As I scramble to meet my quota of articles before the end of December and the end of 2024, I have to churn out a few more pieces of low-hanging fruit or I won’t get it all done. And so, with photos taken a mere two days before Christmas, I offer the best evidence I
Malls across the country, large and small, urban and suburban, enclosed and open-air, are dying. They’re getting sucked into a vortex of shifting consumption patterns that rejects what we might call peripatetic shopping. The image of an attractive woman clothing multiple large paper bags is increasingly passé. People shop while seated at their home computers,
Coming on the heels of an article where I unexpectedly concluded that the best decision might be to save a strip mall in College Park, Maryland, I now view more or less the same subject through a different lens. Leaping across the Potomac River to Virginia, the state might change but the metro area is
I don’t have a reason to visit College Park, Maryland all that often, even though it’s only a handful of miles away from my current home and hosts a major academic institution. But when I do visit, the small city reminds me what an outlier it is: a freestanding municipality encompassing a major flagship university,
It’s been a long time coming. But only within the last few weeks, after encountering a big sign at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), did I achieve full awareness of a condition that has crept across the American social domain: indoor dogs everywhere. Here was my indicator: If it’s not immediately obvious, the overhead
I’m not exactly making bold a proposition when I assert that, if a community experiences an overall decline in its income levels (and a growth in poverty rate), the economic health of its primary retail nodes is likely to deteriorate concurrently. Such a statement isn’t exactly going out on a limb. Any significant change, in
It’s hardly earth-shattering for a storefront to have two separate entrances, if it’s over a certain size. Sometimes even smaller establishments decide that they want two doorways for customers. (Building and safety codes often require a distinct fire/service entrance in the back of the establishment, if its over a minimum size.) Then again, this is
It’s not a rhetorical question, but it’s one that I would have struggled to answer until recently. After all, I’ve spent years exploring some of the dreariest corners of underperforming American retail: one or two dead malls in my hometown of Indianapolis (which has resisted mall decay more than most cities, almost entirely due to
I don’t want to belabor a point, which is why I rarely avoid two articles on the same subject in rapid succession. And besides, my May writeup on shopping cart security breaches didn’t generate a whole lot of buzz, perhaps because most readers are one step ahead: I was pointing out a feature that was
Saying “I like Trader Joe’s” isn’t very edgy; it’s not going to instigate a revolution anywhere. They aren’t exactly fighting words. Ranking right up there with California phenomenon In-N-Out Burger as one of the least controversial chains that dole out food, a person is far more likely to provoke fisticuffs for saying “Trader Joe’s is
As I scramble to meet my quota of articles before the end of December and the end of 2024, I have to churn out a few more pieces of low-hanging fruit or I
Malls across the country, large and small, urban and suburban, enclosed and open-air, are dying. They’re getting sucked into a vortex of shifting consumption patterns that rejects what we might call peripatetic shopping.
Coming on the heels of an article where I unexpectedly concluded that the best decision might be to save a strip mall in College Park, Maryland, I now view more or less the
I don’t have a reason to visit College Park, Maryland all that often, even though it’s only a handful of miles away from my current home and hosts a major academic institution. But
It’s been a long time coming. But only within the last few weeks, after encountering a big sign at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), did I achieve full awareness of a condition
I’m not exactly making bold a proposition when I assert that, if a community experiences an overall decline in its income levels (and a growth in poverty rate), the economic health of its
It’s hardly earth-shattering for a storefront to have two separate entrances, if it’s over a certain size. Sometimes even smaller establishments decide that they want two doorways for customers. (Building and safety codes
It’s not a rhetorical question, but it’s one that I would have struggled to answer until recently. After all, I’ve spent years exploring some of the dreariest corners of underperforming American retail: one
I don’t want to belabor a point, which is why I rarely avoid two articles on the same subject in rapid succession. And besides, my May writeup on shopping cart security breaches didn’t
Saying “I like Trader Joe’s” isn’t very edgy; it’s not going to instigate a revolution anywhere. They aren’t exactly fighting words. Ranking right up there with California phenomenon In-N-Out Burger as one of