Quote Originally Posted by dover627 View Post
Agree 100%. The question is, can you convince a retailer to analyze demographics on a regional basis to capture the "destination shopper" buying power. Recognizing that the big boys have pretty stringent requirements for income, population, etc., is there a way to get around that?
Hudson's was proof, a major retailer downtown can make it a destination... even before it closed, there were at least people on merchant's row on a daily basis. The problem with Hudson's was that their sales had dropped significantly and they still had the high overhead associated with that massive building, and the dropping sales just didn't support it anymore.

Now to expect a ton of people to come from the north is not realistic, at first anyway, but if they could attract people from the south and west of town, it could be feasible... with a little bit of time and advertising, other stores will follow, say a Macy's, I really believe, from an economic standpoint, it could work solely from the point that a retailer like that would make it a destination. These are the types of retailers that make malls survive, so using that logic they could make it work... they would have to advertise it though.