Business Opportunities Weblog

Malls Try Something Different

By on October 28, 2012 in News

Fencing in Florida

Wall Street Journal:

Sobered by store closings and the rise of online shopping, owners of U.S. shopping centers are filling space and drawing visitors by turning to unusual tenants like gun ranges and go-cart tracks.

Mall giant Simon Property Group Inc. opened an aquarium in July at its Grapevine Mills mall near Dallas. Real-estate brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. put a fencing academy in a former Old Navy store in Florida’s Tallahassee Mall, and a community theater on the lower level of a former Boscov’s store in Harrisburg, Pa.

Aqua Tots Holdings LLC, a business that teaches youngsters to swim, has expanded to 14 locations in Arizona, Texas and Georgia and has 10 more on the way, nearly all in former retail shops. Jumpstreet, an indoor trampoline facility, is buying or leasing former grocery stores, filling them wall-to-wall with trampolines and charging patrons for hourly access.

Perhaps the most unusual use of a former big-box store is William James’s Arms Room gun shop and shooting range, which opened last year in a former Circuit City store south of Houston

malls retail

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,203 posts to the site.

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