The number of retailers pulling out of Circle Centre Mall within the past month has now grown to about six with today's announcement that Johnny Rockets restaurant will close. The irony of the heavily taxpayer-subsidized mall hemorrhaging tenants as we're treated by the local news media to daily doses of good news about how downtown is booming because of all the thousands of new millennials moving into the cheaply-built apartment buildings springing up all over the mile square.
It looks like the landlord's endgame here is pretty obvious. Jack lease rates for existing tenants which choose to exit rather than pay more to operate in a dying shopping mall. Landlord tells City it had better pay up and infuse tens of millions in new tax dollars to "re-purpose" the property's use so it doesn't become a blight on the neighborhood as so many of its malls have become in places like Lafayette Square and Washington Square. We have a new mayor who couldn't possibly be more under the thumb of the landlord. A plan to rescue the property will be forthcoming before year's end. You can count it.
8 comments:
Is this the fiasco in which Gannett has a financial interest?
It is just as safe as Lafayette Square. Yes, it's that bad.
The mall was a bad idea from day one. L.S. Ayres closing their DT store was the canary in the coal mine. If an Indiana icon such as the Ayres store found their DT location no longer to be viable, what made the PTB think the mall was going to be a success? Tourists want to travel light. Most people working DT get the hell out of there as soon as possible when it's time to go home after work. Sure,the mall might have had customers for a handful of years after opening,but I bet the mall never produced the number$ promised by its advocates.
Every media outlet had an investment in the mall so nothing negative was reported. The reportage was a complete lie filled with promises of unicorns,daisies,sunshine,cupcakes and redolent roses.The deal was the majority of the mall would be funded by taxpayer dollars and the taxpayers would be the last in line to receive any profits from their investment (giveaway). Of course,I'm betting the Simon's made out like bandits.
I remember when Union Station was THE night spot. Today, Simon lacks security to protect us from the Lafayette Square-Model of gang banger thugs that grown people with money to spend avoid. We do not want our cars broken into, girffriends & wives have their purse stolen, thugs approach us and rob us with guns, or fire gunshots.
Lack of security by Simon has likely caused this.
Eight People Shot at Circle Center Mall
The whole downtown model is completely broken. CCM is just a small part of it. Not sure where this meme of "all urban malls are dying" is coming from. There are plenty of urban malls that are doing fine. Rivercenter in San Antonio is so vibrant you can't move in it. That's probably the best mall for comparison purposes since San Antonio is about the same size as Indy and very dependent on the convention biz. Water Tower Place in Chicago is also vibrant. Indy's urban mall is dying mostly because everything about it has been misstructured and mismanaged. It was too big for the city, but because the city is so incredibly insecure they built it anyway and subsidized tenants. Even that's not enough. It's an all around bad investment made by people who simply cannot accept that they're small fish in a small pond. It deserves to fail. If the people who live in this city aren't going to hold the responsible parties accountable, then they deserve what they get.
I can remember when Johnny Rocket's was a 45 minute wait to get served. Haven't been in the mall, let alone eaten lunch in the food court, for over 15 years.
On a different note, Visit Indy is now spreading propaganda about Indiana 'losing $60 million' because of RFRA. *cough* The conventions that threatened to leave are still here and some have enlarged their footprint.
The figure they quote includes bids for conventions that ended up going elsewhere. That's bullshit to put those down as lost due to RFRA. But that's always the way revenue is calculated when they promise great gains from this project or that project. Pull imaginary numbers out of their collective ass.
The only big unreported story is how Visit Indy uses our taxpayer dollars to bribe convention planners to host their conventions in Indy. I don't see it any differently than lobbyists paying bribes to lawmakers. Yet our useless news media in this town does nothing but allow Visit Indy to propagate lie after lie on the Indianapolis public. As far as I'm concerned, it is engaged in racketeering and should be prosecuted as such. Yeah, not going to happen.
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