What’s Really Behind Closed Businesses and Empty Storefronts?
A QUESTION ABOUT VACANT BUSINESSES AND COMMERCIAL MISMANAGEMENT
See photo: This is one of the nicer areas of Las Vegas (Charleston and Fort Apache — at Boca Park). It’s in the middle of an affluent, well-developed neighborhood, with lots of commercial businesses.
Ten years ago, an upscale grocery store was located here. It seemed to do well, but then without much warning, they pulled out. Maybe the lease payments got too high. I don’t know. Once the “anchor store” departed, a few other smaller businesses in this strip mall also closed.
Surely some other business would come in and take its place, right? Great location. Growing area. Relatively new building. Plenty of parking and good neighbors.
WRONG.
It’s now been a DECADE since this store closed and it’s STILL VACANT.
I was driving through the parking lot yesterday and snapped this photo. It looks the same now as in 2014. I admit to knowing next to nothing about commercial real estate, but it strikes me as about as dumb as it gets to let a PAYING TENENT leave, and then sit on their asses and allow a potentially lucrative property to deteriorate for TEN YEARS. Wouldn’t a reasonably-priced lease on this property have brought in a reliable business and built a long-term relationship?
What is it with these commercial developers and management companies? Is it stupidity? Greed? How can anyone with a vested interest in that company not demand to know, “what’s going on here?” !!! Whoever was in charge of this mismanagement must have cost their company a fortune (think 10 years of lease payments).
The trouble with letting commercial developers run roughshod over neighborhoods is when things go south, they take everything down with them. Boarded up windows and weeds in the parking lot means the nearby businesses suffer. Neglect (and greed) destroys the entire community (recall the Fontainebleau Resort fiasco under construction for 15 ridiculous years that ruined the north end of the Strip and looked like a ghetto). If I was on the city council, I’d like to see city governments SEIZE abandoned properties after a set time frame in the interest of preventing neighborhoods from turning into slums. But that another (debatable) issue for another time.
We see stuff like this happening all over the place in most cities. My question is — what is a commercial developer and/or management company thinking when they allow a building to remain vacant for years, or even more than a decade. Isn’t it better to get almost ANY PAYING TENANT in there to bring revenue? [*see footnote]
Note: I expect that with more people working from home and that trend continuing, in addition to much retail shifting online, commercial projects would slow down. Who is going to move into a new skyscraper and pay those ridiculous rents? Commercial developers and strip malls should be BEGGING for reliable long-term tenants. You can’t tell me it makes any sense for a property to sit empty for years and bring in ZERO money.
This question applies to Las Vegas, but it could also apply to any large city.
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Prediction: It’s going to get worse (and this has nothing to do with the economy or who’s in office). What’s most scary are the houses being bought up by corporations and the middle class being priced out of the market. The scum buying up real estate, middle-manning the prices, and squeezing the public is just criminal. Talk about a predatory economic system!
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