Closing time
Local retail landscape is changing as chains shrink - and it's not over yet
NEWTON - Bundled against the cold, the human billboards are out on the weekends at both ends of Needham Street, their bold-colored, bold-lettered signs - STORE CLOSING! EVERYTHING MUST GO! - pronouncing the end of Tweeter and Linens 'n Things, where an acre of combined shopping space is being liquidated of merchandise.
In between the bookends of this shopping corridor, other chains have already closed: Fabric Place and Mattress Discounters, where a doormat at the locked entrance still beckons, "Have a Good Night's Sleep on Us."
Pockets of empty stores are appearing in Boston's suburbs, the result of a string of bankruptcy filings or store-closure announcements by regional and national chains, including Tweeter, Linens 'n Things, Circuit City, even
"Things are so unpredictable right now, and it's very frightening to think what the future brings for the retail business," said Judy Post, a Needham resident who was shopping for furniture recently along the Route 9 retail stretch, ahead of a retirement move to Shrewsbury.
"Every furniture store I went into, I was the only one in the store, and all the sales people were sitting and waiting around for somebody to come in," said Post, 65, a retired clinical nurse specialist, as she paused before entering the Newton Linens 'n Things. "It was a very eerie feeling."
The human billboards are out in Natick and Framingham, too, and yet some places along that route remain crowded. "I was at the Natick mall last weekend, and it's still pretty full. We're definitely in an economic crisis, but people are still spending," said Ilana Schwartz, 34, of West Newton, as she prepared to peruse discounts at the housewares store, where even the shopping carts were for sale.
Over the last decade, big-box stores and chains flourished. Seeming to sprout ever larger, they clustered in new buildings near malls and highway exits and along multilane roads, luring credit-card-carrying suburbanites who powered a heady era of consumerism that paused, only briefly, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"After that it became patriotic to shop, because we were going to show them that we were going to spend ourselves into oblivion," said Patricia Edwards, a national retail analyst based in Seattle. "And we did it really well, too."
Now, commentators in some parts of the country are pronouncing the demise of an era in suburban shopping - with people in big SUVs going to big stores to buy stuff for big houses - and warning of a landscape littered with empty big-box stores and scarred shopping plazas.
Around Boston, analysts predict a slowdown, not devastation. But if the future does not hold major changes for shopping patterns and habits, it almost certainly will bring more liquidation sales and vacancies.
"Anyone who doesn't think there will be additional vacancies is kidding themselves," said Joel Kadis, a partner with Linear Retail Properties, which acquires and operates shopping centers in Eastern Massachusetts and southern New England, holding a portfolio of a few dozen plazas ranging from 10,000 to 125,000 square feet. "Most people think it's going to get worse before it gets better."
The current and looming closures reflect economic troubles as well as the realization that the retail scene is oversaturated, with many stores selling the same products.
"Every single major retailer that I've talked to . . . will admit, and sound pretty emphatic, that the US is 'overstored.' We have too many stores," said Edwards. But for years, companies resisted pulling back until rivals did, she said.
Until recently, Newton offered a stark example of an "overstored" market: two Starbucks stores within a couple blocks of each other in Newton Centre. One has closed.
"You can have a Starbucks on every corner in a good economy, but in a bad economy you have to have one every few miles," said Linda Grignolo, 58, a Wellesley homemaker who nonetheless voiced cautious optimism about the retail outlook.
Retailers selling necessities, especially discounted necessities, are faring better than those peddling discretionary goods. Natick-based
The Boston suburbs are less "overstored" than the Sunbelt, and other parts of the country, because of scarcity of land, population density, and permitting challenges, said Kadis, whose company's plazas, in places such as Natick and Milford, feature many smaller tenants, not big-box retailers.
Jonathan D. Miller, a New York-based analyst and author of an annual industry outlook, "Emerging Trends in Real Estate," said the weakest malls and "power centers" - meaning plazas with multiple big-box retailers that have sprouted near regional malls - could become empty in the coming years.
"Over time, with an improved economy, Americans will buy again, and malls will thrive again. It's just not going to be in the next two or three years," said Miller, whose forecast, published last month by the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, predicts a bottoming out next year, with floundering to continue at least into 2010.
In the meantime, consumers can expect more sales and closings. But problems with major chains are unlikely to dramatically alter the suburban shopping experience, predicted Virginia Postrel, an author and blogger who writes the Culture and Commerce column for the Atlantic magazine, including a 2006 piece, "In Praise of Chain Stores."
"I really don't think Circuit City going out of business has an impact on anybody's life as a consumer, as opposed to as an employee or supplier," said Postrel, who has praised chains for making more choices available in more places, at better prices, while challenging "cosmopolites" who equate a sense of place with locally owned businesses, instead of terrain, weather, and culture. "I can't think of any retailer that's gone out of business recently where I thought, 'Oh, that's really bad. People won't be able to get X.' "
At the Newton Tweeter, Tom de la Cruz, 27, said he will soon be looking for work for the first time since 2001.
Without the store, consumers will lose the personal service and expertise from the retailer that once promoted "a boatload of know-how," he said, but they can still buy flat-screen TVs from "
"Everything we have is a luxury item," de la Cruz said. "No one needs a 52-inch TV."
Nearby, a middle-aged man who gave his name only as Yuri browsed the final-sale items but left without buying - yet.
"They're not giving it away," the man said, outside the store.
"The end of the world is not coming," he added, climbing into a Volvo. "But things will be tight for a while." 