Arnot Mall Chat

[TTL News 308]

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The owner of the local Mooney’s Sports Bar and Grill, most notably known for its mac n’ cheese, confirmed with 18 News that it will be coming to the former Denny’s building in Horseheads.

Owner Kevin McFall, who owns the Mooney’s locations in Corning, Big Flats, Athens, and several others, said that he’s purchased the building and is hoping to have it remodeled and operating by mid-summer of 2024.

 

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We’ll make this another one of those open style threads for news, ideas and conversation pertaining to the Arnot Mall. 

[KarenK 383]

41 minutes ago, Elmira Telegram said:

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Kewl.  It's not a favorite of mine, but it's OK.   The outdoor seating is a big appeal.

[LocalSportsGuy 43]

6 hours ago, Elmira Telegram said:

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My only question is which I assume you it is but is it replacing the Mall Moonies? or a different location like back in the day how there were two/three Friendly's?  

[KarenK 383]

12 hours ago, LocalSportsGuy said:

My only question is which I assume you it is but is it replacing the Mall Moonies? or a different location like back in the day how there were two/three Friendly's?  

It is replacing the mall.   The lease with the mall runs out next Sept so they want to be open and operational by August at the latest.

[Chris 2,162]

The mall is pricing themselves right out of tenants. Mooneys will be far better off in a location they own. Right off the highway too.

[KarenK 383]

15 minutes ago, Chris said:

The mall is pricing themselves right out of tenants. Mooneys will be far better off in a location they own. Right off the highway too.

Yes, they lose a tenant so increase the rents on the others to make up the difference.  Not super smart.  They also are bringing in new tenants and allowing their rent to be a portion/percentage of their total sales.  That offer did not get extended to current tenants.  They also do not make the the new tenants all stay open specific hours but the older places have mandatory mall hours.

Management needs to be upgraded there I think.

[Chris 2,162]

It’s been through a couple changes over the past decade, but they don’t learn.

[MsKreed 1,179]

 

4 hours ago, KarenK said:

They also do not make the the new tenants all stay open specific hours but the older places have mandatory mall hours.

This explains a lot. 

I attended a car show this summer. 

Outside, there was maybe 150 entrants parked by the vacant Sears location. But inside over 75% of the businesses were closed. Many empty....but a huge number of those that were still in business were not open for business.....5pm on a Friday.

If there are older tenants forced to pay staff when the place in a tomb and they're paying higher rent?? Why TF wouldn't they be scrambling to get away?

4 hours ago, Chris said:

The mall is pricing themselves right out of tenants. Mooneys will be far better off in a location they own. Right off the highway too.

 

4 hours ago, KarenK said:

Yes, they lose a tenant so increase the rents on the others to make up the difference.  Not super smart. 

 

Yeah, that's not smart at all. 

It's a no-brainer that, as tenants flee, the other storefronts lose their value. So punitive rules and jacking up their rent to drive them out sooner is a ridiculous idea. 

I can't help but worry that the CCIDA will reward their shitty business practices. As far as I know, the hotel plan was scrapped before the IDA handed over any money..... but that doesn't mean they won't revisit their plan to shovel tax money at them. 

[KarenK 383]

2 minutes ago, MsKreed said:

I can't help but worry that the CCIDA will reward their shitty business practices. As far as I know, the hotel plan was scrapped before the IDA handed over any money..... but that doesn't mean they won't revisit their plan to shovel tax money at them. 

CCIDA wants a truck stop hub in that area in the worst way.  

[MsKreed 1,179]

1 hour ago, KarenK said:

CCIDA wants a truck stop hub in that area in the worst way.  

I didn't support the truck plaza at the Sperr Park location.

But having one could be a good thing in the right spot. (And at the full expense of its developers- not IDA taxpayer funds).

And honestly....flattening the mall for a Bucky's type plaza isn't necessarily a terrible idea.

[Elizabeth Whitehouse 18]

"Flattening" the mall for any reason is a terrible idea. Repurpose it, yes, but don't tear it down.

[KarenK 383]

9 hours ago, Elizabeth Whitehouse said:

"Flattening" the mall for any reason is a terrible idea. Repurpose it, yes, but don't tear it down.

Well, it's privately owned, not county owned, so I guess that would be up to the owners.

[Elizabeth Whitehouse 18]

17 hours ago, KarenK said:

Well, it's privately owned, not county owned, so I guess that would be up to the owners.

Yes it would be up to the owners. Tearing it down is still a bad idea.

[MsKreed 1,179]

For most things in my own life, I absolutely prefer a practical approach of reusing and repurposing.  

But million+ square foot commercial properties aren’t like old sinks that can be painted a new color and used for some completely different function, like a kitschy planter. 

It’s one thing to add non-structural walls to a relatively small building and create office space and/or studio apartments, etc. However, the larger the property that was built to accommodate a specific enterprise, the more impractical it is to “revamp” to another use. 

Yes, third world countries (that do not have the means to start over) are often forced to try things like turning abandoned factories into hospitals. But those “repurposed” facilities are not by choice. They are substandard and far inferior to their practical and functional counterparts that were built to serve as hospitals.

Example: Over its 25 years of dormancy......it was painfully clear that the A&P Plant as it stood, would never have been practically suited for anything other than what it was built for. No amount of retrofitting and redecorating could have ever turned it into some other use that would be modern, operational, and profitable.....like a Walmart, a hotel, a medical center, a truck plaza, or an apartment complex, etc.

Period.

And the Mall, as it stands, will never be practicably suited for any of those uses either.

[Elizabeth Whitehouse 18]

I find your answer totally lacking imagination. There are many, many ways that site could be repurposed/converted.  Too many to go into here.

[Chris 2,162]

21 minutes ago, Elizabeth Whitehouse said:

There are many, many ways that site could be repurposed/converted.  Too many to go into here.

Humor us, and name three. 

[Elizabeth Whitehouse 18]

6 minutes ago, Chris said:

Humor us, and name three. 

Turn the excessively large parking lots into an urban farm, or community garden. Convert most of the  shops into living spaces, some with second storeys. (British spelling). Turn one of the big stores into a convention center.

[MsKreed 1,179]

A millennia of fiction writing proves that ‘imagination’ is limitless. However, realism and pragmatic solutions are constrained by actual real-world boundaries.

5 hours ago, Chris said:

Humor us, and name three. 

And remember that we’re talking about hypothetical uses for a privately owned, commercial property (that once hugely contributed to financial prosperity in the area).  

Unless one's “imagination” includes a fantasy world where tax revenue is not needed, and hinges on the expectation that the owners should just surrender their asset for “the public good”....those three ideas would need to be at least analogous in that they are profitable and produce more jobs and tax revenue. And in the interest of distinguishing mere ‘imagination’ from realistic scenarios.....each concept should include cited examples of anyone, anyplace actually achieving them for some realistic length of time.  

There are plenty of criticisms we can throw at the current Mall management for its deteriorating role in the local economy. Wanting it to be even less economically successful seems like the antithesis of a solution. It’s beyond asinine to suggest reducing the Mall’s business revenue when the local economy needs the opposite.

We already have a surplus of underutilized publicly owned and completely vacant/derelict private properties that are currently less beneficial to the community than they should be.....even less so than the mall.  The Arena, Erie Plaza, Hills Plaza. While it’s still probably an impractical idea to invest millions of dollars into re-inventing those places as public resources like community gardens and municipal centers....at least doing so would not eliminate existing business revenue potential.

Edited November 13, 2023 by MsKreed

[KarenK 383]

8 minutes ago, MsKreed said:

A millennia of fiction writing proves that ‘imagination’ is limitless. However, realism and pragmatic solutions are constrained by actual real-world boundaries.

And remember that we’re talking about hypothetical uses for a privately owned, commercial property (that once hugely contributed to financial prosperity in the area).  

Unless one's “imagination” includes a fantasy world where tax revenue is not needed, and hinges on the expectation that the owners should just surrender their asset for “the public good”....those three ideas would need to be at least analogous in that they are profitable and produce more jobs and tax revenue. And in the interest of distinguishing mere ‘imagination’ from realistic scenarios.....each concept should include cited examples of anyone, anyplace actually achieving them for some realistic length of time.  

There are plenty of criticisms we can throw at the current Mall management for its deteriorating role in the local economy. Wanting it to be even less economically successful seems like the antithesis of a solution. It’s beyond asinine to reduce the Mall’s business revenue when the local economy needs the opposite.

We already have a surplus of underutilized publicly owned and completely vacant/derelict private properties that are currently less beneficial to the community than they should be.....even less so than the mall.  The Arena, Erie Plaza, Hills Plaza. While it’s still probably an impractical idea to invest millions of dollars into re-inventing those places as public resources like community gardens and municipal centers....at least doing so would not eliminate existing business revenue potential.

The old Macy's is currently being utilized as an event space.

There were several "community gardens" started over the years.  I know there was on in Elmira.  There was one up here in Erin where I live.  Interest in them lasted 2 or 3 years.  

[Chris 2,162]

@MsKreed hit the nail on the head several times, so there’s little use for me to say the same things, but less eloquently.

The Arnot Mall is nowhere near unique when it comes to the state it is currently in. Years ago I was at a mall in Syracuse, the name escapes me now, and I couldn’t believe the state it was in. And now ours is the same, but bigger and cleaner.

When I was in Buffalo this past summer we went to the Walden Galleria Mall and I think there were only 2-3empty storefronts.  So it is possible to have real life retail stores in a mall. Perhaps it’s not the retail industry that’s the problem?

It’s astounding to me when the mall looks like this on a Friday night:

(Photos were posted to FB by a friend last week.)

When it would normally look like this:

 
This third photo was taken by our son on Trunk or Treat night. He couldn’t believe how many people there were. And even that is a pretty light crowd compared to the 80s and 90s.

When it comes to “imagination”, my own imagination sees this giant indoor area filled with local businesses who are paying a far more reasonable price for the space they’re leasing. And I understand that once upon a time that square footage was gold, but is it anymore? Obviously not. So why not drop the price, get some storefronts open and bodies in there?

Years ago when I worked there, I was talking to the mall manager at that time. I mentioned an indoor farmers market. They said they’d tried that, but the farmers didn’t want to pay the prices the mall charged to set up a space. When I asked the price, they didn’t respond directly. And as I said then, I’m sure the average small farmer looked at their price, considered how much product they’d have to sell and noped out.

Due to its proximity to the airport, there’s some things that can’t be done with the mall. My understanding is that’s a large reason why Holiday Inn or whoever was supposed to set up shop there backed out. Then of course COVID came along and for many, it was the coup de grace.

 

[Chris 2,162]

And this topic reminds me of how I wish I had more access to the vault where there’s supposedly a ton of pictures from over the years. I had a connection and got started scanning some of them ( some you can see here ) but never like I’d hoped to. 

[MsKreed 1,179]

47 minutes ago, Chris said:

When it comes to “imagination”, my own imagination sees this giant indoor area filled with local businesses who are paying a far more reasonable price for the space they’re leasing. And I understand that once upon a time that square footage was gold, but is it anymore? Obviously not. So why not drop the price, get some storefronts open and bodies in there?

Exactly..... If they want to demand the steadily increasing rents, they'd need to bring back the benefits that they removed over the last several decades that had made that square footage "gold" in the first place. 

 

From the time the Arnot Mall was built until somewhere in the mid-late ‘90s, it operated with the basic recipe/formula that made other malls across America thrive (and justifying the higher rent costs to their tenants).

Free Events like pageants, art shows, parades, etc drawing consumers into the facility.

Non-Competition clauses in their leases that promised tenants that they wouldn’t have to fight over customers for identical goods and services right down the hall.....while providing consumers with a Wide Variety of shops & services.

Anchor Stores comprised of large, popular, national retailers with traffic from a consistent customer base.

 

Then we saw some of the “ingredients” in that recipe being skimped on (or completely omitted) in order for the Mall Management to squeeze more profits......

Instead of hosting free events, they began charging vendors to participate (like the Farmer’s Market Chris mentioned). Eventually, they just offered up corridors full time to any fly-by-night junk dealer who wanted a booth.  

There was also no longer any attempt to protect older tenants from competition. Any new booth or storefront can come along and sell the same stuff as the next guy. And with the rent being too damn high.....a lot of those new tenants don’t invest in any remodeling or refacing of the old business. They just throw tarps up as walls and use temporary banners for signage.  

Whereas people used to show up for themed free events, no one goes to the Mall for the enjoyment of browsing a dozen cheap booths and trashy stores full of the same Chinese junk they can get at Dollar General.

So...less traffic. And less traffic means more of the businesses leave– so raise the rent of course! Because going back to the business model that was successful would just be crazy. 

[KarenK 383]

I do think people are still visiting the anchor stores.  The two that are left anyway.  I went in Penny's to return an item I got online last Sunday (wasn't available in store) and the lines at the registers were 6-7 deep.  People are going to the stores they want by their outside entrances and not entering the mall.

[KarenK 383]

Another reason for the Mooney relocation was maintenance.   They had a lot of issues with plumbing, heating, and electrical and although I believe the mall was responsible, they could not get things fixed.  I know some plumbers that they called to fix things and they paid for it themselves.  That cost them time and money.  I think they felt it made more sense to just buy their own place and quit paying double (out of pocket and in their rent) for repairs and maintenance.

I kind of wonder if they (the mall) pay their contractors on time.  Dave got more than one late night calls or weekend calls from their management company because they couldn't get anyone to come out.  They don't generally go out and do work for management companies like that, and he didn't.  They must have just been calling anyone they could find. You would think they had contractors of their own for basic maintenance when they need it.

Edited November 14, 2023 by KarenK

[Chris 2,162]

57 minutes ago, KarenK said:

They had a lot of issues with plumbing, heating, and electrical and although I believe the mall was responsible, they could not get things fixed.

I don’t know if every lease is the same, but the lease where I worked? We paid for everything. Even to have an exterior door replaced.

I asked the boss WTF the lease actually paid for, and he said something along the lines of, “You’re standing on it.”

HVAC, plumbing, the tenant paid for it.