage to 4.5 million square feet, including 20,000 hotel rooms, an indoor aquarium, a stadium and performing arts center, an indoor recreation of the Erie canal, three golf courses, and a 100 acre glass-enclosed indoor park. The Pyramid Companies promise the new development would create 120,000 new jobs (!) both here and in a nearby tech park to be part of the project, and would and serve as the largest tourist destination in all of Central and Western New York.

Of course all of this new development doesn’t include much mention of retail. In fact, the Pyramid Companies are attempting to cancel the leases of Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, and JCPenney via eminent domain to redevelop the property. While there would be a new place for them in the completed Carousel Center, Federated Department Stores, owner of both Lord & Taylor and Macy’s, seems to have grown increasingly bitter over the prospect of the redevelopment. An analyst for the company has recommended they exit the center if the redevelopment goes forward, due to concerns about diluting the center with non-shopping patrons and the impact of the redesign on their store layouts. So while it is possible that the future of the Carousel Center is bright and that it may be an almost Disney-like tourist attraction, in the end it may be somewhat less of a “shopping mall”–especially ironic considering that it flattened a handful of its competitors in the past 16 years. Doug Powell once sang that “Video killed the radio star but then committed suicide,” and that’s a particularly apt description for the bizarre conclusion that Carousel Center is headed towards today.

Great Northern Mall; Clay, New York

Great Northern Mall sign at night in Clay, NY

The major driving force in the de-malling of metro Syracuse was the one-two punch of the 1988 opening of Wilmorite Properties’ Great Northern Mall in Clay, one of the city’s northern suburbs, followed by the 1990 opening of the Carousel Center in Syracuse proper.

Unlike the Carousel Center, however, the Great Northern Mall is a very typical mid-sized (891,000 square foot) suburban mall. One of our readers, XISMZERO, even remarked at how flat-out boring that Great Northern is, and to be fully honest, it’s hard to disagree. Great Northern is certainly a successful mall, anchoring a large retail strip along route 31. But likely due to its late-eighties vintage, it doesn’t have many unique design elements or features to make it stand out, beyond the weird yellow walls. Even the center court fountain–which might’ve been interesting–was under renovation for our visit. Judging by this PDF on the Great Northern Website, it sounds like the fountain is being removed (boo!) in favor of a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee bar with a seating area and wifi access (which isn’t a bad idea, but still…).

Great Northern Mall’s original anchor tenants included Addis & Dey’s, Hess’s, Sibley’s, and Sears. Locally-based Addis & Dey’s closed in 1993 and was replaced by Dick’s Sporting Goods; Hess’s was replaced by locally-based Chappell’s in 1994, who were in turn acquired by The Bon-Ton in 1995. The Bon-Ton closed this store and their store at the Shoppingtown Mall in DeWitt in early 2006; this location is now vacant but will soon become a JCPenney. Sibley’s was merged into the May empire in 1990, becoming a Kaufmann’s, and that store was rebranded as Macy’s in summer 2006. Sears is the lone original anchor remaining, along with Dick’s Sporting Goods, Macy’s, Regal Cinemas, H&M, and Old Navy as major current tenants.

I also found a daytime photo of the pylon.

Penn-Can Mall; Cicero, New York

The most tragic victim of Carousel Center’s wrath is the Penn-Can Mall, located in the Syracuse suburb of Cicero. Once one of the largest and most successful malls in New York, the Penn-Can Mall opened in 1976 as the first enclosed mall in Syracuse’s northern suburbs. Named for its location halfway between Pennsylvania and Canada along I-81, the mall named Sears and 86 small stores as initial tenants. Over the years, the mall was expanded, with Hill’s and Chappell’s added onto new wings during the 1980s. At its peak in 1989, Penn-Can had 121 stores.

The one-two punch of the opening of the Great Northern and Carousel Center Malls in 1988 and 1990, respectively, was the blow that did this mall in. It also had to trade down in anchor stores, losing locally-based Chappell’s in favor of Caldor and Sears in favor of Burlington Coat Factory and Office Max. I’ve noticed that one strange, somewhat counter-intuitive factor for determining a mall’s continued success is how easy it is to reach the mall from the other major malls in the area. This is merely anecdotal, but the thought is generally that a mall will survive if it’s closer to the homes that need shopping. However, I suspect that if it’s easy to reach multiple OTHER points of shopping from the mall itself, then it is less likely to survive. Look at the below graphic to see what I mean: while Penn-Can seems well-located, its central location means that it is vulnerable on all sides, so residents of the surrounding suburbs were given too many other, stronger options for shopping and they fled towards them.

Despite a minor renovation in 1992 that gave the mall a new “old movie” theme, the center couldn’t recover from its downward spiral and was shuttered in 1994. The Caldor store closed around this time, and before long the only remaining stores were Burlington Coat Factory and Hill’s at opposite ends of the mall. Hill’s was acquired by Ames in 1999, but was shut three years later with the closing of the chain.

After eight years of near-total abandonment, the Penn-Can Mall began a metamorphosis into a large auto mall in 2002. The Burlington Coat Factory and Hill’s wings were demolished apart from the anchor stores themselves, but the rest of the mall was preserved, restored, and re-opened, and much of it is today–shockingly–open for business and maintaining much of its original look and layout. This is a rare case of a mall coming back from the dead, and mall fanatics will want to make sure to check this place out, since you can freely wander the hallways and much of the center is even set up as a “mall,” with a variety of stores ranging from restaurants to auto-finance stores to a large train set display.

Thankfully, there’s a great website devoted entirely to the history of Penn-Can. I wish that EVERY mall had a historical website this meticulously detailed and with so many great photos (seriously, you NEED to check it out!) Sadly, my camera ate my own two best photos (of the center court!) in the mall, but thankfully those guys have tons more anyway.

Shoppingtown Mall; DeWitt, New York

The Syracuse area may be dominated by one very large mall, but there are two other substantially-sized malls that are still operating in the metropolitan area, and the Shoppingtown Mall (which has no relation to Westfield’s “Shoppingtown” malls) is the area’s second largest mall, with just over 1 million square feet. Serving Syracuse’s eastern suburbs, it seems to be struggling much like many other Syracuse-area malls before it.

Built in 1954 as an open-air center, Shoppingtown Mall was one of Syracuse’s first suburban shopping centers, with W.T. Grant’s, Woolworth, E.G. Edwards, Dey’s, and The Addis Co. as anchor stores. The mall was enclosed in 1975 along with the addition of JCPenney in the former E.G. Edwards space, and substantially renovated and expanded in 1991. Syracuse-based department store chain Chapell’s also entered the mall at some point. The last expansion brought Steinbach, a relocated Addis & Dey’s, and a new wing of stores. While I’m not entirely sure, I would estimate that the two-level portion of the mall that now houses Macy’s and the food court is the newest addition. Chapell’s was sold to The Bon Ton in 1995, and The Addis Co. and Dey’s merged into one chain at some point though I’m unable to find when. Kaufmann’s replaced them in their second location in the mall in 1993.

The mall’s anchors today are Macy’s (until recently the Kaufmann’s store), Sears, Dick’s Sporting Goods, JCPenney, and a 10-screen Regal Cinemas. While the mall is bright and clean and sports a very unique and dynamic layout, Shoppingtown has very recently lost The Bon Ton, Old Navy, and Media Play as well as many smaller stores, especially on the long, sloped Sears wing.

Despite its commercial malaise, Shoppingtown is a very neat mall. Because it was added onto over time, it has a strange floorplan that can best be described as an “L” with an “X” hanging off one end. Part of the mall is two-level, while another part is on a rather steep grade sloping from the second floor down to the first.

I’ve attempted to organize these photos in a logical way, since there are three very distinctively diferent areas in the Shoppingtown Mall. Moving from right to left according to the mall directory, this first group of photos are the indoor and outdoor shots from the two-level portion of the mall, with Macy’s, JCPenney, and the food court:

The second set of photos were taken in the long, one-level wing stretching between the former Bon Ton store to the former Old Navy store, across the central portion of the mall:

And the third set is from my favorite wing of the mall, the long wing stretching from Dick’s Sporting Goods, past the former Old Navy and Media Play stores, and down to the Sears store. This entire wing is on a steady downhill slope from Old Navy down to Sears, and you can see the grading if you look towards the edge of the mall corridor, in front of the stores. Note also that there’s a basement courtyard with offices and a mall entrance in the middle of this wing. Two teenagers were actually down there making out–which is quite a testament to how quiet it was in this part of the mall on a Saturday afternoon–and I briefly considered taking a photo until I remembered I was a kid once… not that long ago. I’m not a bad person, so I refrained.

Woodfield Mall; Schaumburg, Illinois

This is it. In addition to being the largest mall in the Chicagoland area and one of the largest malls in the world, Woodfield Mall is the focal point of Chicago’s expansive northwest suburbs and has been an impetus for growth in the region since it opened 35 years ago in 1971. It is the number one tourist destination not only in the Chicago region but in all of Illinois. People regularly come from neighboring states to shop at Woodfield and the retail cloud surrounding it, including dozens of popular chain restaurants, big box stores, and most notably the first Ikea store in the midwest which opened in 1998. Woodfield is also the largest mall we’ve featured here on labelscar.com.

Woodfield Mall was initially a joint project undertaken by two of Chicago’s major department stores: Sears and Marshall Field’s. As such, its name comes from former Sears chairman Robert Wood and Marshall Field and Company founder Marshall Field. To commemorate this undertaking, Woodfield opened in 1971 with huge fanfare. Vincent Price entertained while Carol Lawrence sang. (Oh, to have been there…) Debuting with only 28 stores (with another 28 opening a month after the grand opening), Woodfield quickly expanded to 189 stores and 1.9 million square feet of retail space by 1973, making it the largest mall in the United States at the time. The 1973 expansion brought department store chain Lord and Taylor and a new wing, complementing Sears and Marshall Field’s. In 1991, Woodfield added 23 more stores and in 1996 Woodfield expanded again with Nordstrom, an expanded Lord and Taylor, and 50 new specialty stores.

The continuing expansion at Woodfield made for spurious growth in Schaumburg and the surrounding suburbs of Hoffman Estates, Itasca, Rolling Meadows, and beyond. Far beyond, in fact. One could argue that the placing of Woodfield cemented the economic viability of the northwest suburbs and established a growth pattern far beyond that of the economically downtrodden south suburbs or other areas. The Village of Schaumburg itself grew 400 percent between 1970 and 2000. In the 1990s, Motorola built its headquarters across I-90 from the mall. Also in the 1990s, Sears left its Sears Tower in downtown Chicago to build their headquarters on a sprawling 200-acre campus in Hoffman Estates, a few miles west of Woodfield Mall. They are still there today, and in October 2006 an 11,000-seat multi-purpose family entertainment venue called Sears Centre will debut with a Duran Duran concert.

The ‘Ordinary World’ surrounding Woodfield also contains multiple office towers of 20 stories, and a 650,000 square-foot development called The Streets of Woodfield which is situated directly adjacent to Woodfield Mall (to the south) with frontage along I-290. Streets is an outdoor lifestyle center intended to mimic upscale urban streetfront shops, and it has had major success. It opened in the early 2000s and replaced a very glassy, failed two-level enclosed shopping center called One Schaumburg Place, which existed for only a short time between 1990-2000 and was anchored by Montgomery Ward. It also had the only food court ever to grace Schaumburg, because Woodfield surprisingly hasn’t built one yet. Streets of Woodfield is flanked by major stores Carson Pirie Scott, a Chicago department store chain, Dick’s Sporting Goods, which was formerly Galyan’s since the days of One Schaumburg Place, and there are also a Lowes Theatres and a GameWorks which are very popular. In addition, numerous restaurants like Shaw’s Crab House and many popular national chains such as Starbucks and Jamba Juice flank the remaining spaces at Streets of Woodfield.

Woodfield has also affected retail development in a far reaching area. The downfall of Randhurst Mall, located about 15 minutes away in Mt. Prospect, Illinois, is mainly due to the continued expansion and domination of Woodfield. Other centers in the west and northwest suburbs also may have never reached their true potential due to Woodfield. Charlestowne, Stratford Square, and Spring Hill Malls are all within a close distance of Woodfield and all have experienced periods of problems of which I would argue Woodfield played a role.

Today, Woodfield is as popular as ever. In addition to the title of largest tourism draw in Illinois, Woodfield is also currently the fifth largest mall in the country in terms of leasable retail space. There are around 300 stores at Woodfield, including 5 very large anchor stores. Sears is 416,000 square feet, making it the largest Sears in the world, Macy’s (formerly Marshall Field’s until September 2006) is 315,000 square-feet, JCPenney is 300,000 square feet, Nordstrom is 214,000 square feet, and Lord and Taylor is only (facetious alert) 124,000 square feet. The average anchor size at most malls is about 100,000 square feet, so these anchors are big boys (or girls, depending on how you gender-assign mall anchors).

The current design of Woodfield is modern and the decor is decidedly Taubman. If you don’t know what that means, all Taubman malls share basically the same decor. It’s pretty sterile, with grooved white slats everywhere. They even have a standard plasterboard plate with etched squares for dead or ‘coming-soon’ stores. If you know what I’m talking about, great. If not, go to one of their malls sometime, they all pretty much mirror each other. Woodfield’s layout is basically a T, with a jog in the wing connecting Lord and Taylor to Nordstrom (the 1996 addition). Most of the mall is two levels with a neat exception near center court where a third level sprouts. One of the more interesting design features is at the grand center court when all the levels connect via long, high catwalks and stairways to one another. All the images were taken September 2006, right before the final conversion of Marshall Field’s to Macy’s. In some of the photos you can see the temporary Marshall Field’s signage in banners over the actual Macy’s signage that was prematurely placed. In addition, here’s Woodfield from space (thanks, Google Maps). If you scroll down (south) a little you can also see the Streets of Woodfield development. For reference, I-290 is on the right of the image.

What’s in the future for the Woodfield area? In my opinion, with a regard for upkeep it will have continued growth. In addition to Sears Centre, Sears is currently leasing many outparcels of its megasite to interested retail or office uses. In a 2005 article in the Chicago Sun-Times, outdoor destination store Cabela’s was named as being interested in opening on the site. This continued growth combined with a history of dominance will certainly cement Woodfield’s near future of continued success. But what do you think? Leave your comments about anything from the cool fish tanks full of exotic species near center court to your experiences in the mall, past and present.

Syracuse: An Interesting Case Study

I’ve been a bit slow on the posting lately, in part because of a road trip this weekend to central New York.

Syracuse is one of the closest metropolitan areas to Boston that I hadn’t yet visited (it’s about a five hour drive) and it was the only major metropolitan area in New York State I hadn’t visited yet either. I was somewhat eager to make the trip because Syracuse is a relatively big market for malls. The Syracuse metropolitan area, with 750,000 people, has at one point or another been home to no less than eight enclosed shopping malls. Today, most of them are dead.

The major event in this area’s retail shift was the 1990 opening of the Carousel Center on the city’s waterfront. The 1.5 million-square-foot, seven-level shopping mall is one of the largest in New York State, and has become the Syracuse area’s primary tourist attraction, drawing visitors from as far north as Ontario and as far south as Pennsylvania.

The Carousel Center’s ascendancy unleashed carnage on the malls surrounding Syracuse, and today only three others: Shoppingtown (the largest mall pre-Carousel), Great Northern, and Tri-County (a tiny, anchorless mall that is open but floundering) still exist. On the map above, existing malls are noted with green circles while dead/converted malls are noted with red circles. Thankfully, Syracuse was also for a time home of Pete Blackbird of DeadMalls.com, and as a result his site contains quite a bit of history of most of these malls. Here’s a brief recap, but they have much more:

Fayetteville Mall – Opened in 1974, this mid-sized mall was home to Sears and later Burlington Coat Factory. Expanded in 1992 to house Caldor and Cohoes, the mall declined through the 1990s due to its proximity to the large Shoppingtown Mall. Today it is a “community themed” big box center anchored by P&C Supermarket, Kohl’s, Target, TJMaxx, and others.
Penn-Can Mall – Once one of the area’s largest malls, this “T” shaped mall in the northern suburbs died a complete death in 1994, placing it well ahead of the curve of most American malls that died and were surpassed by others. Anchors included Hills, Caldor, and Sears/Burlington Coat Factory. After sitting idly for nearly a decade, portions of the mall were demolished and the remainder was redeveloped as a large auto mall.
Marketplace Mall – At one point, Penn-Can Mall was so successful there was a market for its spillover, hence the construction of the Marketplace Mall in its outlots in 1984. Anchored by Service Merchandise, Price Chopper, and Silo (an electronics retailer from the pre-Best Buy/Circuit City era, I believe), this small mall was never a major contender and closed sometime in the late 1990s. Demolition began on 2002 and today it’s a power center, anchored by Price Chopper and Lowe’s.
Camillus Mall – Built as a plaza in the 1960s and enclosed in 1980, this mid-sized mall was home to JCPenney, Sears, Hess’s, Chapell’s, Kmart, The Bon Ton, and Hills at various points in its life. JCPenney immediately jumped ship for Carousel Center, and began a downward slide from which the mall never recovered. The Camillus Mall was shuttered in 2003 and demolished in 2004, save for The Bon Ton store which remains open.
Fairmount Fair – A visibly older mall, disenclosed in 1994, and today is home to Dick’s Sporting Goods, Wal-Mart, and Price Chopper. I wasn’t able to find much about its history.

Look for detailed posts soon on the surviving malls, and also on Penn-Can, which has been converted to an auto mall and is (at least in part) open again, even after sitting vacant for eight years.

Salisbury Mall; Salisbury, Maryland

In recent times, Labelscar has gotten some fantastic submissions from readers, and this piece on the Salisbury Mall in Salisbury, Maryland is one of ’em. CCMoore, a regular reader, sent us these notes and photos of the Salisbury Mall, which was displaced by a larger and newer center about 15 years ago. It seems that there’s increasing local pressure to raze the abandoned, derelict, and apparently somewhat crime-ridden mall site, so if you happen to be in the area, swing by and take a look before it’s too late. Without further ado, here’s what CC had to say:

“I’m only 26, so the Salisbury Mall predates me by about 12 years. I do, however, remember going there as a kid, and while it wasn’t the most exciting place to go in the early 90s, I have since come to appreciate its place in local Delmarva History.

I’ve done some research, so before I describe the malls current state, here’s a bit of history.

The Salisbury Mall opened on October 16, 1968 in Salisbury, Maryland. At the time it cost somewhere around $5 million to build, with $2 million invested in interior details and the parking lot. The land covers about 80 acres and the mall’s west wing spans about 1/10 of a mile. When it opened, it was anchored by two national chains, The
Hecht Co. and Sears. On its opening day only 16 of the 40 stores were ready for business and Miss America was on hand for the ribbon cutting.

I would imagine a place like the Salisbury Mall was a big deal in this area. Delaware and the eastern shore of Maryland aren’t exactly the most metropolitan of places. From the ads, Hecht’s especially seemed quite a showpiece. The mall also included a rather large McCrory’s and a Kinney’s Shoes.

The details from there are a bit sketchy. I’m still working out specifics, but this is what I know. The mall’s east wing was constructed in the mid-70s, which now made the mall in the shape of an H. The new section included another chain, Hutzler’s, a movie theater and more stores. The malls west section had a very classic look with pillared entrances where as the east section was more modern, though the entire building is made of white brick and stone.

The mall seemed to do fairly well into the 80s until a new mall, the Centre at Salisbury was built and opened in July of 1990. At that time both Sears and Hecht’s left, leaving both anchors empty, and they would remain that way. The west wing eventually emptied out and was closed off from the rest of the mall. I have been told the ceiling
leaked and the up-keep was far too expensive. Still the mall soldiered on. In around 1991 or 1992, there was a murder in the ladies bathroom which sent more business away.

As far as I know, Hutzler’s became Peebles and most of the stores left when their leases ran out. Some people tell me there were businesses in the mall up until about 2 years ago, but you wouldn’t ever know from the condition it is in.

I found it one night driving home from the beach and without any parking lot lights, it’s a scary sight at about midnight. It literally takes up about 2 or 3 blocks in a fairly urbanized section of the town. But within its perimeter, it’s just dead.

I have been there a few times. The west wing still looks like it did when it opened about 40 years ago, if you can look past the decay and age. There are plans to tear it down, which is a shame because the more I learn about it, the more I see how much history is contained within its walls.

I [have included these] pictures. I am working with some people to make a documentary about this mall and the surrounding area, because it really serves as a commentary on how fickle mall culture and commerce in general can be. About a mile
away is the city’s downtown district which felt the mall’s presence when most of its stores left for the new construction. Those same businesses then left the old mall when the new Centre was constructed. It’s very interesting and somewhat sad.”

Thanks again CC! Submissions like these are always welcome. As you might imagine, it’s *impossible* to be everywhere at once, and we’ve already missed tons of malls entirely. If you’ve got anything, we’d love to hear about it.

EDIT 8/19/2007: In the 10 months since we originally posted Chris’ photos and commentary, he’s been working on his own blog that’s entirely about the old Salisbury Mall. In addition to historic and current photos, he even has some shots of the interior, which is in a rather sad, Dixie Square-like state nowadays.

Downtown Silver Spring/City Place Mall; Silver Spring, Maryland

Downtown Silver Spring is one of the more interesting downtown revitalization efforts that I’ve come across, in a large part because it incorporates an enclosed mall with the rejuvenated streetscape. The development encompasses two separately owned and maintained parcels–the indoor, 5-level (yet small, at only 300,000 square feet) City Place Mall; and the outdoor “urban neighborhood” of Downtown Silver Spring.

Silver Spring, Maryland is located at the top of the District of Columbia diamond, just inside of the Washington Beltway, in affluent Montgomery County. Arguably the second-largest city in Maryland after Baltimore, Silver Spring’s downtown experienced the same post-war lows as many major American cities, but like many has seen its downtown spring back to life in the 2000s.

The neighborhood surrounding Downtown Silver Spring and City Place has its roots (obviously) in Silver Spring’s historic downtown retail district, which included Hecht’s, JCPenney, and Sears in the 1950s. By the late 1980s, however, the area fell into decline and Hecht’s vacated their large store in the center of downtown Silver Spring. The former Hecht’s was converted to a tall enclosed mall–City Place–in 1992, but the mall failed to attract major tenants and became known as a budget mall. This is largely still at least somewhat true today, as City Place counts Marshalls and Burlington Coat Factory as its anchors. In this decade, however, a large portion of the downtown area surrounding the City Place Mall has been redeveloped as an active outdoor streetscape, with a variety of retail, restaurant, and entertainment-oriented tenants. Several streets are closed to vehicular traffic and used as pedestrian malls, and the development has a symbiotic relationship with the existing enclosed mall. Today the Downtown Silver Spring portion of the development has tenants like a 20 screen movie theatre, Whole Foods Market, Borders Books and Music, and Pier 1 Imports.

If I have any complaint with developments like these, it’s that they tend to be far more homogenous than the downtowns they replace. While I applaud any project that brings activity and life back to our faded downtowns, I hate that it has to eternally revolve around Starbucks and Cold Stone Creameries and that the end result feels like Celebration, Florida. For example, little separates the end product at Downtown Silver Spring from much of the work done 40 miles up the road in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor or from the Newport on the Levee development in Newport, Kentucky, across the river from Cincinnati. Even in their worst downswings, our cities derived their life from the unique businesses they hosted, from local restaurants to used CD and book stores. Developments like these are a start, but hopefully their visitors will fan out to surrounding blocks and enjoy the offerings of neighborhoods that aren’t leased by a single corporate parent.

K’s Merchandise Closing All Stores

Founded in 1954 in Decatur, Illinois, K’s Merchandise Mart is (or was, depending on when you read this) a hard-lines merchandise wholesaler not unlike the now-defunct Service Merchandise chain. Like Service Merchandise, it has fallen on hard times as competition from stores which offer overlapping merchandise at competitive prices, more convenient locations, or both have flooded the markets where K’s operates. Earlier this year, a Boston-based bank offered K’s a cash infusion to avert bankruptcy. K’s used the cash to spiff up its stores, namely the furniture and jewelry departments, and anticipated larger sales from these modifications in order to pay off the bank and get back in the black. Unfortunately, the increased sales never materialized, and K’s has been forced to pack up and march out. All 17 of K’s stores in Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, and Missouri will liquidate and close when the walls are bare, including the Rockford location I shopped at as a kid.

With the closest Service Merchandise in the Chicago area – over an hour away from where I grew up in Janesville, WI, we shopped at K’s Merchandise for those crazy times we needed wholesale hardlines and needed them fast. K’s was never a fancy store, and I personally thought the concept was easily duplicated at specialty electronics, jewelry, or general discount retailers like Wal-Mart and Target. In fact, I haven’t even been inside a K’s store in over a decade, a testament to the loss of my need for the store. In addition, just last week when passing a K’s incidently I had wondered about their viability.

The stores themselves were never fancy in decor, in varying conditions physically, and until very recently never attempted to update themselves as Service Merchandise did toward the end of its run, modernizing many of its stores. Perhaps the only interesting thing about K’s is the logo, and the memories you have if you ever shopped there. Feel free to post comments about K’s, too.

Tower Records Going Out of Business

Tower Records

Long-struggling California-based Tower Records announced yesterday they will officially begin liquidation proceedings and wind down their business, closing all 89 remaining stores in 20 states.

According to the Associated Press, the company was sold at auction to Great American Group for $134.3 million. Great American feels the physical assets of the company, including its remaining product and real estate, out-value the brand’s future potential in the marketplace, and will shut the chain. Sadly, Great American’s bid bested the auction’s second-highest bidder, Albany-based record store conglomerate TransWorld Entertainment (owner of FYE, Strawberries, Coconuts, Sam Goody, and other banners) by a mere $500,000. Unlike Great American Group, TransWorld planned to close only some Tower stores, keeping the remainder open and hoping to resuscitate the brand.

Now the storied 46-year-old retailer with stores spread across 20 states will be yet another dinosaur littering the landscape of departed media retailers, following many before them. Tower is a sadder loss than most, because they pioneered the record superstore format in the United States, even if in recent years their stores have declined in popularity, failing to remain competitive with their strongest competition on price or selection. Unlike most electronics superstores or the TransWorld chains that now dominate this market, Tower Records cared about its product and employed staff who knew about music (check out the detailed staff listing of some stores on their website, which includes employees’ names and product specialties). This is the kind of touch necessary to be a good music retailer–selling music isn’t like selling shoes–so it’s a sad loss for the industry.
Strangely, the record superstore format has done quite poorly across the board in the United States even as it is the norm in some foreign countries, such as the United Kingdom and Canada. In the U.K., large-format HMV or Virgin stores are common, and Canada’s largest music retailer is HMV, who often operates stores in similar formats as Tower in the United States. HMV pulled out of the United States in 2003 and Virgin still has a relatively limited presence restricted to large cities.

I was a manager at a record store for three years, so I saw the challenges facing this industry first-hand. Increasingly, media products are more easily (or cheaply) found online, via outlets such as Amazon or by downloading through iTunes. This is weeding out all but a) the most loyal of customers, who are collectors attached to the “product” and b) the least sophisticated customers, who may not have the technical know-how or the means to download music or movies. The latter audience has little loyalty, and will often turn to stores such as Target or Best Buy that also sell music and movies, as opposed to specifically seeking out media marts with a larger selection of titles they’ve never even heard of.

That leaves the die-hards–people who buy dozens to hundreds of CDs or DVDs a year–as the remaining audience for these stores. These customers are very sophisticated and expect a wide selection at fair prices, and they only shop in a record store because they choose to, because they have an emotional attachment to the experience itself. Many of these customers religiously buy new releases the day they come out. This audience may not continue to last forever, but it explains why many of the very best stores–such as Newbury Comics in New England, or Amoeba in California–are surviving, even if they are feeling the same pinch as their competitors. These customers do not shop at FYE. There was a time they shopped at Tower Records, but due to the chain’s cost-cutting and inventory-slashing, Tower became less fun to shop than their competitors. The die-hards left, and now another yet one bites the dust.