Westfield Says It Is Done With The U.S.

pseudo3d
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Re: Westfield Says It Is Done With The U.S.

Post by pseudo3d »

Brian Lutz wrote: May 25th, 2022, 12:54 pm As a somewhat famous\infamous example, Dixie Square Mall in Harvey Illinois (most notable as the site of a car chase through the then abandoned mall in the film The Blues Brothers) had a Jewel store and a Walgreens as tenants during its time as an operating mall from 1966-1978. Throughout much of its history Crossroads in Bellevue has has a grocery store as a tenant ( a QFC store has occupied the northern portion of the main mall building since at least the 1990s) and it was fairly recent that a 365 store operated in Bellevue Square for about a year before Whole Foods abandoned the concept and closed the store. Currently a Seafood City (Filipino ethnic grocery store) operates on the lower floor of what used the be the Mervyn's at Southcenter (the upper floor is a Round 1 arcade/bowling center.)
The actual Dixie Square Mall had a Jewel that did not connect to the mall corridor even when many malls did have interior-connected grocery stores (Randhurst across town DID have an interior-facing Jewel until the 1970s, when it built a stand-alone store in the outlots).

The last of the new-build malls with a grocery store were in the very early 1970s, and even then, they were very different from what we have now. There are a few malls that have a "real" supermarket with a mall entrance (such as Giant-MD in Beltway Plaza in Maryland) but generally those malls were B-class even in the mid-2000s.

Part of the problem is that the size of supermarkets are no longer junior anchors that can fit comfortably into a ~25k square foot space, they're now at least 50k square feet if not larger.
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Re: Westfield Says It Is Done With The U.S.

Post by BillyGr »

pseudo3d wrote: May 26th, 2022, 1:21 pm
Brian Lutz wrote: May 25th, 2022, 12:54 pm As a somewhat famous\infamous example, Dixie Square Mall in Harvey Illinois (most notable as the site of a car chase through the then abandoned mall in the film The Blues Brothers) had a Jewel store and a Walgreens as tenants during its time as an operating mall from 1966-1978. Throughout much of its history Crossroads in Bellevue has has a grocery store as a tenant ( a QFC store has occupied the northern portion of the main mall building since at least the 1990s) and it was fairly recent that a 365 store operated in Bellevue Square for about a year before Whole Foods abandoned the concept and closed the store. Currently a Seafood City (Filipino ethnic grocery store) operates on the lower floor of what used the be the Mervyn's at Southcenter (the upper floor is a Round 1 arcade/bowling center.)
The actual Dixie Square Mall had a Jewel that did not connect to the mall corridor even when many malls did have interior-connected grocery stores (Randhurst across town DID have an interior-facing Jewel until the 1970s, when it built a stand-alone store in the outlots).

The last of the new-build malls with a grocery store were in the very early 1970s, and even then, they were very different from what we have now. There are a few malls that have a "real" supermarket with a mall entrance (such as Giant-MD in Beltway Plaza in Maryland) but generally those malls were B-class even in the mid-2000s.

Part of the problem is that the size of supermarkets are no longer junior anchors that can fit comfortably into a ~25k square foot space, they're now at least 50k square feet if not larger.
Other than smaller ones, like here where Whole Foods has a store in the corner of a former Sears in a mall. Still accessed from the exterior only, but still in part of the actual mall.
Though, of course, a space like an empty Sears could easily be large enough to house any type of supermarket if they wanted to put one in there (and this particular spot would have been easy enough, given that it is on the end of the mall and faces a large parking lot that is never filled, save maybe the days before Christmas).
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Re: Westfield Says It Is Done With The U.S.

Post by ClownLoach »

BillyGr wrote: May 29th, 2022, 2:02 pm
pseudo3d wrote: May 26th, 2022, 1:21 pm
Brian Lutz wrote: May 25th, 2022, 12:54 pm As a somewhat famous\infamous example, Dixie Square Mall in Harvey Illinois (most notable as the site of a car chase through the then abandoned mall in the film The Blues Brothers) had a Jewel store and a Walgreens as tenants during its time as an operating mall from 1966-1978. Throughout much of its history Crossroads in Bellevue has has a grocery store as a tenant ( a QFC store has occupied the northern portion of the main mall building since at least the 1990s) and it was fairly recent that a 365 store operated in Bellevue Square for about a year before Whole Foods abandoned the concept and closed the store. Currently a Seafood City (Filipino ethnic grocery store) operates on the lower floor of what used the be the Mervyn's at Southcenter (the upper floor is a Round 1 arcade/bowling center.)
The actual Dixie Square Mall had a Jewel that did not connect to the mall corridor even when many malls did have interior-connected grocery stores (Randhurst across town DID have an interior-facing Jewel until the 1970s, when it built a stand-alone store in the outlots).

The last of the new-build malls with a grocery store were in the very early 1970s, and even then, they were very different from what we have now. There are a few malls that have a "real" supermarket with a mall entrance (such as Giant-MD in Beltway Plaza in Maryland) but generally those malls were B-class even in the mid-2000s.

Part of the problem is that the size of supermarkets are no longer junior anchors that can fit comfortably into a ~25k square foot space, they're now at least 50k square feet if not larger.
Other than smaller ones, like here where Whole Foods has a store in the corner of a former Sears in a mall. Still accessed from the exterior only, but still in part of the actual mall.
Though, of course, a space like an empty Sears could easily be large enough to house any type of supermarket if they wanted to put one in there (and this particular spot would have been easy enough, given that it is on the end of the mall and faces a large parking lot that is never filled, save maybe the days before Christmas).
Isn't it very expensive to configure a multi-story space like a Sears to add in all the necessary plumbing and refrigeration for a grocery store? Wouldn't it be cheaper if the building was razed and they just built a new store on that spot? I am pretty sure it is too much which is probably why Whole Foods is the primary retailer seeking such space - Amazon was giving them unlimited resources as long as they were only being spent on store construction.
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Re: Westfield Says It Is Done With The U.S.

Post by BillyGr »

ClownLoach wrote: May 30th, 2022, 9:13 am
BillyGr wrote: May 29th, 2022, 2:02 pm Other than smaller ones, like here where Whole Foods has a store in the corner of a former Sears in a mall. Still accessed from the exterior only, but still in part of the actual mall.
Though, of course, a space like an empty Sears could easily be large enough to house any type of supermarket if they wanted to put one in there (and this particular spot would have been easy enough, given that it is on the end of the mall and faces a large parking lot that is never filled, save maybe the days before Christmas).
Isn't it very expensive to configure a multi-story space like a Sears to add in all the necessary plumbing and refrigeration for a grocery store? Wouldn't it be cheaper if the building was razed and they just built a new store on that spot? I am pretty sure it is too much which is probably why Whole Foods is the primary retailer seeking such space - Amazon was giving them unlimited resources as long as they were only being spent on store construction.
No reason to configure a multi-story space. Many of the Sears stores were big enough that just the lower (ground) level would be large enough for a supermarket (that is, for those malls that were more than one story to start with, as not all are/were).

Thus, no different than using any empty built box space and just adding what they need as they would to any new building being constructed that was never a supermarket.
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Re: Westfield Says It Is Done With The U.S.

Post by Super S »

ClownLoach wrote: May 30th, 2022, 9:13 am

Isn't it very expensive to configure a multi-story space like a Sears to add in all the necessary plumbing and refrigeration for a grocery store? Wouldn't it be cheaper if the building was razed and they just built a new store on that spot? I am pretty sure it is too much which is probably why Whole Foods is the primary retailer seeking such space - Amazon was giving them unlimited resources as long as they were only being spent on store construction.
There could also be regulations in place where they can't expand out of the original building's footprint, and land use laws discouraging new construction. Such is the case with Portland's Mall 205 where Home Depot constructed a store within the existing footprint of part of the mall, and Target continues operating a 2-story store which is a former Montgomery Ward.
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Re: Westfield Says It Is Done With The U.S.

Post by lake52 »

Westfield sold Santa Anita (Arcadia, CA) for $538 million to an undisclosed commercial real estate firm. The rumor is that Rick Caruso, the owner of Americana at Brand was the purchaser.

If that is the going rate for Santa Anita, I can only imagine what they’ll get for Valley Fair or Century City.
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