To mix things up a bit, here is a mall update from Louisiana.
Acadiana Mall in Lafayette Louisiana has been struggling lately. The mall went into foreclosure and now has a new owner. In 2019 Namdar Reality took over the mall (click here for more on that story on The Advertiser site)
As most of us retail enthusiasts know, Namdar is one of the least active mall owners and does the bare minimum to improve their properties. Acadiana Mall was renovated a few years ago prior to the default and has faced heavy competition from newer power centers in the city. There are parts of the mall that are doing great and other parts that are struggling. The mall was still closing at 7pm at this point and business was still not up to pre-Covid levels.
Since our last visit Sears closed in September 2017. JCPenney began a closing sale in 2020 when the company filed for bankruptcy, but was saved after a deal was struck to keep the store open (click here for this Advocate story about that store). Macy's has downsized their store by closing off the second floor. Dillard's is the only anchor store that is still operating normally.
Here are my previous articles at the mall.
We begin our tour at the food court entrance.
A small tour of the FYE store in the mall. This store is located to the left of the food court entrance.
More views of the store......
Always good to see Garbage Pail Kids getting some display space.
As you can see this FYE has a good selection of products.
Vinyl selection.
New and retro styled action figures.
FYE stores have downsized their physical media offerings.
The wall of POP figures.
A huge candy selection.
The checkout counter and impulse buy section.
One last look as we head into the mall.
The food court, the restaurants are to the right of this photo.
Former Sears to the right and the rest of the mall to the left.
We will start with the Sears corridor.
The Sears corridor doesn't have a lot of vacancies despite Sears being gone for nearly 4 years at this point. There is also no mall entrance to this corridor.
The vacant Sears mall entrance.
Back to where we started food court to the left and the rest of the mall straight ahead.
A quick look at the center corridor. More on this area in a bit.
Going down the Macy's corridor which has probably the most vacancies inside of the mall.
Macy's is looking very bare. In addition to the second floor being closed off, one of the outside entrances is also closed off on the first floor.
Closed off outside entrance.
It is difficult to tell from my photos, but the inventory at this store was very lean. Lots of open spaces in between clothing racks.
Escalators blocked off.
The lights are still on upstairs.
A lot of floor space is unused and open like in this part of the store.
Back out into the mall we go. Not a good look with the vacant store fronts with blankets covering up the emptiness.
As you can see here, the mall has an unusual shape. The mall appears to have bene built for 6 anchors, but only 4 showed up.
H&M and Forever 21 were the only chain stores left in the Macy's corridor. Both of these stores are at the front edge of the corridor near JCPenney.
The JCPenney court. JCPenney to the right and the center court of the mall to the left.
An older style Shoe Department with the JCPenney entrance in the far background. Forever 21 is to the right of this view.
Looking towards the center court.
This corridor of the mall leads to the center entrance.
The center court is very lively.
This is the best corridor of the mall, the corridor to Dillard's.
This is a three level Dillard's. It is a well maintained and modern store.
Looking towards the center court from the Dillard's mall entrance.
More views of the Dillard's corridor as we head back to the center court.
Looking towards the Sears/food court hallway from the center court.
Food court restaurants. The mall was closing up as I was leaving, these places were open earlier.
These places were in the process of closing up for the day.
A photo I missed earlier, the front of the FYE store.
Now for some exterior photos. I made 2 drive arounds which explains the randomness of some of the photos.
Here is the old Sears.
This part of the store appears to have some roof damage. Only part of the damage was covered up by tarps, maybe the rest of the tarps had blown off.
The massive Dillard's store.
One of the stores with exterior access.
The center court mall entrance.
Another view of the Sears.
Talbots has mall access as well as an exterior entrance.
This side of JCPenney has an interesting design.
This side of JCPenney has the typical brutalist look of their 1980's era stores.
Macy's is well designed, it is a throwback to the Maison Blanche era of department store designs.
More to come, stay tuned!
It is good to see that the FYE store at this mall is well-stocked and seemingly doing okay. I must say that the mall entrance of the FYE is quite strange looking for a FYE. I almost wonder if it was something else before and FYE just didn't bother to change it much. Anyway, aside from a nasty looking drop ceiling above the record inventory, the store looks like it is well-maintained. They don't have a lot of music these days, but they do have a portable CD player and also a Memorex cassette boombox for sale. I'm sure the Sony boomboxes we have from Sears/Kmart are a lot better, but at least it's something.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of FYE, I recently ordered some CDs from their website. They still have a pretty good selection of music online and the prices are about the same as they are anywhere else online. FYE does have frequent sales online which makes the prices even better. I've ordered music from FYE before, but this is the first time I've ordered from them since they were bought out by Sunrise Records. But, yeah, I'm glad they still carry a decent selection of music online if nothing else. Perhaps if they get enough online orders from this area, they may open more stores like they did at Katy Mills.
As for the rest of the mall, it is a bit of a mixed bag. The renovations are still keeping the mall fresh, but there are some areas of the mall which aren't doing too well. The Macy's wing especially looks iffy and the Macy's store itself looks rather shabby even if the outside design is good. Macy's is starting to look more and more like Sears from about five years ago. This can't be a good thing. I'm sure the shoppers at this mall, and most malls, prefer to shop at Dillard's instead even if the mall entrance sign at this Dillard's is oddly small.
Namdar ownership is not a promising sign for this mall. Hopefully the mall can maintain some grade A retailers and keep going, but if things start falling apart with vacancies, the whole mall might quickly start losing tenants. Hopefully that won't happen though.
I think this was a Sam Goody store prior to FYE. If I remember correctly, this store and Lake Charles were renovated at the same time to the yellowish look that Sam Goody updated stores with in the early 2000's. I am always glad to see an FYE store as they were rapidly disappearing between 2005 and 2015. I try to buy something every time I go to one.
DeleteMacy's here reminds me on the store in Beaumont before it closed. I really would not be surprised to see it go soon. There are still several locations that are part of their closing lists that are still open for now. With Namdar taking over the mall, we should expect to see more closures. The retail scene in Lafayette has left both malls behind, but this one still has a chance to recover. Northgate is still surprisingly open, but suffers from a high interior vacancy rate.
The Lafayette Macy's from what I understand is considered by the company to be a 'neighborhood' store, so that places it on the list of potential closures.
DeleteLooks like this mall might have originally sported a French Colonial theme based on some of the exterior architecture, esp. the center court mall entrance.
Northgate looked like a relic 14 years ago; it seems to survive by leasing to small neighborhood businesses which serve the north Lafayette area.
With Namdar ownership, not too hopeful about this mall's long term prospects. :(
The Macy's certainly has the feel of a store where the bare minimum is being done. What I was surprised about was the lack of clearance items, they didn't have a huge selection like you normally see at the downgraded Macy's locations. I wonder if they will convert this store to a smaller location if/when the Acadiana Mall store closes. You would think that Lafayette is an area more than large enough to support a Macy's store. It is also possible that the mall is struggling even more than before. Namdar ownership definitely does not help, the mall needs a local owner who aggressively refills store spaces.
DeleteThe two malls in Lafayette are interesting to say the least. I will have a 2021 update on Northgate as well, possibly as early as next week.
Depressing! I shopped here often as a teen and it was my favorite mall. My Mom and I would wake up and decide to drive to Lafayette for the day. I haven't been there in years. Sad to see its decline.
ReplyDeleteI thought the mall would pick up after the renovation. It actually got worse. The renovation is pretty boring in comparison to the way the mall previously looked.
DeleteDo you still live in the Lafayette area?
The first renovation made a bigger difference in the early 2000's (getting rid of the brick floors brightened up the interior and made it more stroller friendly). But competition from multiple shopping centers and horrible traffic in the area have hurt. If you go back further, relocating the movie theater to outside of the mall circle looks to have been a mistake. It used to be in the food court area and drew people into the mall.
DeleteTraffic along Ambassador Caffery even outside of the mall area is a big issue. Target relocated south of the river into their own new shopping center and then Costco was built near them as well (with Academy, Kohls, etc. also in the same area) creating another traffic congestion area. Those living south of the river (where most of young families live) avoid the drive to get to the mall as it is a nightmare during peak times.
JCPenney also built a second store off of I-10, giving the Northside other options than driving all the way to the mall.
I visited this mall back in 1997, but I can't remember the interior back then. The Ambassador Caffery and Johnson corner has been bad traffic wise for years. The area was not built for the traffic load. A lot of the improvements to the New Orleans and Baton Rouge area mall access roads helped keep those centers viable. The successful ones are also next to the major highways so that helps also. Splitting the retail areas South of town has not helped, I agree that it hurts traffic.
DeleteMalls like Lakeside, Mall of Louisiana, Oakwood, and Prien Lake are not threatened by competition or have good populations nearby. Lake Charles doesn't have a lot of the retailers that Lafayette does and has a similar metro population. Prien Lake has only thrived by adding on several big-box retailers instead of letting them locate to new shopping centers in the area.
ReplyDeleteSuch a shame how the mall has declined. I managed a store there from 2012 to 2014, and had to deal with the renovations during 2013. Still my business was booming (national retailer who shall not be named). I feel reasonably confident the sales figures my store did during that time frame were not and never will be topped. Now national retailers seem to be leaving and are not being replaced. That Macy’s is even sadder now than when you visited.
As a kid I loved going to Lafayette to shop around the turn of the century. Acadiana Mall had so much more than my hometown mall of Alexandria, even when THAT mall was thriving in the late 90s. While Acadiana isn’t as bad as Alexandria mall, it surely isn’t head and shoulders better anymore.
I hardly ever go to the Acadiana mall anymore. The continuation of COVID hours and the increasing vacancy rate really make the place feel sad. This mall was always slammed, even during and after the renovations in 2013. Now, the traffic is significantly lower on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Reading how shady the new ownership is makes me worried this place won’t have the opportunity to recover, even as more businesses build on that end of town and the construction on Johnston wraps up.