8 replies to this topic

[jefffwd]

I was reading the current issue of the DBJ and saw that Willow Bend has been placed on www.deadmalls.com

Then, I went to the website www.shopwillowbend.com and looked at the store directory and clicked on the interactive map. Let me preface this by saying that there are a few high end stores left (bebe, Lucky, etc.) but I thought this was a very exclusive mall until I saw some low end or "regular" tenants:


LEVEL 1
GNC
Stride Rite
Select Comfort
Claire's
Zales
Limited
Game Stop
T Mobile
Foot Locker
Famous Footwear
Finish Line
Radio Shack
Lids
Verizon
Motherhood Maternity
Express
Lady Foot Locker
DSW
Nine West

LEVEL II
(Many vancancies)
Rockport
Bong's Tailor
Victoria's Secret
On the Spot Watch Repair

What happened to all of the much hyped "first in Texas" stores?

[cjyoung]

I would still classify this mall as high-end. You've got to have filler. Even Bal Harbour has a Gap.

I was reading the current issue of the DBJ and saw that Willow Bend has been placed on www.deadmalls.com

Then, I went to the website www.shopwillowbend.com and looked at the store directory and clicked on the interactive map. Let me preface this by saying that there are a few high end stores left (bebe, Lucky, etc.) but I thought this was a very exclusive mall until I saw some low end or "regular" tenants:


LEVEL 1
GNC
Stride Rite
Select Comfort
Claire's
Zales
Limited
Game Stop
T Mobile
Foot Locker
Famous Footwear
Finish Line
Radio Shack
Lids
Verizon
Motherhood Maternity
Express
Lady Foot Locker
DSW
Nine West

LEVEL II
(Many vancancies)
Rockport
Bong's Tailor
Victoria's Secret
On the Spot Watch Repair

What happened to all of the much hyped "first in Texas" stores?

[vjackson]

What happened to all of the much hyped "first in Texas" stores?

They're in Northpark, the Galleria, Victory, Highland Park Village, and West Village.

Willowbend has been a disaster since it opened. I've only been once and that was a few years ago, and it was hardly busy on a lovely spring afternoon. You have to wonder about the brains behind placing another mall so closely between two powerhouse shopping malls, the Galleria (which alreadly has a low budget mall, Valley View, right down the street, and the constantly packed Stonebriar in Frisco. Willowbend was real gamble and hardly stood a chance of being successful.

[webwide]

I only started visiting this mall recently, but every time I've been there it seems alive and well. I primarily hit the Apple Store, but I've not seen any closed spaces. It is normally full of high-end cars and high-end displays in the main atrium area.

Seems to be doing fine.

[Dismuke]

You have to wonder about the brains behind placing another mall so closely between two powerhouse shopping malls, the Galleria (which alreadly has a low budget mall, Valley View, right down the street, and the constantly packed Stonebriar in Frisco. Willowbend was real gamble and hardly stood a chance of being successful.

Part of it also has to do with its timing. It opened around the time of September 11 when the economy was very scary for awhile. That mall opened up in an already-crowded market that caters to a relatively small percentage of the overall population. When the economy goes down, that small percentage gets even smaller. Sure, within that high end market are going to be those who have enough accumulated assets that their lifestyles and shopping habits are largely unaffected by economic downturns. But my guess is that the number of such people is nowhere near large enough to support all of the high end retail that exists in the area. My guess is that a good chuck of such stores' business comes from those who merely have high incomes and who spend most or all of it on maintaining a high end lifestyle - and perhaps even going into debt in order to do so. That portion of their customer base is very vulnerable to an economic downturn. If anything happens to their income flow, they are going to be in huge trouble. And even if, in the end, nothing happens to them personally, if they merely fear that they might be impacted, many are going to cut back on lifestyle expenditures in a big way in order to be better prepared.

For the mall to have been successful in the way its developers envisioned, it needed to attract the attention of its target market in a major way and change their buying habits away from the shops they previously patronized. There is only a limited window of opportunity to attract such attention before one becomes old news - and the mall came along at the very worst time to do so. And as the weaker stores fold and move out, it makes the task of playing "catch up" more difficult. Perhaps if it had opened a couple of years earlier, it would be a different story.

BTW, vjackson metions Valley View. I recently read that the Sanger-Harris/Foley's/Macy's (I am still mad that they got rid of the Sanger-Harris brand) store is being closed and that there is talk about the mall being a possibility for redevelopment. It will be interesting to see how long that mall continues to survive. Here is an interesting bit of trivia about it: The Sears store at Valley View actually pre-dates the mall by several years. When the Sears store was built, most of the area was still undeveloped pastures.

[Dismuke]

Here is something I found interesting on the Dead Malls site regarding Willow Bend"

"It was a very expensive project of the Taubman Co, and was touted as an ultra-upscale shopper's paradise, which fits with the surrounding affulent community. They even offered to buyout the 2 year old Home Depot across the street and knock it down, because it didn't fit their idea for this "upscale" area. Home Depot declined and still operates a thriving store there next to a successful Costco."

That is absolutely amazing. Were they afraid that the "upscale shoppers" would simply not come due to the mere sight of the alleged "low-lifes" who shop at Home Depot?

If the surrounding area is affluent - well, exactly who is it that is shopping at the Home Depot? And according to the Dead Malls site, a Wal-mart has also opened up across the street. My guess is Taubman Co was not very happy when they first heard about that. Also, apparently Sears is interested in the empty Lord & Taylor space - which the mall does not want because of the impact on the image it is trying to project.

So are we to believe that the alleged bumkins from the less fashionable parts of town that Wal-mart, Home Depot and Sears supposedly cater to are going to venture beyond their allegedly "low life" neighborhoods and drive right past multiple Wal-mart, Home Depot and Sears locations just so they can buy the identical merchandise in a big box store that is surrounded by affluent neighborhoods rather a big box store surrounded by more modest neighborhoods? I don't think so.

If the people who shop at Home Depot, Sears and Wal-mart are low-lifes - well, that must mean that there are a lot of low-lifes in those surrounding affluent neighborhoods. If not - well, exactly who is it that is shopping in them and why do teh chains wish to locate stores in that part of town in the first place?

Perhaps the geniuses behind Willow Bend based many of the premises of their marketing strategy on stereotypes of how affluent people behave.

I remember reading something a few years ago about the long, sad decline of the once-mighty F.W. Woolworth dime store empire. In its later years, some alleged expert they hired did some demographic research of the chain's customer base and, much to everyone's surprise, a fairly decent percentage of Woolworth shoppers were highly affluent. As a result of this, some brilliant person spent lots and lots of money buying huge quantities of expensive "upscale" items such as silver tea services. Of course, it never occurred to these geniuses that, when those affluent customers set off for their Woolworth shopping trips, the chances of them having any intention of buying a silver tea service or other "upscale" items were virtually nill. And, as one would expect, the end result was that Woolworth had to have a massive clearance sale to get rid of silver tea services at below cost prices. I guess it never occurred to them to ask themselves why their affluent customers shopped at Woolworth and why they valued it over other shopping options. Instead, the brilliant experts were simply unable to see past their conventional stereotypes.

Obviously there is a reason why Wal-mart, Home Depot and Sears have a desire to open stores in affluent areas. My guess it is because the affluent have the ability to and actually do shop at all ends of the market. Those who are less affluent do not so high end stores have little appeal to them. But lower priced stores clearly do have an appeal to many affluent shoppers. Of those you know who are millionaires - how many do you see drinking high priced gourmet soda verse those you see drinking Diet Coke?

I can certainly understand why having a high concentration of stores catering to the same market creates a certain "critical mass" which makes it a "destination" - and for that reason, I can understand Willow Bend wanting to keep Sears out of the mall (though I wonder how many would-be Neiman Marcus shoppers at Ridgmar are frightened away by the existence of a Sears store on the other side of that mall). But wishing to spend top dollar to tear down a successful Home Depot across the street from the mall? That just strikes me as being a bit bizarre. If they are going after only those affluent people who consider it to be beneath their dignity to go into a Home Depot - well, I suspect that is a VERY small market indeed.

[JKC]

Wow!

Merchandising is about merchandising and not neccesarily social stratification. Taubman, though not without fault, is not naive or bizarre. It is a far less typical strategy today and malls are very slow to change: but for many years, merchanding plans clustered certain types of offerings together and shunned others to create a particular shopping experience. Knowing full-well that those same upscale shoppers were also value shoppers at other times.

Having made a few merchandising mistakes myself in the past and betting that I will again, I guess I have some sympathy for them.

[Dismuke]

Taubman, though not without fault, is not naive or bizarre. It is a far less typical strategy today and malls are very slow to change: but for many years, merchanding plans clustered certain types of offerings together and shunned others to create a particular shopping experience.

I agree that the sort of clustering you mention can make a lot of sense. Similar clusters are common in other types of retail as well - car dealerships and restaurants, for example, tend to cluster near each other. It makes sense that high end retail outlets benefit from similar clusters. So I can see why it would be beneficial for the mall itself to be such a cluster and why Taubman would be (or at least was initially) selective about its tenant mix and would want to keep Sears out.

When I used the term "bizarre" I was referring not to such clustering but rather to the notion of taking it to such a degree that they would seek to purchase a successful Home Depot across the street for the purpose of simply closing it and tearing down the building.

Think of how much money they would have had to offer to make it worth Home Depot's while to close down a successful store. I have no idea how much profit Home Depot makes on a strong performing store. I did find a mention on the web that in 2002 a typical HD store had an annual revenue of about $42 million. And, of course, real estate in that part of town does not come cheap either. So I assume that the price tag of making such a purchase worth HD's while would at least several tens of millions of dallars. I also assume that a company such as Taubman would be in a position to know what sort of offer it would have to make in order for it to be regarded as credible and that their offer would have been along those lines.

Whatever the amount is, for Taubman to offer it would assume that the mere absence of Home Depot would enhance the value of Willow Bend by more than the purchase price. In other words, the assumption is the mere absence of HD would generate an increase of traffic to WB that is worth tens of millions of dollars - and that spending tens of millions of dollars on getting rid of the HD would bring in more business than, let's say, if that same money were spent on enhancements to the mall's public areas or on the mall's promotional budget. That is what I find bizarre.

Perhaps there are indeed some people out there who would be so repulsed by the mere sight of a Home Depot that they would avoid the mall no matter how nice its tenant mix is. But my guess is whatever numbers of such people exist are very marginal and that it is simply not profitable for anyone but the most niche oriented businesses to jump though all of the hoops necessary to make such people happy. High end retail, of course, is by definition a niche market. But the cost of building and operating a mall (imagine what a month's air conditioning bill for just the unrented public spaces is during the summer months) is such that there needs to be a pretty decent volume of shoppers in order to make a go of things. "Volume" and "exclusive" are not especially compatible terms. So I would think that there is a certain limit to just how exclusive and high end one can go in any mall type of environment.

Sure, there are plenty of high end retailers operating in malls. But things like that exist in a continuum. Some high end stores are more "high end" than others (which, by the way, hits on why snobs drive me absolutely nuts - every time I run across one, the first thing I think of is the fact that there is always someone out there who is in a position to look down on them in the exact same way they look down their nose on others). If exclusivity and high end is the standard - well, individuals who are really high-end and exclusive are in a position to shop anywhere in the world. Flying to Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London - wherever - for no other purpose than to go shopping is not a big deal for certain people. How may people who fall into such a category do you suppose exist here in the Metroplex? A few hundred? Perhaps a few thousand? Can they alone support a local concentration of ultra high end retailers given that such stores have to compete with offerings in other cities?

The reason I categorize Willow Bend wanting to spend money to knock down a Home Depot in order to be more exclusive as "bizarre" is because, in the grand scheme of things, it is. The very notion that such a mall could be that exclusive is laughable. Keep in mind that this is the same mall that pushed up its grand opening a few weeks early so as to coincide with the Texas sales tax holiday. Gee, if you are a really exclusive person in this world instead of a mere pretentious wannabe, is a paltry 8 percent savings on sales tax going to have an impact on when you decide to make a shopping trip - especially given that the tax break is only good on items which cost less than a hundred bucks? I mean, if a person is less inclined to shop at Willow Bend because of its geographical proximity to a Home Dept - do you really think that such a person is going to relish the prospect of being surrounded by a crowd of back-to-schoolers with their bratty kids in tow who consider it to be a big deal to save eight bucks on the cost of a $100 jacket?

[Dcurtis]

Willowbend has been a disaster since it opened. I've only been once and that was a few years ago, and it was hardly busy on a lovely spring afternoon. You have to wonder about the brains behind placing another mall so closely between two powerhouse shopping malls, the Galleria (which alreadly has a low budget mall, Valley View, right down the street, and the constantly packed Stonebriar in Frisco. Willowbend was real gamble and hardly stood a chance of being successful.

There was an article Friday in the DMN talking about all of the urban projects going up around the Galleria. There's a huge one planned for right between the Galleria and Valley View. If you drive down Montfort or Alpha due north of the Galleria, you'll see lots of the old apt. complexes have been torn down and are being redeveloped. Also a mixed used project just opened across the tollway from the Galleria. As these apts are lost, so is most of Valley View's clientele. The single family communities in that area are mostly upscale and the new residential communities seem to be reaching for a more monied demographic. Valley Views days seem to be numbered. My wife loves the Galleria and I would drop her off there and hang around Valley View (easier to park). But most of the stores I would partonize at VV are gone. And before Northpark's AMC opened, the new theater at VV was one of the nicest I've ever seen. Now, cops are posted inside the theaters, and if you're watching a movie after the mall closes, once you walk outside the mall, you can't come back in. I think VV will go and possibly a mixed use center will be built in its place. That area is changing and urbanizing and VV just doesn't seem to fit there anymore.