And it's also happening right here in "River City". About 1/2 mile away
is a small mall with a supermarket, several small shops, restaurants and
other businesses and what was, until recently, a long abandoned discount
department store. It has recently been taken over by a civil
engineering firm who has totally refurbished the building, repaved the
parking lot and are filling it with about 100 engineers. They're
branching out to cover a wider geographic area and the business is
growing. They had previously been located in a too small space in a
decaying downtown area. They're now in the suburbs.
Chuck Norcutt
On 6/21/2012 9:30 AM, philippe.amard wrote:
> This excerpt might interest you.
> I like the idea of universities or clinics using the premises too.
> Philippe
> Rescuing shopping malls
> Reclaiming the suburbs
>
> Some of America’s struggling malls are getting a new lease on life
> Mar 31st 2012 | SAN ANTONIO AND WINDCREST, TEXAS | from the print
> edition
>
>
>
> THE old Rackspace headquarters was stuffed to the gills. In 2007 the
> company, which offers cloud-computing and web-hosting services, had
> more than 1,000 employees in downtown San Antonio. People were crammed
> at folding tables in the hallway. They often had to go to a different
> building or shuttle around the lifts to talk to people in other
> departments.
>
> Still, when Graham Weston, the company’s co-founder and chairman,
> suggested that they move into a shopping mall, staff were sceptical.
> The mall was vacant. Its site, the encircled suburb of Windcrest, was
> slightly grotty, not least because of the huge dead mall right off the
> highway.
>
> Building a campus from scratch, however, would have taken several
> years at least. Anyway, the place was cheap. “Nobody wants a mall any
> more,” says John Engates, the chief technology officer. Except
> Rackspace, and others like it, who have come to see a dead mall as a
> blank canvas. In 2008 it opened its new headquarters, and won a prize
> for community economic development. Now it has more than 3,000 workers
> on site, with plans to hire hundreds more by the end of the year.
>
> Plenty of enclosed malls are, of course, still thriving. And after
> several abstemious years, shoppers are perking up. In February,
> according to the Commerce Department, retail sales were 1.1% higher
> than they had been in January—higher than expected, and a welcome sign
> of recovery.
>
> But many American malls had run into trouble before the recession
> started, and the country’s nascent recovery is not likely to revive
> them.
>
> … / …
>
> One strategy is to turn the mall itself into a mixed-use
> development. The Natick, a high-end mall in Boston, has added
> condominiums. Another idea is to bring in unconventional tenants. In
> Cleveland, Ohio, part of a mall has been given over to indoor gardens,
> with the idea that it might be a model for other urban agriculture
> programmes. Schools and universities are another settler group. The
> University of the Incarnate Word has leased part of another mall in
> San Antonio. Vanderbilt, in Tennessee, has leased some space to open a
> clinic; patients are given pagers so that they can get a snack from
> the food court while they wait.
>
> Hundreds of high-school students in Joplin, Missouri, are taking
> classes in a converted mall after the town’s high school was destroyed
> in a tornado last summer.
>
>
>
> These projects may be more sensible than enclosed retailing.
> Universities and offices do not depend on passers-by as shops and
> restaurants do. But turning these spaces to fresh purposes requires
> some expense and experimentation.
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 21 juin 12 à 15:21, Tina Manley a écrit :
>
>> It seems such a waste of a great building and space but I guess this
>> sealed
>> its fate:
>>
>> "The store opened in a prosperous middle class area that has become an
>> impoverished, high crime neighborhood in the intervening decades."
>>
>> Love your desolate photos!
>>
>> Tina
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 10:29 PM, Chris Crawford <
>> chris@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>> http://chriscrawfordphoto.com/chris-details.php?prodId=1071&category=32
>>>
>>> --
>>> Chris Crawford
>>> Fine Art Photography
>>> Fort Wayne, Indiana
>>> 260-437-8990
>>>
>>> http://www.chriscrawfordphoto.com My portfolio
>>>
>>> http://blog.chriscrawfordphoto.com My latest work!
>>>
>>> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Crawford/48229272798
>>> Become a fan on Facebook
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> _________________________________________________________________
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>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tina Manley, ASMP
>> www.tinamanley.com
>> --
>> _________________________________________________________________
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>
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