LocalCenters.com » Strip Malls

How to Make California Business Friendly

LC — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:32:06 +0000

California created less than 1% of the new jobs created in Texas, over the past two years. An unresponsive and punitive bureaucracy at both state and local levels in California, along with disturbing demographic and social trends, contribute to the growing exodus of businesses leaving California and the dwindling numbers of new start ups and relocations from other states.

During a recent guest appearance on a local Wall Street Journal Business Network radio station affiliate, host Mark Montgomery and I discuss the needed steps to help get California back in the game of business development.

Here are a few topics from our discussion:

* California is becoming a brain drain. Only 56% of 2010 California college graduates have found work, and they are starting to move out of state en masse.

* While Economic Development is 12.5% of the Texas annual budget, it doesn’t even warrant a line item in California’s budget.

*We examine three business surveys with several criteria for ranking state desirability for doing business. Texas ranks very high in all; California is often at the bottom. We look at why.

* Find out what well known company has scrapped all expansion plans in California, and received a personal phone call from Gov. Rick Perry, thanking them for doing business in his state (even if I did screw it up and said “California” instead of “Texas.” Apologies to the governor;-)

* What small business people can do in acts of self-defense against an unfriendly business climate

Listen to the podcast here

Pick Up Stix Closes 26 Stores Without Notice

LC — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:46:31 +0000

Pick Up Stix, a San Clemente,CA based chain of fast casual Asian restaurants, has shuttered 26 stores in Northern California, Nevada, and Arizona as of January 15, 2008. Apparently there was no notice given to the local employees, according to the buzz on Elk Grove, CA based Elk Grove Online (requires registration).

Wal-Mart Says “Watch Out Tesco!”

LC — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:30:59 +0000

Strip Malls Soon To Get A New Player with Marketside

Today Wal-Mart announced plans to roll out “Marketside,” a concept intended to compete head on with the UK Giant Tesco, doing business in the U.S as Fresh and Easy.

The story is still developing, and the figures in the Forbes article below are incorrect. They state that the Marketside stores will be “a tenth the size of Wal-Mart’s 200,000 SF stores, even “smaller than Fresh and Easy stores that are 10,000 SF.”

First, Fresh and Easy stores in the U.S and 14,000 square foot, not 10,000 square feet, and clearly 20,000 is larger than 10,000 so we do not have the full store, which certainly is characteristic of the cloak of secrecy typical of Wal-Mart. No geo-targeting has been released from the giant discounter.

Strip malls are entering a new paradigm with the densification of the suburbs, and Marketside provides yet another fine mini-anchor for strip mall developers. A possible downside could be Wal-Mart’s ability to be a category killer, maybe with any size.

From Forbes

Retailer Reports 30% Credit Card Declines and Bad Checks

LC — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:27:02 +0000

Some of our merchants are membership-based and funds are either withdrawn from checking or a credit card automatically.

This afternoon I received a call from one of my best tenants, requesting a split rent payment schedule in January; the reason for his request is pretty clear with the headline above. Thinking there was a processing error, he called the company who processes the payments, only to find that they’ve been flooded with similar calls since January 1 from all over the nation.

Obviously the payors are contractually obligated to make good their commitment, however this is an alarming percentage of defaults.

While the major credit card issuers’ mid-December estimate of a 4% default rate falls far short of the reported 30% declines which could be simply over-limit in some cases, it’s still up 26% from the previous period according to a recent CNN Money article. We’re all familiar with home equity defaults and foreclosures; so what’s next? Auto loans, and debt on those toys like Waverunners is my best guess.

What do you think?

Oh, and of course I agreed to half the January rent now and half on the 15th. When you’ve got a great tenant who has a plan and gets blindsided you go to the wall for them.

Strip Malls and Society

LC — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:51:58 +0000

Brad Edmonds, author of There’s a Government in Your Soup, speaks of the history and social fabric of the ubiquitous strip mall. It’s a good read!

In Defense of Strip Malls

By Brad Edmonds

Strip malls are universally denigrated by writers of all sorts. The ugliness, ubiquity, and impersonal nature of strip malls are the detractors’ favorite topics. Many writers extend their diatribes into such issues as the loss of community consciousness and neighborly affiliation associated with modern American suburban life. Others bleed into invective against automobiles, pollution, mobility, and their more-socialist offshoots such as rent control and public transportation.

Given all this, what can be said in defense of strip malls? We know they’re not going away anytime soon. To the contrary, new ones continue to appear in neighborhoods near you. Is this constant appearance of new strip malls a sign that the critics are off target?

These criticisms reveal our own inconsistencies. As we drive along the large highways through a city, it is all too easy to wave one’s hand and say: “look at all these unseemly strip malls that make this place look like every other!” But if we are looking for a hardware store, need a cup of coffee, or need some engine repair, our tune changes: we are grateful that we can easily spot the Home Depot, the Starbucks, or the Buick dealer. The locale saves search costs, for which we are glad indeed, and we demonstrate this feeling by voting for them with our own money. That’s why they appear. That’s why they stay.

Let us consider the issues one at a time:

Are strip malls really ugly? It depends. Some background: In the 19th century, American courts wouldn’t enforce any kind of land-use regulations (known today as “zoning”) based on aesthetic concerns. Over the course of the 20th century, and today, courts are more willing to enforce local zoning regulations that are exclusively aesthetic in nature, on the grounds that property values (hence tax revenues) are affected by ugly buildings.

Looking at things from that perspective, then, imagine that you’ve built a house out in the country. Imagine you did so in a little subdivision, linked to a two-lane highway, ten miles from anything remotely urban. Your house has a given value; you know pretty much what it is. Two years later, someone builds a strip mall on that two-lane road, a mile from your house. What happens to the value of your house? It goes up, every time. By the judgment of all American courts over the last century, then, the strip mall is beautiful: it has increased neighboring property values. How can this be true, when we all know that strip malls are ugly? Because gains in value color our aesthetic vision. If Jackson Pollock paintings can demand huge prices, strip malls are beautiful.

Limiting the ugliness discussion to truly aesthetic concerns