The_Overdog wrote:That business plan has totally changed and today they wouldn't pay $19.50 PSF for a store in the heart of Dallas for a Neighborhood Market.
By your own logic, they are (still) paying that. You say they are paying $19.50 for a 35k sq ft place which is $682,500 in rent. I doubt they are paying that much, or if they were they'd reopen it as a store. I'd bet they are paying 1/2 at most of that now that it is closed. The owners have a lot in their favor - a contract, a paying tenant, and a building that either has to support a grocer where one doesn't work or has to be redeveloped and they don't want to sell. If Dallas had the immigrant population, then maybe an Asian grocer would pop in to bail it out, but no-one else wants it and it's too big for other uses. It's better to take that rent and wait. Those jump places (a huge step down from a grocer) are more like $5 a sq ft places.
...consider this what-if: Wallyworld has tiny profit margin of ~3% ($485 billion revenue, $14 billion profit), more than 5,000 US stores so just wildly guessing that if they're carrying 300 similar leases, that would be an unacceptable $180,000,000.00 or 1% or the profit. Stupid computation assumptions, I know, but that's a lot of money - within an organization world famous for ruthless accounting creating one of the world wealthiest families, hundreds of thousands of employees doing a limbo penury dance.
I would assume Walmart, in it's wisdom, gets an income tax entry for these empty leases that one way or another makes up for the substantial loss line-item. So.... in the spreadsheet world of paying taxes on profit the biggest company in the world gets a touch more public assistance to lease empty buildings draining neighborhoods.
This practice should be punishable with a fine and jail time. A perversion of finance manufactured across decades for sure, but there's really no reason we should continue the practice.
Sorry about the rant. In the long run, I actually think sequestering this shopping center while Henderson & Ross & Greenville Avenues converge is better for the neighborhood, in the long run. Right now, we don't really know what will end up being the most beneficial development for the neighborhood. I suspect it'll be something we don't already have much of, a slight variation of SOP retail/commercial venture... similar but different, not the same.