Feeding someone's parking meter

I wonder how many stores it would take to replace Amazon. Malls have been on the decline for years. Used to be a time we went to the big department stores for most things.

The only time I can recall going to town in about 40 years is a couple of trips to the lawyers office and some government offices. There is a bank I do business with and make a trip ther about 6 times per year. They do have their own parking lot.It is in about the last block of town. As I mentioned the meters were removed many years ago.

I haven't been in the local mall for over a year. Since Sears, RadioShack, and the bookstores left there isn't an attraction. I read last week that Eddie Bauer is going. Authentic Brands owns them now and that doesn't seem to be a recipe for job security.

Replacing Amazon would be difficult. 30 years ago if you wanted anything out of the ordinary you had to go to Spokane. We've got most of the big box stores now but the availability of specialty items hasn't improved. While it's become the shopping center for western Montana and parts of Idaho there still isn't enough of a market to support a wide inventory. My usual pattern is to hit the local sources, strike out, and order from Amazon. Sometimes it's ridiculous. For reasons unknown there was a Friskies shortage and I started ordering cases of cat food from Amazon on the monthly plan.

As the article says Troy was sliding downhill fast in the '60s but when I was a kid Frear's was still in the game. Its lunch counter was a lot classier than Woolworth's, the WalMart of the day.

I am not sure if it is called a mall or maybe a strip mall where the stores are mainly connected together but the doors are all outside. Then there are several seperate stores in the same general area off the main road.

The one mall where you go inside and then to the stores is out of business now but there are 2 areas where the things I call strip malls are. One near town and the other about 3 miles out of town. The stores from the old mall either moved to one of these or went out of business.

The mall hangs on by its toenails. Stores come and go. The two anchors now are an AMC-9 theater complex and a Scheel's sporting goods.

It's doing better than the other malls in this part of the state. The one in Helena was demolished a couple of years ago. The one in Butte is popular with mall walkers getting in their 10,000 steps since it's mostly deserted.

They're converting part of our mall to housing. They're planning to tear down the vacant Sears and replace it with a four-story apartment and two-story retail building. They'll also eat some of the parking lot with the new construction, including a four-level parking garage and "dozens of bicycle parking space". I assume there's some green space in the plan. Additionally, the apartment building must be all-electric with no gas connections except for emergency backup power.

I haven't been to the mall in several years, so I don't know whether its stores are flourishing or suffering.

Our Sears was an anchor store in the mall. I think it morphed into an AMC theater complex although I haven't checked out the architectural changes.

In the middle of 2021 the vacancy rate was 0.38%. New units were being constructed all over the place so now it's around 3%. One bedroom apts are running around $1100. Rental housing has always been tight. In the 30+ years I've been here both rentals and single family housing projects have proliferated but the population keeps growing.

An economic downturn would hurt right now. I've seen this before where builders start new projects with the assumption the good times will keep rolling. Suddenly there is an over supply and both the builders and banks holding their paper are in trouble.

Oh, I think there still are empty (or nearly) office buildings that went up in the late 1990s to early 2000s. A bunch of housing developments outside town stopped developing in 2020, but they're going again. I really don't know where all these people are coming from, and how they can afford $450,000 for a house.

That's been a mystery to me. There has been a radio ad for condos in an area that used to be a sawmill. She says 'Starting at 450' trying to sugar coat 450 thousand. I suspect many are people who cashed out in the CA real estate market and moved here with big bags of money.

I really should go back to Troy NY. Nobody moves there willingly.

From the CPI inflation calculator, a house that cost $40,000 in 1960 (granted, a nice house - the median in 1960 was $11,000) would cost $418,765 today.

There are plenty of places in the USA where the median house price today is in the $150,000 range. The realtors say "Location, Location, Location".

There are also areas (often geographically constrained, like the SF bay area, Manhatten) where prices are much higher. As is employment compensation, for the most part.

Detroit is coming right along.

As long as you have an annotated map of the no-go zones...

From the time when you could buy a house for $1 if you agreed to fix it up and live in it, it was likely to go up someday.

My first house in 1966 cost $10,600. Today, according to Zillow it would be $180,000. I about tripled my money in 1981. That was in Philadelphia.

The house I bought in 1981 was $59,000, sold it for $195,000 in 2018 ans Zillow now says $312.000 Putnam, CT

House I bought in 2018 was $268,000, now $410,000.

So, in five years, house I sold increased $117.000. house I bought increased $142,000. Manatee county FL

In 1991 I bought a house for $40K. Someone was telling me that if this was California that would be a half-million dollar house.

Hard to say. Location, Location, Location. Your house in Fresno or Bakersfield or Barstow will not be worth as much as if it were in Menlo Park, Atherton, Bevery Hills, Fountain City or Hillsborough.

Location is the word. Friend sold a strip of land that was about 50 by

Slab of concrete .. Jimmy Hoffa perhaps ? :-) John T.

Parts of Fresno it probably isn't even worth 40K. Location indeed.