Retail Construction Hits a Red Light

Retail Traffic -Consumers are checking discretionary spending and, seemingly everyday, new retailers come out with announcements that they are filing for bankruptcy, shuttering stores and constraining expansion plans. As a result, construction is coming to a screeching halt at projects across the country as developers reevaluate proposed centers' economic viability.

Most recently, site work of the planned 215-acre open-air center, Bridges at Mint Hill in Charlotte, N.C., came to a halt. Chicago-based General Growth Properties and local partner Childress Klein Properties originally announced plans for the center in June 2005. It was slated to open in 2007. A series of delays pushed projected completion back to 2009. As for now, no new timeline has been announced.

Elsewhere, Memphis, Tenn.-based Poag & McEwen Lifestyle Centers scrapped plans to build Boise, Idaho's first lifestyle center, a 200,000-square-foot, $50 million project. The developer initially had planned to open the center in 2009. Now the project no longer appears on the company's list of new developments on its Web site. Poag & McEwen did not return calls seeking comment.

CBRE/Torto Wheaton Research, a Boston-based research firm that tracks completions of neighborhood and community shopping centers, estimates that developers delivered 6.3 million square feet of space in those sectors during the second quarter--two-thirds of the planned 9.7 million square feet of space that was supposed to come online. “That, to me, signals that some of the projects are being either taken away or delayed,” says Abigail Marks, economist at CBRE/Torto Wheaton.

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