I’ve driven by the Frederick Sears many dozens of times on trips from our home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., to that of family who live in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Why would you run this? … I am just shocked to see this one open.” Why would you keep this one? It’s not doing business. It’s attached to bigger markets where isn’t operating.
It’s a middle market that’s got plenty of competition. “This is a real operating Sears,” Egelanian said. Based on merchandising alone, the Sears looks very different from any other store I saw in the mall. Nothing about the store diminished our curiosity and, frankly, bafflement, though Egelanian had some theories (more on that below). Transformco - Sears’ parent company, which is controlled by former Sears Holdings CEO Eddie Lampert - did not respond to my request to learn more about why it’s kept the store open and how the store is doing. Seeking answers, he chatted up an employee, who didn’t have any more idea than we did on how or why this store has stayed open. When Nick Egelanian, president of retail real estate services firm SiteWorks, met me outside the Sears, he seemed flabbergasted that the store was still operating. It's hard to see how Sears can be making a profit from the store with so much empty space. Apparel (much of it discounted) took up the lion’s share of floor space. Across different times during my visit to the mall, I saw perhaps two or three customers in all. The store in Frederick was even more sparse when it came to foot traffic, though to be fair I visited in the first couple hours after opening on a Thursday. What goods the store has are spread out on as many shelves as possible, and still there are entire patches of empty shelving in the corners and large swaths of sales floor without any fixtures or racks. over recent years, how do you explain those Sears and Kmarts still with us? And how long will they remain a part of the retail landscape? Walking around the Sears in Frederick, the answers aren’t apparent. The mystery today is of those that are still around, how are they doing and why do they still exist? With so many hundreds of closures in the U.S. has followed a never-ending cycle of financialization and retail decline. Why that is has been well-documented - the short version is that the disappearance of Sears stores from the U.S. Fifteen years ago, there were nearly a thousand Sears department stores in the U.S. The reason I came to this one is that it houses the last full-line Sears department store for hundreds of miles in any direction. In other words, it’s the same as hundreds of malls built in the heyday of enclosed shopping centers and the American suburb. Go inside it, and you could be anywhere in the country. It’s anchored by those once dominant middle-market department stores: Sears, J.C.
It opened originally in 1978 and rests just off the interstate in a small crossroads city near Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. It’s not a big mall ( 755,000 square feet ), at least not compared to American Dream or King of Prussia. The Francis Scott Key Mall in Frederick, Maryland, could serve as good of an example as any to bring them up to speed. Let’s say you’ve been tasked with explaining what a traditional shopping mall is to someone from the distant past, or distant future, who has stumbled into our timeline. Senior Reporter Ben Unglesbee takes a look inside to see how retail has changed since the heyday of malls. The department store in Maryland is sparsely merchandised and low on traffic. What can it tell us about the state of malls? This is the last Sears for hundreds of miles.
0 kommentar(er)
