The Alexandria Mall:
What’s the deal? Yesterday, I drove to Shreveport, and I noticed that on the 1-20 cutoff road (whatever it’s called), there’s an old shopping mall that’s been converted into one of those megachurches. Is this the future of our mall?
Surely, large retailers won’t be knocking down the doors to lease space there anymore.
Also, is it true that the mall recently changed ownership?
CenLamar 
I went to the mall for the first time in several years Tuesday. It was not pleasent. Too many rude folks that would force you to walk around them or bump you as they passed. Why does the mall management allow this? No wonder traffic has fallen off.
Yes, the future of the Alexandria Mall is that of the old South Park Mall in Shreveport. Little by little the gangs of thugs took over in Shreveport, making families fear going there. It is happening in Alexandria as sure as I’m sitting here typing this. Parents drop their kids off at the mall when it opens and pick them up when it closes during school holidays. That should not be happening, especially with child predators and no cameras in the mall. Mall businesses should not have to put up with rude obnoxious children. A note of fairness to the kids, there are an unusual number of just as rude adults too and that is also unfortunate. Ever read the t-shirts of some of the adults walking around the mall??? Vulgar is a tame word for some of the trashy low-lifes you see there.
lawdee we gonna have to go to the mall 😐
A church bought the mall because it was nearly empty. It was a great sacrifice for this church as they were in a new building. They bought it for the benefit of the community. If the Alexandria mall loses their main stores and the neighborhood goes “bad” the same thing could happen.
its almost inconceivable that something like this could happen at our own alexandria mall.
we saw that? Just venture down to the Alex Mall one day, preferably a Saturday from around noon (the thugs sleep late). Occupy a seat for an hour or so and watch the trash you see there.
Having had discussions with several managers there, you’ll agree that the thugs are slowly taking over. Imagine having to spend a whole day in the mall and dealing with the obscenities and rudeness from the variety of trash who come there, mainly to loaf and cause trouble. Many are not even there to buy anything, just to hang out and be obnoxious and shoplift when they get the chance.
What gives with the mall? I’ll try to keep this concise. Several economic factors contributed to the downfall of the Alexandria Mall. First among them is systemic with the way the real estate market for such properties is set up in this country. Real estate investment trusts (REITs) are often publicly traded land and building ownership companies. Think of them like mutual funds, but instead of owning stocks, they own and manage land and property, such as shopping centers. The attraction of investing in a REIT is that land, barring an environmental calamity, tends to gain value in spite of the health of the economy. A good example of this scenario is the last “mild” recession in the US in 2001. The stock market tanked, but real estate values continued (and still continue) to gain value. Typically the rates of return on REITs are single digit, but it’s a safer bet that if the economy goes through a downturn, one would still make a profit on an investment in a REIT. It all goes back to the old investment adage: buy low, sell high.
With that background in mind, let’s consider the ways a REIT can manage its investments. A very conservative management program can generate profits for the REIT by buying a property, waiting a period of time, then selling the property to another REIT. Because the value of the property will go up without capital investment during the period of ownership, the REIT that sold the property gets a profit. The cycle can continue with the next owner, and the next owner, etc.
With a more aggressive strategy a REIT can attempt to generate more revenue from a property by investing in improvements to attract more people to the property. In the case of owning a shopping center, this can be an especially attractive strategy. More people go to shop at the mall, meaning more sales at the stores, and more money from the override (a percentage of sales paid as rent to the landlord) on the leases of the merchants in the mall. The result would be improved cash flow and revenues that can be invested into buying more property or improving existing property. It also guarantees the property value will go up. Most REITs employ a combination of these management strategies.
The Alexandria Mall is probably a good case study for how REITs have managed property in the last fifteen years in the US. Throughout the 1990s and over the last six years, the Alexandria Mall has had multiple owners (I believe four, but I could be wrong, so for the sake of this explanation, let’s say “multiple”). My contention is that the Alexandria Mall is an example (victim) of REITs employing the least aggressive management strategy. They bought the property, did little to improve it, and after the value increased over a period of time, sold it to another REIT.
Why didn’t the Alexandria Mall get placed into the more aggressive investment strategy? Put yourself into top management at a REIT and your company owns shopping centers in Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Denver, St. Louis, and Alexandria. You have a budget for improving your properties, where would you prioritize your capital investments? Because revenues and cash flow can be maximized in those major metropolitan markets, they get the top priority, and Alexandria sits as low man on the totem pole. I know this may seem like an overly simplified (hypothesis) explanation, but malls located in smaller markets throughout the country have suffered a similar fate from this systemic cause.
The economic climate I describe above, I believe, remains at the root of why the mall has declined over the years. To be sure, though, the downturn of the Alexandria Mall has occurred because of other reasons, too. The mall’s decision to fill spaces with dollar stores, discount chains (namely, Stein-Mart), and (let’s be frank, junky) sword/memorabilia/curio stores did as much to repel better specialty retailers from moving into the mall as anything. How many times have you been crowded out in the walking spaces at the mall by those itinerant flea markets? And for crying out loud, how many cheap jewelry kiosks and athletic shoe stores does one mall need? I could probably write another post as long as this has gone about why the food court has never worked.
The changing buying habits of consumers – not necessarily isolated to Central Louisiana – also contributed to the Alexandria Mall’s demise. The growth of Internet and catalog shopping over the last decade is probably the most obvious change. Mall shoppers also found a renewed interest in shopping with stand-alone stores and “strip” shopping centers, where they can drive up to the front door of a store instead of fighting their way through crowds of shoppers and a dozen shops to get to their destination. Walking traffic in the Alexandria Mall has declined, especially after 5 p.m. and on the weekends. Shoppers vote with their dollars, and they give their favor to shopping out of the mall. Consequently long-time mall merchants either closed shop or moved to stand-alone locations or in “strip” centers.
I could continue for sometime on this subject, but I promised to keep this reply short. All of the reasons I have mentioned for why the Alexandria Mall has declined point to a simple description: market forces dictated the change. On the macroeconomic level, the nature of the national real estate market and the habits of American consumers took their toll on the mall. Specific to the Alexandria Mall, meanwhile, were bad tenant choices, poor upkeep of the physical structure, and the absence of an owner committed to aggressively market the mall to both businesses looking to locate there and consumers hoping to shop there.
That being said we all have reason to be hopeful improvements are on the way. The mall’s newest owner has stated, at least in the TT, it will own the property for at least ten years. It has begun investing in land improvements (as already shown with the overlay of the parking lot). Perhaps the departure of Stein-Mart also will improve the chances of luring better retailers into the property. The mall will probably need some other radical changes (a redesign project to start with, for example) to make the mall successful again. I hope that the mall’s owner has a measure of devotion that extends beyond the cosmetic and builds a new engine for commerce and jobs in Alexandria.
Thank you for the in-depth cause for the decline. I’m hopeful that the new owners will carry through with the needed remedies.
I do know that during the holiday season I talked with a number of people who were fearful of even coming to the mall in fear of their safety from all the gang-like creatures who frequented the mall during all hours, staying usually ALL DAY without buying anything.
I couldn’t agree more about the choice of tenants, especially the number of jewelry kiosks! Jeez!
Is there no chance that a number of the wealthier Alexandria business owners could form a consortium to buy the mall and make it a local development?
Perhaps someone local could buy it, but your guess as to whom is as good as mine. The mall was bought in the last couple of years by its current owner, and he said he wanted to hold on to the property for at least 10 years. The best bet for improving the mall, outside of encouraging the local civic-minded business owners to make the new owner an offer, would be to encourage the new owner to develop the center with some sense. Beautify it, market it, police it, etc. make it a place retailers and customers want to be.
Police it is the operative word, too. During last Christmas season, I worked there for 38 straight days in a booth there and you wouldn’t believe some of the depravity that occurred during the days/evenings. The mall security seemed to have their hands tied or simply didn’t want to enforce any kind of rules. Gangs ruled and seemed to dare anyone to even look at them wrong. Young teens, adults too, would come out with the most vile language and not care one whit who was near. It was certainly not a place to take small children. The noise emanating from the two competing shoe stores across from one another seemed to see how loud they could play that rap crap noise, making it annoying to even be near them.
I hope change will come in the area of making it more family friendly at least.
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