How many pop-up Halloween shops are there near you? I make 6 of them within 10 miles.
The argument here (or arguments) is that these are an example of how poor use of land can look like dynamic growth but is really just predatory profit-seeking.
“While I might once have just seen run-down buildings through my windshield and kept on driving, now I see people doing what they can with what they have,” he writes. “It’s not perfect. […] But it’s better than abandonment and blight.” He has a point. I would much rather see an old Kmart used as a Halloween costume store, even if it’s only temporary, than have that store go empty in perpetuity, and I’m sure the owners of the building would, too.
Ok, that sounds fine…
Today’s Spirit is pretty much a bottom-feeder business that works only at the expense of other stores; if there weren’t vacant storefronts, this business wouldn’t exist. Or, as the Times puts it, “Spirit is merrily feasting on the corpses of its fallen foes.”
Huh. That’s not so good.
Maybe seasonal shops could take turns with a rotating storefront downtown; there’s no reason a single space couldn’t be a Halloween store from September–October, a Christmas store from November–December, and a beach-gear store from May–August. Or maybe these shops would fill in during temporary vacancies of commercial spaces, between random store tenants.
You know what used to fill this role? Department stores. And what was once thriving in the vacant spaces where these seasonal shops now appear? Department stores. And they employed local people year round, not just a few weeks at a time. They were often a local destination, with a restaurant or coffee shop inside, and specialty services (repairs and alterations) that are now hard to find.
We shouldn’t be building a world where it’s normal to have dozens of vast empty stores propped up by millions of taxpayer dollars in public infrastructure.
Or empty spaces, like parking lots downtown. We should be angry when we see these shops coming in to scoop up a few dollars and leaving no trace, no investment, nothing behind.