http://www.labelscar.com News and Views of Malls, Shopping Centers, and Retail Chains Past and Present Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:06:08 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Albuquerque is the largest city in sparsely populated New Mexico, America's 5th-largest state by area.  With a metropolitan population of approximately 850,000 people, nearly half the population of the entire state of New Mexico lives in the Albuquerque area. Albuquerque is known for its natural beauty and Spanish and Native American influences, ... http://www.labelscar.com/dead-malls/winrock-shopping-center I keep an eye on the comments, and I know there's been a few stats junkies who've been paying attention to the ratio of malls-to-population that we've posted. I know there's also been some (undeniably true) grousing that we haven't posted anything about New Jersey in ages. Well here you ... http://www.labelscar.com/new-jersey/brunswick-square-mall This isn't a shocker, but according to an article in the Wall Street Journal (which has been reprinted all over the place, including the San Francisco Chronicle), Borders plans to close another 200 of its Waldenbooks stores, leaving a paltry 130 remaining in the chain. Despite what the article says, ... http://www.labelscar.com/retail-news/waldenbooks-slowly-disappearing Recently I've been following coverage of some pretty extensive renovations taking place at Lincoln Mall, a long-beleagured super-regional mall in south suburban Chicagoland.  Initially I was excited at the prospect of even a modicum of success here, especially considering I've never seen the mall even close to its potential.  I ... http://www.labelscar.com/illinois/lincoln-mall-matteson Here's something kind of authentically Texan: a shopping mall that's home to "the world's largest pair of cowboy boots," a 40' sculpture outside of Saks Fifth Avenue. Pretty wild! San Antonio, Texas is a large and sprawling metropolitan area of just over two million people in south-central Texas, and is home ... http://www.labelscar.com/texas/north-star-mall We thought we'd switch it up a bit with the mall postings and fire off a whole bunch of them at once, in an urban setting: downtown Chicago. The following six malls are the largest and most cohesive retail centers in downtown Chicago, which we're defining as extending beyond the Loop and including the ... http://www.labelscar.com/illinois/the-malls-of-downtown-chicago [caption id="attachment_6734" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Santa Rosa's Coddingtown Mall, early 1960s"][/caption] Coddingtown Mall, in the Sonoma County city of Santa Rosa, is one of the largest and oldest malls north of San Francisco along the California coast. Unfortunately it seems to be a bit troubled nowadays, but historic mall geeks may find ... http://www.labelscar.com/california/coddingtown-mall One of the most disturbing retail trends over the past few years has been the virtual disappearance of old-line department stores. Even if shopping trends aren't exactly favoring them anymore (and I would argue that there's not all that many people in the under 30 set who shop at Macy's ... http://www.labelscar.com/uncategorized/well-be-the-future-of-retail-blog-for-a-minute This has popped up in a few places already, but Dwell and Inhabitat have been sponsoring this series called "Reburbia" that's targeted at coming up with ideas to "fix" America's broken suburban landscapes. It's pretty neat, because the finalists are full of really kooky sanctimonious ideas like "suburban people need AIRSHIPS ... http://www.labelscar.com/uncategorized/reburbia-sanctimonious-cankles This is really neat. You can vote on your favorite one. http://www.labelscar.com/uncategorized/modernist-gas-stations