Panama City's Abandoned Mall

Panama City Beach, FL, is a tourist destination. The coastal highway running through that area is lined with resorts, night clubs, mini theme parks and restaurants. Inland of that, by only about 10 or 15 minutes, is the mainland Panama City. It is small, largely business and industrial, with one central hub for all the residents and tourists alike.

The “shopping and restaurant” district of Panama City includes several strip malls and free-standing chain restaurants. There are well-known brand names like Target, Lowe’s, Books a Million, Beall’s Outlet and TJ Maxx as well as Olive Garden, Chili’s, O’Charley’s, Chick Fil A and more. This “district” stretches out west along 23^rd street, towards the beach. But much of it seems to be consolidated into several blocks that center around the old Panama City Mall.

In October 2018, Hurricane Michael ripped through Panama City and caused significant damage. As of now, more than a year later, the damage is still prominent in places. Businesses that were already shuttered before the storm have been left standing half-demolished by the winds. Their rooftops are peeling back like cat food cans. Some other businesses were open at the time but never returned, and also look like they were part of a war zone. The biggest casualty of it all, however, has to be the mall.

Panama City Mall opened in 1976. It was small, at only a little over 600,000 square feet. It boasted just three anchors. At the time that Hurricane Michael struck in 2018, those anchors were Dillard’s, JC Penney and Planet Fitness. Present day, all three of them are still open and operating normally. The mall itself is permanently closed. It sustained so much damage to its interior corridors that the company who owned it, Hendon Properties, determined permanent closure was the only option.

Apparently, they didn’t think it was worth what would have to be borrowed and sunk into it to restore it.

The mall’s website is still up and running with only the surviving anchor stores and surrounding restaurants listed. The building itself is covered in boards and looks rather ominous. Pictures of the interior can be found online, taken before the storm closed it down. I don’t know much about what was there before the hurricane, but whatever stores were inside must have been doing just “not-well-enough” to warrant the mall not being worth the trouble of restoring.

New Orleans had the same type of thing happen, but on a larger scale. A few malls were left permanently boarded up and rotting away after Katrina flooded them in 2005. No one has ever tried to rebuild them due to the areas surrounded being left largely vacant when residents decided not to return.

I’ve watched a few malls steadily decline here in Florida over the years, reaching dead-mall status. (Jacksonville’s Regency Square HAS to be the worst case of this.) I’ve also read up on some that have closed due to economic shift or decline in the past few decades and have since  been replaced by shopping centers. But this is the first case I’ve seen up close and personal of a mall that was taken out by what they call an “act of God”.

My Retail Predictions for 2020 and Beyond

Christmastime 2019 is upon us, and at the Avenues Mall in south Jacksonville, Florida, the anchor and corridor stores are bustling with holiday shoppers. Except for one massive shopping space that instead sits silent, dark and empty with its mall entrance covered up.

In fall 2018, Sears filed for bankruptcy. While the department store that sold affordable clothing, shoes, housewares and appliances once saw its heyday in decades past, it has become obsolete much like similarly structured Montgomery Ward. Many of their stores began to shut down earlier this year. The Avenues mall location began to close in the fall.

On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, my husband and I made a trip up to the Avenues Mall with our baby to purchase a Christmas dress for me and a few gift items. We were all aware that Sears has been struggling, but unaware that this location was closing. We never even frequented Sears. It was always just “a large entrance to a store in the background” for us. (This sort of mentality among my millennial generation may be what killed it. ) I took a walk through Forever 21 to look at dresses and also to pacify the baby in his stroller. When I came out of the store, my husband was nowhere to be seen. I called him and he said “I’m in Sears”.

When my husband and I were younger and still dating, we would often go to the mall to visit the puppies at Puppy Avenue, which is housed right next to the mall entrance to the lower floor of Sears. I remember glancing at middle aged men and women strolling lazily around between the refrigerators inside that entrance, but never paid it much notice beyond that. He had certainly never gone inside the store. “Why are you at Sears?” I asked. “It’s closing and so I’m looking for good deals”. 

This was only six days until Black Friday so I figured when he said “Sears is closing”, he meant “They just announced it, and now things are 20% off”.  When I arrived at the upstairs entrance, I was shocked to find that there were only a handful of merchandise tables and racks left in a vastly empty space. The items on them were largely picked over and of the “odd sizes and colors no one wants” variety. The few small appliances left were those that had missing parts or scratches. Everything was as much as 70% off though. I have learned in the past few years that buying anything that I either didn’t need, that didn’t fit right or that I didn’t love, even if only 99 cents, was still a waste. With this in mind, I browsed lightly but walked on by most of what I saw. I located one single large bluish knit blanket that had once been $45 and was now less than $20. We always need blankets. My husband looked more intently at things but found nothing he wanted. 

I did not return to the mall on Black Friday, but based on how little was left, I can only guess that Sears was completely shuttered by then. Now that set of mall entrances is completely covered over with a light colored wall, as if that had always been a dead end. The outside still looks like Sears, but the logos are gone. I am not sure if the Mall will compensate by bringing in a Burlington Coat Factory or a Dillard’s Clearance or something of that nature that usually inhabits the abandoned spaces left by original mall anchor stores as they die off. 

I have lived in the general area for fourteen years now, and this is only the second time that I’ve seen an Avenues Mall anchor jump ship. The first time was at the end of the 2000’s, when Belk decided it only needed ONE anchor, not two, in the same mall and closed their “mens and kids” store. They consolidated it all into the women’s one and remodeled. That old Belk space was taken over by the fantastically large Forever 21 within a year (Grand opening fall 2010). Unfortunately, Forever 21 is even in the early stages of bankruptcy now.

Which brings me to an intriguing topic: I’m going to make a retail prediction based upon observations made since I was a teenager at the beginning of the 2000’s and how other companies have closed as technology and internet advanced over time.

From 2000 to now:

·      I watched Montgomery Ward close all of its stores, though in my early teens I didn’t really understand why. I recently watched a history report on this on Youtube.

·      I observed Circuit City’s way of selling technology become obsolete and lose to Best Buy, resulting in all of its stores disappearing in I believe the late 2000’s.

·      Around the same time as Circuit City’s demise, I stopped seeing Comp USA stores. I don’t know if they still exist in other regions, but in north Florida they do not. I assume it is also because of the internet and Best Buy.

·      I saw Kmart also become obsolete in the late 2000’s and disappear by early 2010’s. (my mother never liked them to begin with, and the one that was in my college town was very run down and simple compared to Target and even Wal-Mart. Yes Wal-Mart. That’s never a good sign)

·      In the late 2010’s, the last Radio Shack stores finally vanished. Their 1980’s way of marketing mixed with their too-high prices on some things made them lose to Best Buy and also the internet as Amazon gained strength and power.

·      Brookstone and The Sharper Image vanished between 2007 and 2015. These stores specialized in seemingly “cutting edge” inventions for personal use, such as portable air purifiers, massage tools and various desktop objects with USB ports in them. As those types of things became accessible online or in big-box stores for a much better value, these two specialized retailers went extinct.

·      I watched “Linens N’ Things”, which I always perceived to be kind of a knock-off of Bed Bath and Beyond fail in the late 2000’s or early 2010’s.

·      Over the span of most of the 2010’s, the major bookstores like Barnes and Noble began to stagnate and even shrink because of Amazon. The store in my hometown has long since closed down. Virgin Records closed its massive store in Orlando, as CD’s became obsolete Also, in my area at least, I’ve stopped seeing Walden Books and ... what was that other Seattle-Based one? It was huge. Why can’t I remember it. Oh Right! Borders.

·      Just last year, in 2018, I saw Amazon’s success as well as Wal Mart and Target’s selling strategies for toys run Toys R’ Us and its other affiliates into the ground and finally kill it off after the holiday shopping season in (I believe) 2017 was an epic fail for them. 

·      Though they were not in my part of the US (southeast), I am aware of a store chain called Ames, a department store ran much like Kmart, that also folded for similar reasons in the early 2000’s.

My predictions for 2020 and beyond:

The next five years

·      I think that JCPenney will be the next “Sears”. It has tried to update some of its stores to a more modern vibe and has maintained low prices, like Sears, but in the past several years it has struggled a bit. The small store in my town has already closed. JCP in other areas, like the one in Gulfport, MS, that I went into with my aunt last year, are starting to become a little run down and disorganized. They advertise often and frantically on the radio and on Pandora. They have huge “blowout” sales for every occasion. I think that within the next five to ten years, they will also cease to exist.

·      I wouldn’t be surprised if the next five years of Amazon growing larger and more like a monopoly result in the official death of ALL large-scale bookstores. Books a Million and Barnes and Noble have gotten increasingly quiet inside as more and more books can be purchased online in different formats and for less money.

The next ten years

·      I have a feeling that specialty stores that have a certain theme but sell the product for much higher prices than what can be found online are going to start to vanish. This would mean the beginning of the end for Bed Bath and Beyond, Pier One Imports, Bath and Body Works, Family Christian stores, Hallmark, Cost Plus World Market, Victoria’s Secret, FYE, M.A.C., Spencer’s, Hot Topic and more... In fact, I think some of these have already begun to close some stores.

·      For the stores that decide they are DEFINITELY going to survive, some brand names are going to grow, monopolize and be the death of other brand names.

o   I can see Dick’s Sporting Goods causing all the other sporting good stores to implode. Gander Mountain already closed in our town.

o   I think eventually either Michael’s or Hobby Lobby will win out and become prominent in every town, but not both.

o   Best Buy will probably become THE only brick-and-mortar place for shopping all types of technology and getting it repaired. It already kind of is.

o   Common Jewelry store names will probably all conglomerate and get absorbed into each other until there’s only Diamonds Direct and names like Kay and Zales  (The fast food restaurants of the jewelry industry) will be no more.

o   Ikea will choke out all other large-scale furniture stores, leaving only a few hand-made-family-owned types of operations standing. For those who want cheap furniture but don’t want to assemble it, there’s Wal-Mart, Target, Big Lots and WayFair.com.

o   Office supply stores will be no more. Either Staples will be the only one still standing, mostly operating through its website, or they will disappear all together.

-I think a handful of middle-tier and upper-middle-tier department stores will survive (Belk, Dillard’s, Nordstrom etc...), but many more overpriced upper-tier names will fold (Like Saks or Neimann Marcus) and more “faded old has-been” lower-tier names will also fold (Like if there’s still any The Bon-Ton left). Yet, department store liquidators will continue to flourish and open more new stores in brand-new massive strip malls everywhere. These names, like Marshall’s, Ross, TJ Maxx and Home Goods will eventually be the only way everyone acquires department store grade fashion and home décor. Except without the department store.

-Clothing retailers for women and teens that dominate every mall will gradually shift towards only being available through their websites.

-More malls will begin to close. Now only larger metropolitan areas will have one. Small towns will get new strip malls instead.

The next twenty years

-All of the indoor malls will be extinct. Either they will have been torn down and replaced with lifestyle centers or they will have been repurposed as churches and offices.

-Amazon will own everything, sell everything online, and what is left as brick-and-mortar will have their name incorporated into it somewhere. Much like how Whole Foods stores have a deal with them and the shoppers get special deals for having a Prime membership. Amazon will probably even sell cars and might even own housing and sell/rent it through online services instead of one having to consult a realtor....

- Since 90% of all shopping will take place on the internet, every town will have an amazon warehouse so that no one has to wait for their fresh produce or medication for long. Instead of malls, open-air lifestyle centers will be prevalent and will include businesses such as restaurants, spas, salons, cafes, cinemas, banks, gyms, pet care services, walk-in clinics, gaming rooms, entertainment, religious centers, art galleries.... but not much in the way of shopping.   

 

How accurate do you think my predictions are? If you have a lot more in-depth knowledge of the economy than I do, maybe you can shed some light on where I could be wrong.

Malls Are Going Extinct....here's why

Malls are going extinct

It has been six years since my cross-state mall tour in 2013. A lot has happened in six years, but three major developments have resulted in a change in direction for me.

1)   In 2014, I got married. During our honeymoon, I toured a few Sarasota, FL malls. But after that, we settled into a routine and I did not have time to travel around the state so much, especially for the sake of simply walking in a mall.

2)   In 2018, I became a mom. Now when I’m not at work, my life is centered around caring for a baby and on the weekends I go where I can take baby along easily. A mall is great for walking with a stroller, but not if the mall is hours away.

3)   I found new passions. Food reviews, Facebook group moderating and supporting local restaurants are some of them, and this takes up enough of my time.

However, I still take a moment to observe what’s going on around me.  At one point, my visits to the Avenues Mall in Jacksonville and the St. Johns Town Center, also Jacksonville, were every weekend. I was in a rut socially and my new husband was busy studying for school, so it was easy for me to just take a long walk around the malls on Saturday or Sunday. What was I even doing with my time? This was a point where I was asking “What is my life?” Because I was kind of stuck in limbo waiting for the next big thing. Unfortunately, I think a number of unnecessary purchases of little clothing items came out of these weekends. This turned out to be clothing that I didn’t love enough to wear for long and would sell later.  My husband and I went through some financial issues in 2017 and 2018, and then we had our baby. I stopped having time to go shopping or even window shopping. The mall went from being a leisurely hangout for me to a place only visited in times of necessity. When I needed maternity clothes. When I needed a few new work pants. Most of the time, I was going to second hand shops like Clothes Mentor or Uptown Cheapskate to find things I needed.

After the baby was born and we drew closer to the holidays last year, as the finances improved some, I finally made some visits to the malls again. I was taken aback by the shift in the occupancy in our local indoor malls.  

Changes at The Avenues

-The anchors are still holding out strong in Jacksonville’s favorite family mall but the corridors are losing some tenants.

-At some point, Banana Republic vacated its double-space downstairs.

-Some of the jewelry stores are gone.

-A few of the boutiques that had just come in rather experimentally in the past few years have been replaced by off-brand bottom-dollar fashion. These types of stores sell colorful party outfits made of the cheapest materials. 

-FYE has adapted to change by replacing its rows and rows of CD’s with shelves of Bluetooth and media player accessories, posters and cutouts of famous movie and TV characters, little trinkets themed after popular cartoons and music, and some clothing similar to the music and TV themed clothing at Hot Topic next door.    

-While the massive Forever 21 is still chugging along (despite parts of the ceiling falling in when it rains), some of the other big names in teen fashion have gone bankrupt and shut down. Charlotte Russe and Papaya have disappeared not just from this mall, but everywhere.

-Seasonal monogram stores, a paint-your-own pottery studio, sports-themed stores and a few other family owned themed retailers try their luck in spaces that belonged to brand name shops before.

 Overall, there are maybe 20% more vacant spots than there were, and about 30% of the mall is off-brand and family-owned retail ventures.

The St. Augustine Premium Outlet Mall

This one is the busier, and still more populated mall of two outlets that face each other across I-95. It is still seemingly doing well, but has seen the closure of Nine West and Gymboree as the brands went bankrupt. The mall also lost Cotton-On which is also struggling and has closed 300 stores. There may be a few others, which I will have to update next weekend when I can drive by again. 

  

The St. Augustine Prime Outlet Mall

This case is the saddest.

In 2008, the ailing Prime Outlet (called Belz at the time) was given a new start with an outward-facing expansion and the addition of a few dozen new stores and the large Saks Off Fifth free standing department store by the front entryway.

This expanse created hundreds of new jobs, including one for me at Hugo Boss outlet. I was hired just as Obama was elected president. In spring 2009, the recession began and I was laid off as the store trimmed down its staff. I found another job in the same mall with less reliable hours before moving on to other types of retail and ultimately banking.

After I left retail, I watched the outlet mall slowly decline.

A few of these outlets of very high fashion failed quickly. Guicci and Escada, for example, only lasted a few years. But as we made our way through the 2010’s, the stores began dropping like flies.

-Some of the “somewhat expensive but more moderately priced” retailers failed, like American Apparel. The entire company went out of business shortly after.

-Almost everything on the left side that faced the interstate disappeared. Juicy Couture went first, as the era of the velour tracksuit with “Juicy” written on the butt finally ended. Luckily, this was replaced by Francesca's. The 2B Bebe went down, then the Maxazria, then the Kenneth Cole. Coldwater Creek was replaced by Vanity Fair which moved over from the far right side so Old Navy could move in. (The Guess and the Talbots still remain on the far left).

-Shortly After this, as we neared the end of the 2010’s, The massive H&M store opened and is still sustaining but many of the other affordable teen brands vanished. Pacsun filed bankruptcy and closed its outlet (but not its Avenues mall store). Rue 21 Closed its store after filing bankruptcy protection. Charlotte Russe and Papaya both went fully bankrupt and closed all their stores everywhere. 

-Dress Barn closed its store in this mall but not the other one across the street. The company has since been bought out and renamed. The leather outlet closed around that same time and is used for a Halloween store seasonally. Disney closed soon after and is now a sports store. The mall has at least 3 of these.

It is incredibly sad walking along the interior, passing shuttered store after shuttered store. Some were highly experimental and didn’t last long. Others were there for years but the end of their time finally came.  Of the batch opened in 2008, only Saks, Hugo Boss, Jones NY, Cole Haan, Dooney and Bourke, Michael Kors and Loft remain on the outside. Lucky Brand is the only lucky survivor on the inside.

The main draws that keep the mall open are Saks, Old Navy, H&M, Bealls Outlet and the food court with its occasional holiday events.

Longer term tenants still there include Bath and Bodyworks, Bon worth, a kitchenware and a tool store, Sunglass Hut, Famous Footwear, NY & Co, Rocky Mountain Chocolate, Christopher and Banks, Nautica and a couple of off-brand fashion or cellular stores. They are scattered among rows of dark and shuttered storefronts. Even though the entire structure was remodeled not too long ago, parts of it are already falling into disrepair such as the back entrance where Dress Barn used to be having many wet-floor signs out to mark broken tiles that may be a tripping hazard and buckets to catch rain from a leaky ceiling.

Prime Outlets basically looks now how Ponce Mall did ten years ago.

Which brings me to my next thought.

Ponce Mall was officially closed to the public in 2015. The JCPenney and the Belk were still up and running, as well as the Sears appliances, but nothing was left inside except for GNC and one other small business. They relocated and the mall was sealed off. The doors were locked and the mall entrances from inside Penney’s and Belk were covered up. The old movie theater had been in use for a couple of years by Anchor Faith Church at this point. The church has to be accessed from behind the mall building, but they are considering buying out the inside of the mall in the future. Or so I’ve heard. JCPenney, which was downgraded to an outlet store, is set to close permanently.

Up in Jacksonville’s Arlington district, Regency Square Mall is in similar shape. I haven’t been there since 2014, but last I heard it only had one anchor left and maybe a small handful of stores inside. There was a rumor of it being repurposed for an outlet mall for tools and hardware. Now a food bank has arrived.

Read these TripAdvisor reviews, from people who were there more recently.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g60805-d9801091-Reviews-Regency_Square_Mall-Jacksonville_Florida.html

All of this decline begs the question: What is happening to the indoor shopping mall? It’s not just Jacksonville. Log on to Google Earth and see satellite photos of massive rounded vacant plots of land encircled by small roads. They once held popular monolithic shopping structures like Mall of Memphis in Memphis, TN; Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, OH; or Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, IL. Around the country, other malls that are still open are slowly having their brand-name stores replaced by off brands or left shuttered. A lucky few were repurposed, such as the Church at the Mall in Lakeland, FL. What happened to the classic shopping mall we all knew and loved? I grew up with them in the 1990’s.

Online shopping, quite plain and simple, is the culprit. Remember that 80’s hit “Video killed the radio star”? Well, “online shopping killed the mall”. As technology advances online shopping becomes simpler and the range of items that can be bought only becomes wider. As mobile devices become sleeker and faster, people can take care of more functions on the go, at home or at the office. Paypal is not the only secured money exchange online. Venmo and Apple Pay are among many that have popped up and made it safe to order something from anywhere at any time.

Social media like Pinterest brings us inspiration that we had to get by going to the store to purchase a magazine or going to the mall to window shop just fifteen years ago.  Facebook brings us the profiles to people’s shops, pictures of what’s for sale and links to go and make a purchase when it was only for students to find each other in the past. Amazon doesn’t just bring books, it brings everything from clothes to baby gear to tools to food now, and at the best prices it can find. Famous retailers like Forever 21, Walmart and Old Navy have made shopping on their sites more convenient and more secure.

Online shopping has made it so people’s free time can be spent at home or somewhere else other than the mall. For those who prefer to get out, socialize and be active, lifestyle centers are popping up in more and more towns. A huge one was just completed in my hometown of Lakeland, FL (The same city where a mall became a church). Palm Coast, FL, already had one and it is basically all there is to do there. St. Johns Town Center in Jacksonville is perhaps the largest one of all, incorporating designer retailers with an “everyday needs” type of stores. It too is changing some, but is still expanding. These types of giant strip malls typically sport retailers for every category of the family’s needs:

-Best Buy or equivalent for dad’s technology needs

-Target for groceries, pharmacy, home decor and family clothing

-Marshall’s and/or Ross for discounted higher end family clothing and home needs 

-PetSmart or equivalent for the animals

-Dick’s for the family’s outdoor supplies

-Hobby Lobby for grandma and mom’s crafting

-Rack Room Shoes for the whole family’s shoes

-A handful of retailers like Old Navy, Charming Charlie, Men’s Warehouse

-A handful of chain restaurants like Panera, Panda Express and Smoothie King

-A nail salon or two

-A dry cleaner

-A boutique or two

-Ulta Beauty or equivalent for mom and daughter’s makeup

-A dollar store for those last-minute needs you don’t want to spend a lot on

-A liquor store or two

-GNC or equivalent for Vitamins

-A jeweler like Kay or Jared

-GameStop

-Sometimes a hardware store with a garden center, like Lowes.

-Sometimes there is a large gym

-There are usually some larger chain restaurants on the outer edge (Olive Garden, Applebee’s) as well as a few banks and some fast food with a drive-through (McDonald’s, Wendy’s)

The malls have given way to these giant strips, where you can park outside the store you need, then later drive down to the next place OR you can walk along the front, in the sunshine, for exercise. I can see why people may like this better than being in an enclosed space that mostly only offers fashion. This is comical because before enclosed shopping malls (so before the 1960’s and 1970’s), everyone went to the town square where....wait for it.... there were full blocks of outward-facing specialty shops and you had to walk in the fresh air to get from one to the next.

But they didn’t have online shopping in 1950..... So, hopefully, everyone who already did their shopping at home on their iPad is now taking this newly available free time to go to the gym or church?