For years, many analysts in the retail and commercial real estate sector have predicted the death of U.S. shopping malls, but a closer look at recent industry data shows that despite sweeping closures and thinning foot traffic, malls are far from dead, MorningConsult reported. While recent reports paint a gloomy outlook — an April report from Cowen and Co. predicted that as many as 20 percent of stores at some mass and middle-market mall retailers will close in the next five years, and a Credit Suisse report from May forecast that 25 percent of all U.S. malls could shutter by 2022 — those projections don’t portend the imminent death of malls, according to other industry experts who say it’s more that the industry is correcting itself in a country that built too many retail centers over the past few decades. “Malls are coming back to where they started,” said James Hughes, a professor and dean emeritus at Rutgers University’s School of Planning and Public Policy. “They’re coming back to where they should have never left.” Read more.
Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the forthcoming ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available for pre-order at the ABI Store.
