Big 5 moving from mall store to former Rite Aid

[Super S]

http://www.columbian.com/news/2010/nov/ ... ving-mall/

I find this isnteresting on several counts:

Westfield Shoppingtown/Vancouver Mall has had a vacant Mervyn's space for quite some time, as well as many other vacancies as of late.

Big 5's new location is a Former Rite Aid, which was a mid-90s build, originally a PayLess Drug. The strip mall also contains a Wholesale Sports store, which is far larger than this new store. However, the strip mall also contains an LA Fitness.

This strip mall has been real spotty with tenants. The original anchors were Albertsons, Payless, Thrifty Auto Supply, and Home Base. Albertsons relocated to a new store on Padden Parkway several years ago, Rite Aid closed with no replacement store, Thrifty Auto closed with no replacement store (all Vancouver stores were closed, the remainder of this chain in Portland is now Carquest) and Home Base closed when the chain folded, the building was demolished for Sportsmans Warehouse, now Wholesale Sports.

I am curious what the future holds for Vancouver Mall. JCPenney has opened a freestanding store in east Vancouver, and the mall store you can tell is aging inside. The Sears in this mall also seems more dated looking than the nearby Portland area stores. The mall always seems busy, but I have noticed a growing number of vacancies over the past year. However, Macy's did a very thorough remodel and expansion of their store several years back. As for Big 5, I don't think there are any more mall-based stores in Portland, there is one in Kelso in the Three Rivers Mall, another mall that is really struggling. It would not surprise me to see big 5 vacate that one.

[Brian Lutz]

A number of the Big 5 stores in the Puget Sound area are located in outbuildings near malls. Several of these were originally SportsWest stores from back when Pay 'n Save owned that chain, and they had a tendency to group their stores together in the same shopping centers (such as the now nearly deserted Totem Lake Mall in Kirkland and Factoria Mall in Bellevue.)