Just had an out-of-town guest. Left to himself for a day, this is what he did (excerpt from text message conversation):
- Me: Go anywhere today?
- Guest: Center City
- Me: Do anything fun or otherwise?
- Guest: Looked around the mall
- Me: What mall?
- Guest: The one on Market St
- Me: Did you like it?
- Guest: It's cool, pretty big.
So, there you have it. The Gallery is "cool" and "pretty big"
Now stop bitching about it all the time.
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Just had an out-of-town guest. Left to himself for a day, this is what he did (excerpt from text message conversation):
- Me: Go anywhere today?
- Guest: Center City
- Me: Do anything fun or otherwise?
- Guest: Looked around the mall
- Me: What mall?
- Guest: The one on Market St
- Me: Did you like it?
- Guest: It's cool, pretty big.
So, there you have it. The Gallery is "cool" and "pretty big"
It's the exterior of it that I dislike more, actually. I hate the blank nothingness of its Market Street facade. The mall itself is really not that bad.
My sister in law, brother in law and two nephews (13 & 9) stayed at the Marriott on Market over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. When it was raining last Wednesday they went to the Gallery to walk around. They had no complaints about the place even bought all kinds of stuff. They are from the Lancaster, PA area not used to the city at all. They ended up at the Gallery because they were afraid to go to far from their hotel before I met up with them Wednesday evening.
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Used to be DLS now I'm Elfreth's "Alley"
It's also the 20th biggest at about 2 million sq ft big. The who's who of upscale retail is in that mall. And it's got a 15-screen AMC theater as well.
So I guess I'm a bit spoiled when it comes to really great shopping mall. But whenever I've walked thru the Gallery, it's looked a bit dingy and all, but it's okay, gets the job done regards to your basic shopping. The design and interaction with the street is another topic, but the location can't be beat, right in Center City and on so much mass transit.
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"If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that it is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact is how cities did grow great...Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."
I believe the Gallery's is one of PREIT's better performing mall properties. I heard that in the Philadelphia area, the Gallery has the third highest rent per square foot behind only KOP and the Cherry Hill Mall. That being said I don't know how many mall properties PREIT owns...
But that doesn't mean PREIT can't do something about it...
In case anybody has noticed, the commercial real estate market is busy imploding right now and the banking system is busy trying to build up loss reserves to cover the avalanche of defaulters washing ashore.
So my guess is PREIT has other things to worry about right now.
In case anybody has noticed, the commercial real estate market is busy imploding right now and the banking system is busy trying to build up loss reserves to cover the avalanche of defaulters washing ashore.
So my guess is PREIT has other things to worry about right now.
Seriously.
PREIT is a mess right now; their stock is down about 90% since it's high just over two years ago. Unlike the broader market, PREIT has not recovered and is still sitting just off it's lows.
They are scrambling to deal with tenants going bankrupt and an inability to refinance their short-term loans.
I imagine the last thing on their list of priorities is sprucing up one of their crappier properties that sits in a relative ghetto and caters to low-rent tenants.
I remember that, and it wasn't a really wise financial move for them to re-do that mall, since it's swallowed by KOP, and from what I hear, it's still a joke compared to KOP---it's shoppers still consist of only locals who don't want to fight Route 202.
They could have spent all that capital decking Cherry Hill Mall, which still has moon craters in the parking lot and looks as sh*tty on the outside as Granite Run Mall, and it's only partly renovated on the inside. Because PREIT has done such a piss-poor job with Cherry Hill, they've allowed strip-mall developers in Marlton, NJ to swallow some of their retail business.
The Marlton area doesn't have much of a population, but it sure is nice to go up there. They got everything Cherry Hill has as far as retail is concerned and it's a pretty easy drive for 100% of the peeps in NE Philadelphia to get to and all of South Jersey. I shop there quite often and love it.
1) Is missing a sorely needed anchor in the empty Strawbridge and Clothier space
4) can't even support a Gap and
QUOTE]
1) Agreed, agreed, agreed.
4) There's a big Gap on Walnut, a Gap on Penn's campus, and a Gap Outlet on Chestnut. I don't think anyone's missing out on one not being at the Gallery.
The Gallery isn't as bad as you people say it is
