Retail is set to have a record year of closures, spurred by the shuttering of Toys 'R' Us, Sam's Club, Sears and Bon-Ton stores around the country, CNBC's Lauren Thomas reports. "The amount of retail space going dark in 2018 is on pace to break a record," says the report, citing CoStar, a real estate information firm. Over 90 million square feet has been announced as closing this year, on track to surpass the 105 million square feet that was vacated by retailers in 2017. • What's your take on the demise of retail? Read the story below and comment.

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I know Amazon and online is part of the story, but how much of this is just correcting for way too much retail space.

After all that space goes dark, how will the square footage of retail per capita compare to what it was in 1980?

CORRECT

Thy built too many BIG BOX stores and side-shops...

My  commercial real estate friends "retired"

Overbuilt, yes, but I still contend that something has changed that has wiped out budding mom & pops from the market.  They are the plankton of retail. That's where our shopping diversity comes from.

Quote from: rcjordan on April 19, 2018, 11:04:42 PM
something has changed that has wiped out budding mom & pops from the market.

David Cay Johnston contends that part of it, at least, is that big retailers learned how to play hardball and negotiate sweetheart deals with local and state governments, forcing them to bid for their stores (like Amazon just did), and commonly destroying the local mom and pop retail who in many cases would be competitive if they had the same tax deals
https://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wealthiest-Themselves-Government/dp/1591842484

Obviously there are other factors

Another factor in the mom and pop demise: malls.  Keeping in mind that the fall of the mom and pop has been a decades long process, when huge indoor malls and later huge strip malls anchored by Big Box stores, it raised the bar money-wise for opening up a store: rents were high, furnishing the store to a much higher standard, minimum square footage, the costs rose to a level were only a big corporate retailer could afford to locate there.

Both worth a quick read.

https://nypost.com/2018/04/07/the-worlds-hottest-shopping-city-is-becoming-a-ghost-town/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/ct-ae-tribune-tower-jones-0422-story.html