Box Store Mania is Coming Soon

[drfrightner]

Box store mania is coming soon folks... I can remember the days when locations for haunts was on every single corner then Clinton came along, and every field was turned into a strip mall, box store, or new subdivision. So basically there wasn't a lot of locations... that is about to change.

They are now predicting that Best Buy is going to going out of business soon. Blockbuster Video will be going out of business, Circuit City is already gone, and many malls are losing stores left and right.

Borders is going out of business which will also add millions upon millions of square feet open for rent... but can you imagine if Best Buy goes out of business???? We are talking about thousands of locations here... each store up to 50,000 square feet. There is no business that will just magically come along and take their place.

I could and can see a new boom of haunts opening everywhere because the locations will just be to clear or hard to pass up... do you guys have any thoughts on this. I'm wondering if this will be good or bad.

Larry

[sophisticatedterror]

At the same time, some of the owners of said buildings...would rather wait and see if another big store chain will come in first before renting out to a haunt for a few months.



Kale

[HauntedPaws]

At the same time, some of the owners of said buildings...would rather wait and see if another big store chain will come in first before renting out to a haunt for a few months.

Kale

Yeah and Best Buy will try to adapt before going down so it'll be another couple years. The property owners have to much money to care about a haunt and already likely own the buildings free and clear too. 50,000 sqft in New England goes for a hefty $750,000-$1 mil a year in rent. Several empty large store fronts have split space to the countless discount chains and we have a new chain who's occupied our Circuit City building and they're a Circuit city clone oddly enough.

[badass]

i wonder how many square feet the white house is ?
btw... hard to compete when the scariest place in town is the gas station..

im sure with the crumbling economy..business will soon be booming..

[mindtumor]

I guess it will be good for people that can afford the high rent those retail buildings will probably charge. Not to mention the utility costs.

[Scenic Art Productions]

Seems good but really bad if you think deeper.

This may seem great at first for a haunt owner. First thought "great!!!" alot of vacant buildings with square footage for the taking means low rent . Then stop and think why? These companies are going under because of lack of customers. The only exception is Blockbuster. It is a victim of new technology. The other buisnesses are going under because nobody has money to spend on luxury items these days. This economy is terrible. With that said, that results in less attendace at your haunts. The better news would be these companies thriving and moving to bigger locations. That means the same result except square footage may not be as low but more money floating around to spend to go to the haunts. I hope the companies can stick around and have their sales increase. We will all be better off with that happening.

Good Luck,
Robert Travis
Scenic Art Productions
ScenicArtProductions@Yahoo.COM
http://www.facebook.com/scenicartproductions

[HauntedPaws]

Best buy is a victim of technology too aka the internet and price checking apps. Amazon doesn't have any brick and mortar overhead just a big ass data center in the boon docks. Slowly but surely Made In America is catching on and china is getting to expensive causing manufacturing to come back to the US but we have few qualified people due to lessening demand the past 20 years. If they'd end these stupid work visas allowing foreigners to come work here and not have to pay taxes that'd help ALOT too.

[Frightener]

That's a great thing about our industry!! You can't buy a haunted experience on feebay!!


Well, in my area, it's filled with a buncha dumbarses. There's this old Hollywood Video building that's been empty for 4 or 5 years now. There's an old icecream shop built into the side of it. It's probably 2,000 sq ft or something like that. If that. This ol boy wanted $5,500 a month! for that small spot! It has been empty since long before the video store went out.

We were gonna put in a hobby shop, for r/c planes and etc. The guy WOULD NOT COME DOWN off his price> I tried talking some reason into him. I told him we could occupy it for our offered price, and give it up if one of those "big retailers" wanted the shop. He still refused.

The place has been empty now for years. Costing him money each year. However, he could've been making a couple of grand, instead of paying OUT on it.

But this place isn't the only one, and he's not the only fool. I don't know, it may be great for some of you much larger haunt producers. Being on the bottom of the ladder, it's hard for me to see much good into it. Like shane bought that huge grocery store! That's awesome, sure, but he seemed to have been in a really good shape to purchase it. Like us, we wouldn't have the large dough just to pay the first 6 months of lease that they require.

Our mall wanted 6 months paid in full before we got a key for any large spot. The kiosks, they wanted a full year!!! This is ridiculous, but hey, it's their mall, and our ONLY mall we have around here. We do have a Best Buy, and it's huge, but I bet it'd take someone like you Larry, that's well established to even try to make a go of it. It'd be nice though.

Do you think one of these Best Buy shops would be good for a year around attraction? Or best to keep it seasonal?

[FablesStudios]

2cents..

Best Buy is going out because everyone shops online now and their selections and customer service is horrible. Example, went there to buy a movie couldn't find it. Asked for help to locate it and a worker looked through the movies in their database then said he'll be back. I never saw him again. After another 15 min of looking I gave up and left. I saw the guy outside smoking . Thats just one example, I have so many I'm cant believe they have not gone out of biz sooner.

Amazon took their place for me years ago. From movies, games, tvs and better customer service. Free shipping sometimes, discounts and i can actually find what I am looking for.

Borders was the place to by a book and have a cup of joe. 10+ years ago my old band would play acoustic shows in their lounge. Starbucks and the ipad/ kindle took its place. Things change.

Do you remember Coconuts music stores or actually any music store? I remember buying vinyl, tapes and cds in the store. Most if not all have gone out of biz due to downloading.

To get back on topic, I know of a few new haunts opening this year or next year but I also know of some long time haunts leaving. There are so many Large empty building here but the owners either want nothing to do with a haunt (Bad taste in their mouth from others) or they want $20-$60 a sqft for rent. I understand why taxes on a huge building are nuts so the owners need to charge these high rates. Thats why were looking to buy land and build from there, big waste of money to keep renting here..

Well see how things play out. Only time will tell.

Peter T
FS

[Deathwing]

This doesn't impact haunts at all. I mean, how many can afford the 30k + a month lease all year round? They won't want to lease to a haunt anyway because they want someone in and open all the time because those stores will built to anchor a center. And even if they did short term lease as soon as a bigger and permanent business wants in the haunt is kicked out.


Jake

[screamforadream]

What isn't being spoken about is WHY seasonal business owners have a hard time getting a lease.

Anything under a year is viewed as a "loss" in the banks eyes.

Building owners want to do more and better, if the space is only active a month or two out of the yyear they want nothing to do with you. It makes them look bad regardless of whether or not you're paying.

I'm finally opening up my own place this October, and I had to ccommit to a two yyear lease as well as have a business model that will aallow for year round usage. So in the off-season we may have a nightclub....liquor license pending. It is either that oor a black light mini golf lol. but being a DJ, the club idea is more fun in my eyes Haha.

[HauntedMemphis]

Yeah and Best Buy will try to adapt before going down so it'll be another couple years. The property owners have to much money to care about a haunt and already likely own the buildings free and clear too. 50,000 sqft in New England goes for a hefty $750,000-$1 mil a year in rent. Several empty large store fronts have split space to the countless discount chains and we have a new chain who's occupied our Circuit City building and they're a Circuit city clone oddly enough.

HHGregg took over our circuit city location almost as fast as it emptied out in Memphis.

[HauntedMemphis]

We were gonna put in a hobby shop, for r/c planes and etc. The guy WOULD NOT COME DOWN off his price> I tried talking some reason into him. I told him we could occupy it for our offered price, and give it up if one of those "big retailers" wanted the shop. He still refused.

He probably did you a favor. The hobby industry is TERRIBLE to be in. Most hobby stores around the country are going under due to the internet and mail order. The distributors who supply hobby stores actually sell against them, so there is no markup on items. RC is the worst.

[Frightener]

Well, at the time, MiniT sales were through the roof and NO ONE had an indoor track for the 1/18th scale. We had installed one in a shop and we were pulling in quite a bit just off of that.

Your sales in that area is the parts they break while running on your track lol. They don't want to wait to get it fixed. But yeah, I know what you mean. Sales are down, you gotta find other ways to get them to spend at your store. Having an indoor track is very nice, but even doing a 1/18th indoor track is kinda tricky to do. We were doing scale Monster Truck racing, Sled pulling and MiniT racing at our location.

either way I hope someone can take advantage of these openings coming up that Larry's talking about. We tried to get into that old mall for indoor paintball etc, but it sat for a decade before anything else went in, and now it's being demolished, as we chat here now! That was a nice facility too.

[Valley_of_Screams]

A few years ago the Circuit City here closed...and STILL sits empty. The landlord is STILL asking for a lease of $37,550 a MONTH!!! ...and has NO plans of coming down on that price. No wonder this businesses are going under. Unless building owners realize that they cannot keep their leases as high as they are and they don't come down on price, the won't have anybody lease.

HOWEVER...here we have a complete mall that sits totally empty. Massive parking lot...over 100,000 sq. ft. of space...great location...but he won't open leases to anyone. Why? Because the tax write-off he gets from the building sitting empty creates a return that makes him MORE money than it would if it were completely leased out. I call BULLSHIT! Ugh...rant over. -Tyler