Malls Across U.S. See Vacancies Skyrocket

The windows of Bobick’s Cool City Golf in Westwood Mall featured signs that mall shoppers are all too familiar with: Its doors will stay shut.

The golf shop’s recent closing is one of several at the mall, and is part of a growing number of vacancies at strip malls, community centres and regional malls across the country.

Kyle McLaughlin, an analyst at a New York-based real estate research firm Reis Inc., said the mall-vacancy rate is increasing at a pace not seen in nearly three decades. “We’ve never really seen deterioration of this order in occupied space since 1980,” McLaughlin said.

At Jackson Crossing, the 10.9 percent vacancy rate — up from 10.3 percent in 1999 — is higher than the reported 9.5 percent rate at malls nationally. The mall, owned by developer Ramco-Gershenson, lost at least two of its nearly 15 empty stores to bankruptcy, said Mike McBride, Ramco-Gershenson’s vice president of assets management in the Midwest. “More chainwide closings are a result of the global economy rather than maybe something happening in Jackson,” he said.

Ritz Camera is the most recent Westwood Mall store to fall victim to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy organization. Manager Kyle Hockley said the store’s strong sales in the last three years did not stop it from becoming one of about 300 Ritz stores set to close in the U.S.

Vacant storefronts hurt more than the former tenant and the mall’s owner, workers at mall stores say.