[Spero]

http://www.costar.com/News/Article.aspx?id=E3D24E8CB57F0333E6B1C2AD6D5B9C3A&ref=100

In last week's CoStar Advisor retail story, titled "4,500 Store Closings….And Counting," CoStar tallied major store closings announced by retailers during the first half of 2008 and estimated nearly 7,100 store closing announcements would be made by the end of this year, which would surpass the high recorded by ICSC in 2001.

Our story appeared the night before the bankruptcy filing of fast-expanding discount apparel retailer, Steve & Barry's. Then, on Monday, ICSC released a report saying it expects 144,000 stores to physically close in 2008. The retail real estate trade group's latest report expanded the scope of its previous report, and included unannounced store closings, small store closures, closures by private and "mom and pop" owners, and estimated actual store closures, the data being partly gleaned from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' business establishments data.

If the revised ICSC estimate is realized at the end of this year, the increase in store closures would up 7% over last year -- the highest increase seen in 14 years. ICSC qualified the statement by saying it expects "a similarly large increase in new retail store openings" this year. While this is welcome news, such openings likely won't create a balancing effect when you combine the trend of shopping center vacancy consistently rising with nearly 76 million square feet of shopping center space estimated to deliver in 2008 and another 79.5 million in 2009 (according to CoStar Property Professional's Analytics feature).

Times is strange. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the US at the moment but even the investors around here are acting like chickens with their heads cut off.

 

[jimmydean]

The mattress store down the street has been having a "Store closing sale" for a little over a year now.

 

[$tinkle]

The mattress store down the street has been having a "Store closing sale" for a little over a year now.

if mmike's mom would take a coffee break & get off of one they could close up

 

[Spero]

The mattress store down the street has been having a "Store closing sale" for a little over a year now.

There was one somewhat close to me that had those signs for a couple of years. They shut down last month.

They're still building expensive strips on the outskirts of the city that are destined to sit unoccupied and eat at someone's wallet. Even the prime centers with great demographics, location and rates are showing vacancy.

 

[jimmydean]

An old report (2006-02-20), but I'm sure it's only gone up from here.

Wal-Mart discount stores are slowly disappearing. Over the past 5 years, Wal-Mart has shut down 35.3 million square feet of discount stores. Since 1999, Sprawl-Busters has monitored Wal-Mart’s abandoned stores. These are stores the company leaves behind to build bigger stores—what the company likes to call “dark stores.” Last year, for example, we reported that Wal-Mart had 356 dead stores, with 26.69 million square feet of empty space on the market. At that time, 31% of these dead stores were over 100,000 s.f. As of February, 2006, Wal-Mart Realty is still sitting on a colossal amount of dead air. A total of 310 stores in 38 states are on the list of “available buildings”, a total of 24.39 million square feet, or roughly 508 football fields of empty stores. The top ten states in 2006 with empty Wal-Mart’s are as follows:
Texas, 31
Tennessee, 26
Ohio, 19
Georgia, 17
Illinois, 17
Iowa, 14
Louisiana, 12
Kentucky, 11
Michigan, 11
North Carolina, 11

 

[ohio]

144,000 closing in 2008? How many close in a typical year? How many are opening in 2008?

 

[Spero]

144,000 closing in 2008? How many close in a typical year? How many are opening in 2008?

From what I can recall, generally we have around 10,000 closings in the US annually and I'm assuming that number is for closings that have been officially announced by the companies. The 144k is an estimate that includes everything from unexpected closings to your dilapidated corner store closing. The rest is in article.