Anchored To Poverty

On May 6 the Toronto Star ran an article focusing on the plight of neighbourhood malls, which are in decline. The two most likely reasons are the anchors pulling up anchors and on-line shopping.

Target has been in and out of Canadian malls for two years leaving a trail of debt and unemployment behind them. Sears has closed 11 department store anchor locations across Canada since 2012.

Market research firm IBIS-World issued a report which predicted this trend would continue for the next five years, ''Profit has suffered over the five years to 2016, as many industry operators have slashed their selling prices in order to remain attractive to customers'', the report said.

Mary Mowbray, of group sales for Colliers International, added, ''Malls, used to rely on their anchors and the anchors are changing faster than anyone imagined they would''. This is another indication that under capitalism no one really knows what will happen, but you can bet that with the economy the way it is now it won't be good. It's so bad even mall owners are getting out of the mall business.

Canada's top real estate development and investment firms have reduced their mall portfolios by half in recent years. A spokesman for one real estate consultancy said, ''Retailers don't want to have 600 stores anymore in a country. They are aiming for something closer to 300. The growth of online sales is a major factor. According to an estimate by Colliers, online sales of 23 billion in 2014 replaced 76.7 million square feet of stores. That is roughly the equivalent to the shopping centre inventories of Vancouver, Halifax, Ottawa and Victoria, the estimate said. What no report or estimate did say was that these days millions of working class folk just don't have the money to shop for more than their basic needs and some haven't enough to do that.

 Steve and John.