The city of Cleveland has little to no medium to high level retail shopping for a city its size. There are a few pockets of retail in Steelyard Commons and on West 117th but those are suburban Walmart and Target anchored developments. I'm talking about honest-to-god, Macy's-level, ground floor retail at the bottom of a tall building pushed right up to the sidewalk. Think the heyday of Halle's, Higbee's, and May Company... ya, we don't have any of that.
What do we know? Well suburban sprawl continues to destroy everything in its path... but has finally seemed to stop decimating the urban core from which it began. Don't get me wrong, the damage is done but now as 20-30 year olds move into the once abandoned city centers... they like totally need clothes and housewares and junk!
I know, big box stores seem as douchie to me as they seem to you but have you ever been to Chicago? The Magnificent mile is exactly that and North State Street is no slouch either. Their layout takes the urban mall that we all know and love, disassembles it, and puts it where it's supposed to be... up to the sidewalk and under business and residential. Yes, it was there long before suburban malls dotted our maps and no, I don't know why developers and planners didn't see it's wonderfulness and copy it over and over in big cities BUT... our focus in today's blog (like all of my blogs) is on Greater Cleveland and Greater Cleveland has its share of Suburban malls. Here are a few:
| Mall | Distance from Public Square by Car |
| Crocker Park | 21 mins |
| Legacy Village | 29 mins |
| Great Northern Mall | 28 mins |
| Beachwood Place | 28 mins |
| Southpark Center | 27 mins |
| Great Lakes Mall | 27 mins |
| University Square | 28 mins |
| Richmond Town Square | 25 mins |
| Midway Mall | 33 mins |
| The Shoppes at Parma | 21 mins |
| Westgate Mall | 16 mins |
| Severance Town Center | 23 mins |
Life Support Malls
Malls fall into a couple categories and when I was a teenager you were a vibrant hip mall if you had a Dillards, Kaufmans, and/or Sears. Now a days things are a little different. Of the malls above, most web sites agree that these ones are dying or in transition to becoming strip malls due to only having 1 or no anchor stores left. I call them Life Support Malls: Midway Mall, Parmatown Mall/Shoppes at Parma, Severance Town Center, Westgate Mall
Boy that's an eerie thought. The places where you used to hang out... where you went school shopping... where you went on dates... they're now on life support and are considered to be dying. What happened? Well just like urban sprawl (maybe even fueled by it) better malls opened up in safer and more accessible areas. The suburban mall model of indoor, temperature controlled shopping on an island surrounded by surface lots is failing. Now outdoor malls that model the abandoned urban centers of the good old days rule the mall landscape in this area. All the fun of urbanism minus all the crime, grit, and personality... oh and none of those scary ethnics!
The world is also a smaller place and where each city had their own big departments stores way back when (Even Louisville had Zwick's), there now exists a handful of affordable brands that serve as tent poles to hold up the whole mall industry. Even those are falling year by year as the online market place gets stronger and companies like Amazon find cheaper and easier ways to get you stuff. There really aren't enough stores to fill malls anymore. Don't believe me? Think of your favorite mall... now think of it without these stores... Radio Shack, Sears/K-mart, J.C. Penny, Barnes & Noble, Toys R Us, Christopher & Banks, Best Buy, Abercrombie & Fitch. There are going to be a couple of empty storefronts and possibly some huge abandoned buildings with even bigger parking lots... sooner than you think.
What do you move into a Best Buy or a J.C. Penny? There can only be so many Targets and Walmart's in the world and they are more than likely down the street from these now abandoned buildings. Hell they're probably what put these stores out of business anyways. As buildings sit empty and neglected, the mall scenery starts to change. A Halloween store only stops the bleeding for a month or so. Parking lots start to crack and grow grass. Lights go out and aren't replaced. Garbage doesn't get picked up. What about in the mall? Discount stores move into the storefronts to fill the vacancies but what type of people do they bring in? If there are 2 mortal enemies to the suburban mall... they are unpopularity and the poor. Those same factors are what pushed middle to upper class whites out of downtown's... why are malls any different? Nobody wants to see dirty abandon building and bus stops full of poor people around their suburban oasis. That's just the sad truth about people.
Dead Malls
Soooooo where do we go from here. Well since we all have cars, we go further away from our homes to the new mall! It's clean and has an Apple store and a Williams-Sonoma. It's safe looking. We let that old mall die like a once great sun that is ready to supernova. It's OK, we have kids to worry about... but as the old mall dies so does the area around it. Houses turn to rentals. Condo towers turn to section 8 housing. Tax revenue goes down and city services are cut -- including police. Less police means more crime. Large streets that once held traffic jams of cars during the holidays act as barbed wire fences between blocks. The sidewalks look desolate. There are now 2 areas you don't want to be caught dead in anymore. Downtown and the inner ring suburb where the mall used to be. Thank god those highways get me to and from an occasional sporting event without having to see the cancer that is slowly creeping outwards... towards me? Nah it'll never get to me.
Sounds a little overly dramatic huh? Ask your parents about Randall Park Mall, Rolling Acres Mall, Euclid Square Mall, or Canton Center Mall. Let them tell you the story about how they used to hang out there until May Company's became Kaufman's or that lady was mugged in the Woolworth's parking lot or the Theater opened up in the Valley. Now they're dead malls. Dead as in just sitting there empty. It's too expensive to demolish them since they're so large. The holding companies that ran them into the ground went bankrupt and they just fell through the cracks. Now they're the city's issue to deal with and cities don't have enough money to fix potholes let alone deal with dead malls. Acres and acres of land you can't do anything with. It's like a nuclear spill happened there and the first entity to blink has to pay to clean it up. So far... no one has blinked on these dead malls.
No matter the "why?" behind the issue, the reality is that 1/3 of the malls in greater Cleveland are dying...
How do we stop another mall from creating a concrete pock mark on another city in Greater Cleveland? Stay with me here as I'm going to daydream a bit...
Basic and Regional Downtown Fill-in
First, I'm going to give you my Downtown Retail wish list. Now we may not have the standing population downtown to support all of this new retail but we do bring in people for sporting events and plays and holidays and celebrations. Some of these are just basics like cell phone stores, tech, and clothing. Seriously, there's not much of it:
- Verizon - Honest to god Verizon. Not an over-priced "authorized" retailer
- AT&T - Same deal as Verizon
- Nike Store - For Lebron's return and Kyrie
- Reebok Store - For competition with Nike
- Brighton Collectibles - Not Pandora since Rossio Pfister sell it in the Galleria
- Apple Store - So hipsters can fill the streets when the new phones hit
- Microsoft Store - So we can watch Microsoft continue to try
- The Container Store - Columbus and Cinncy have 1
- Ikea - No one should be forced to drive to Pittsburgh for anything
- A Comic Book Store - We just need one!
- A Hipster Book Store - Somewhere where famous authors can stop to sign books
- The GAP - Because Gina gets a discount
- Chico's - Because older ladies need a place to shop too. Plus it makes me think of Super Troopers.
By adding these stores you start to fill in empty store fronts and give people somewhere to go to get some everyday basics without having to hop in a car. That's the whole point here. We live in dense urban areas so we don't have to drive everywhere. The whole world is at our finger tips.
Other places like Ikea are regional draws that will bring people into the city just to shop there. Then we got'em!
Other places like Ikea are regional draws that will bring people into the city just to shop there. Then we got'em!
Pick a Target
Knowing now that there is a life cycle for malls that eventually ends in death with an outward rippling effect, we can jump the gun a bit and be a little proactive. For my example, based on it's location, age, and style, I'm going to use Great Northern Mall. Yes I know, it's decent now but when we compare it to it's west side neighbors, it doesn't really stack up. Let's take a quick look:
It's location comparable to SouthPark mall and Crocker Park.
- It's 17 mins away from Crocker Park
- It's 20 mins away from Southpark
It's the oldest of the 3 malls at 38 years old.
- Crocker Park 10 years old
- SouthPark 18 years old
It's theater has 10 screens including RPX
- Crocker Park's theater has 16 screens and includes Imax
- SouthPark's theater has 14 screens and includes RealD 3D
It's owned by Starwood Capital Group
- Crocker Park is owned by Robert L Stark Enterprises
- SouthPark is also owned by Starwood Capital Group
 |
| Great Northern Mall (orange diamond) is the odd man out on the West Side in my plan to move retail back to downtown Cleveland and save a soon to be dying mall. The yellow lines start at Public Square and end up at the major Greater Cleveland malls in the suburbs. The Purple lines show the closest dying malls (purple circles) to those major malls. Notice how in most cases they are closer to downtown. There is 1 dead mall (red circle with black X) that I point out on the map as well. |
My thought is that before Great Northern Mall starts to lose more business to the younger and more hip malls in its area... we slowly downsize it until it's at the right size for it's location. Take it's viable stores that also exist at Crocker Park and SouthPark and move them to an area that needs them more... downtown... or University Circle depending on what we're talking about. This is going to be a slow transition as the population of Cleveland's core and it's popularity as a tourism destination grows.
And it all starts with one store... Macy's!
De-Cluster and Redistribute the Mall as You Know It
Remove Macy's from Great Northern and make it the retail anchor of a new downtown mixed use building. Build it on a surface lot right on public square like Higbee's or Halle's used to be. Make it 2 floors with parking underneath. Put floors of class A commercial and high scale residential on top. It doesn't need to be Key Tower big but make it tall... See what I did there? Macy's in a typical mall is just a 2 story building in the middle of a parking lot. Move it downtown and it becomes the retail anchor of a new skyscraper! 1 business can make a difference. It can change the skyline of a major city. It can entice people to move to the urban core again. It can change your perspective on life itself... ok it's not that powerful but you get my drift.
Greater Clevelanders, I promise you, you won't even know that it's gone! This move still leaves us a Macy's at Midway mall to the west which might help it limp along. One at SouthPark southwest of downtown and 2 on the east side. You still have your radius of stores around the greater Cleveland area but now people who live downtown have a choice and don't have to drive to get there. That puts less people on the highways for all of you who hate traffic jams!
Now I put way too much thought into this for it to be a small blog post about a pipe-dream. I'm just sayin'... I gots ideas! So now I'm going to lay out store by store how my plan to redistribute Great Northern is going to work. Not all of these are going to be great fits and it certainly shouldn't happen over night but I hope one day to look back on this post and brag to my kids about how smart their ole dad is!...was!
- Game Changer - May be the ground floor of a brand new building downtown or fill an historic space:
- Macy's - Downtown's only must have as far as big retail
- Anchor Department Stores - Move to already existing spaces downtown or in UC as 1st/1st and 2nd floor retail. Could sign on to fill spots in new buildings. Make sure footprint isn't unusable if store goes out of business.:
- Dillard's - 1st floor (maybe 2nd too) existing retail space
- J.C. Penney - Consolidate remaining suburban locations to 1 location
- Best Buy - Close store off 480 and explore a smaller urban footprint location
- Specialty Anchor Stores - Move to already existing medium sized 1st floor retail downtown or in UC:
- Dick's Sporting Goods
- Pier One Imports
- World Market
- Medium Stores - Move to already existing storefronts in Tower City, Arcades, or Galleria:
- American Eagle
- Aeropostale
- Hollister
- Limited
- Express
- Wet Seal
- H&M
- Small Stores - Move into already existing neighborhood storefronts or Steelyard:
- Crazy 8
- Charlotte Russe
- Deb
- Spencer's
- Plato's Closet
- Ambiance
That's really all we'd want to move downtown or to UC. 20 stores that would (if positioned correctly) change the landscape of this city dramatically. Cleveland would now be equipped to services its citizens retail needs and not just its visitors. People will live downtown longer and possibly move into condos as opposed to apartments. Suburbanites would see familiar sights and start to become more comfortable with the idea of visiting and possibly living downtown. Urbanites will walk to the store and then back to their apartments making the city more 24/7. People can do all of their Christmas shopping downtown while enjoying the lights, horse drawn carriage rides, and Christmas decorations. More people + more businesses = more taxes = better schools, roads, services, and bridges. How about that word math!
Don't Worry North Olmsted. You'll Thank Me in 10 Years.
Part of my plan is to let some places be left behind as part of a smaller footprint mall at Great Northern. We're not burning it down and salting the earth. Rethink of it along the same lines of the Shoppes at Parma. Someone comes along and takes down some buildings and reinvests in a new, smaller mall vision. It's better than having Randall Park Mall sitting dead in the middle of your city, right? Seriously, go there and see how bad it is. At least we're being proactive. Also consider the neighboring cities. Everything is effected when a mall dies and nothing is done.
The next 3 places just aren't doing well at the moment and may not be willing to make a major change even though smaller urban stores may save their brands. We have to consider the success rate of places before we move them. One failed store for whatever reason could derail the whole plan. Especially when Cleveland has so many critics just foaming at the mouth waiting for any little mistake:
- Sears
- Toys R Us
- Christopher & Banks
These stores are already downtown or close enough to not make sense unless you want to move to a location in UC or over on West 117th:
Tower City already has:
| Steelyard already has:
| Ridgepark Square already has:
|
Payless ShoeSource is already at multiple points in the city too.
These stores already have competitors in or close to downtown. We don't want to punish already existing businesses:
- University Sports - Tower City has Playball Sports
- Yankee Candle - Tower City has White Barn Candle Co.
- Hallmark - Tower City has an American Greetings
- Finish Line - Tower City has Champs Sports
- Office Max - Staples are at multiple points in the city
- Pet Smart - Steelyard has PetCo
- JB Robinson Jewelers, Jared The Galleria of Jewelry, and Litman Jewelers - City has multiple jewelers
- LensCrafters - City has multiple vision centers
- The Vitamin Shoppe - GNC already at Tower City and Steelyard
- Joann Etc - Closed Cleveland Locations
- Avenue - Closed at Steelyard
- Lane Bryant - Closed at Tower City (Surprisingly)
Well I know that this is just a Christmas Ale soaked dream and may never happen in my lifetime but it feels good getting it out onto paper... electronic paper. People are already moving downtown in droves which I guess is step 1 in this crazy thing. Once there are enough people, the retail will come. I'm just impatient so I made an argument to speed it up. I'll never make a dime off of this whole big idea I have. I think of things like this in my spare time for 2 reasons. 1) I live in Cleveland and struggle with these issues everyday. 2) I see opportunity in this city. Especially now when things are still cheap enough to make out like a bandit! Other cities have done it. Why can't we?
I Still Love Small Business
Please note that I am not in any way an expert in knowing all of the stores in Cleveland or the Greater Cleveland area. There may be places that I don't know about that fill these needs. Tell me in the comments and I'll check them out and make edits to this. I love small business and want them to succeed. In no way is this a way to push them out of the picture. I'd take a home made shoe store any day over a Payless. I feel big box in this scenario feeds a legitimate retail need that this city has AND it also serves my 2nd idea of preemptively closing a old mall before it dies. If you can fill that need instead then DO IT! I'll be your first customer and I'll stand out in the rain waiting for you to open.
Goodnight Cleveland well it's time to go! Ba-Ba-Da-Da-Bum! I hate to leave you but I really must say,Goodnight Cleveland, Goodnight! <3 U
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