I don't believe there is going to be sudden collapse in the retail environment downtown. Lots of change, yes. Challenges and retreats; surges and lulls. There was an article in the Bulletin about the Sunriver mall, (which is really more of a downtown), and it would be easy to draw some parallels. But I think downtown is at such a fever pitch, that it would take a complete disaster to bring it down. And if that happens, downtown occupancy rates will be the least of our worries.

Years ago I read an article on how malls can die. Let's say you have a stretch of 10 stores, all of which are just making it. The weakest store drops, and the loss of customers strains the surviving stores, and the next weakest store drops, which then creates even more strain on the next weakest store, etc. Once that process starts, it's almost impossible to reverse.

That's why malls get torn down and started over, or at the very least, get total makeovers.

I had a store in the Mountain View Mall from 1990 to 1997. When we first opened, the mall seemed to be prospering; but I was never really fooled. See, I remembered how, when I bought Pegasus in 1984 downtown, I wasn't open more than a month before the MtView Mall approached me and offered me a free year of rent. I was pretty overwhelmed with my new store, and turned them down. But you don't get offered a free year of rent if things are going well.

I don't think either the MtView Mall, or the Bend River Mall, ever really got to stage of being healthy. They kept doing 'deals' and 'gimmicks', which only came back to bite them. If a marginal store feels compelled to accept a free year of rent, and then has a balloon payment in the second and third years, it is only going to make it that much harder to survive.

I don't know how the string of buyers of the MtView Mall, (which happened at least twice that I know of), couldn't see that they were buying a mall that was held together with duct tape and baling wire, but eventually I believe the banks put their foot down and said, 'no more deals.' Which was then the end of the malls.

My little section of the mall began to empty out. Literally in the middle of the night. Out of 9 spots on my level, 3 or 4 were empty. The theatre began to show the worst films. K-Mart started to echo from the emptiness. It felt abandoned. Termites came boiling out onto the floor outside our store, and I was told that there was a very thin layer of concrete underlying the whole edifice. It was falling apart from the day it was built.

Linda started to pressure me to sell the store, even though it was still profitable. We needed the money because we'd already closed our Sisters and Redmond stores, and sports cards were continuing their steady, precipitous decline. I resisted, until finally I took it upon myself to start talking to other stores. I worked my way toward the center of the mall, and as I got closer to the core, the store owners seemed more and more resistent to my message of alarm. Finally hit the two stores at the central point. One said to me, "We're having our best year, ever. What's wrong with you?" And the other store said, "Why don't you just take care of your OWN business."

After muttering how I thought the two ends of the mall were suffering from gangrene, I retreated. I walked into our store and said to my wife: "You're right. These people don't have a clue about what's happening. Let's sell."

We were lucky, and managed to sell the store. I heard from the new owner that the new mall management was going to improve the looks of the mall. Their first step was to pull out all the landscaping in September. It started to snow and freeze, and the landscaping remained a churned desolate mess until spring. Realized that maybe the new landlords might have even less awareness of Bend than the last landlords. They put up a couple of facades at the entrances, and brought in a couple of lousy discounts stores (one of which, the above article on the death of malls specifically mentioned as one the signs of the end), but the malls fate was sealed, even if it took a few more years.

That's the thing. All these changes take years and years to happen.

Downtown Bend doesn't give off any of that feel. Yes, we are getting a lot of doubtful high-end business, yes, viable long-term businesses are leaving. But there still seem to be plenty of people waiting to take the spaces. At full rent -- indeed, rents that are too high. I haven't seen the kind of weakness I saw in the MtView Mall, and even if I did, I know that it takes many, many years to play out. What we are really talking about is a change of tone, not health.
I'm hoping for just enough weakness to give the landlords pause, so that when my lease comes due in a few years, they'll continue to be reasonable. If not, I'll try to see it as an opportunity to improve my business by an even better location, or a bigger space, or.....whatever it takes.

So far the changes downtown have pretty much been a wash for me. Good things and bad things, equaling out. I just have to be nimble.