It’s happening. Brick-and-mortar retail is officially on the decline.
It’s not really anything new. Classic brick-and-mortar retailers have been slowly failing for years, particularly due to the rise of e-commerce and digital technologies. Well-known companies like The Limited and Gymboree that were practically staples of shopping malls 10 years ago have now filed for bankruptcy. It’s a clear sign that the industry’s traditional model has been flipped on its head.
When Investment Rhymes with Canada
Canada has a proud history of achievement in the areas of science and technology, and the field of biomanufacturing and life sciences is no exception.
But with retailers leaving malls across the country, what’s happening to all that unused space? Are shopping malls just sitting empty?
Not quite.
Landlords throughout the country are finding new ways to make use of the cleared out stores. One innovative idea involves including medical providers, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a prime example.
In Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, the Atrium Mall is being transformed into a wellness and medical facility called Life Time Center. And Dana-Farber is one of the tenants.
The institute has signed a lease for two floors of the former mall, which it will use to provide clinical trials, exams, infusions and support services for adult cancer patients. It anticipates welcoming patients to the space by the end of 2019.
“The Life Time Center location is ideal for our patients coming in from the west and south,” Wendy Gettleman, Dana-Farber’s vice president of facilities management and real estate, told WSJ. “It is both a satellite location and close enough to our main campus to allow us to look at this as a clinical growth solution for our Yawkey Center that will soon be at capacity.”
The trend is far from new. The University of Mississippi Medical Center Cancer Institute has space at the Jackson Medical Mall in Jackson, Mississippi. UCLA Health provides primary care services out of the Village at Westfield Topanga in Woodland Hills, California. Southeastern Regional Medical Center rents space at Lumberton, North Carolina-based Biggs Park Mall.
And Vanderbilt University Medical Center runs Vanderbilt Health out of One Hundred Oaks mall in Nashville, Tennessee.
“We have been very pleased with the performance of [One Hundred Oaks mall], driven in large part by the built-in traffic generated from the Vanderbilt University Medical System,” Jim Garvey, portfolio manager of LaSalle Property Fund, told WSJ. LaSalle bought the mall five years ago.
As Garvey pointed out, medical providers have been bringing value to the now-empty malls. But from the healthcare providers’ perspective, why lease space in a former shopping center?
Eric Johnson, national director of healthcare at Transwestern Commercial Services, a real estate firm, said malls provide the structural support to house the heavy medical equipment health systems use. On top of that, a mall’s location alone — often near a highway or busy road — can be helpful in drawing attention to a medical center.
As the brick-and-mortar retail industry continues to flounder, perhaps healthcare will be mall landlords’ saving grace.
Photo: serts, Getty Images
