the future of semi-public space in america

so I posted this in the borders thread: http://www.grist.org/#/urbanism/2011-07-25-the-importance-of-sustainable-third-places-in-the-city and the subject's been on my mind lately. maybe it's just interesting to me, I dunno. basically borders closing has bummed me out for entirely-non-book reasons. in my hometown there were two borders, the first was an enormous 4 story building that essentially served as the geographic and commercial heart of downtown. another was in a suburban big-box strip mall - the only option for public space in the sprawlyish area. both served purposes that can't be replicated. the book (and music) stores they replaced generally aren't coming back. starbucks lives on, as do many coffee shops. it seems...reasonable? to guess that coffee shops of some sort will exist 30 years from now. the institution has grown over the last decades, my immigrant dad prob wouldn't have suggested hanging out in a coffeshop in the pre-starbucks era, loves going today. so coffee shops and bars aren't going anywhere. what else? would we even need semi-public space if we had more decent public space?

in the future I will be downloading my coffee

I'm fascinated by how Borders and Barnes & Noble took over the type of space I had at the library as a kid--this struck me especially being at a B&N in Rockford, Illinois, on a Friday night and seeing kids running around, teenagers hanging out, adults reading stuff for self-education.

What I find most interesting now is that companies that sell stuff that has no sensory aesthetic--banks, insurance companies--are moving in to take the place of what Borders had. State Farm Insurance and ING Bank are opening semi-public hangout/coffee/work/meet/learn spaces.

Does it seem like a bad idea to allow private companies to provide all that space for public use and/or events because then they sort of control/regulate the public uses, or am I just being alarmist?

at the very least i find it pretty gross

libraries actually seem like more of public space than ever, as they're transitioning from 'place to check out books' to 'place to use computers and wifi, take classes, check out books/music/DVDs. but there's definitely a class aspect to it...you generally do not see upper-middle class people just hanging out in the public library. xp

I don't really think "allow" is the right term, it just seems like more people are choosing to flock to the semi-public spaces provided by these private companies. Its not as if public libraries are gone just yet, but they simply aren't attracting people like they used to. I mean, as much as I love having hundreds of free private reading spots to choose from when I go to my local library, I'm constantly depressed by how empty it is.

but it's not like these companies are privatizing anything, laurel - they're just filling the public space gap that exists regardless, for reasons beyond their control.

Nono, yes, I see that. But y'know we don't really value public space in our planning and spending here, so if we just kept using what corporations give us, could that turn interesting at some point? Maybe only in science fiction.

I've taken my four-year-old daughter to both B&N and the public library. I think we much preferred the library. The kids section was bigger. She could run around and touch the books while at B&N, I'm constantly feeling that "you rip it, you buy it" rule. We sat down in some rocking chairs and I read her a couple of books she found. The library is in its own building downtown, so no strip mall complications. And there's this satisfaction of hanging out there, an ownership that comes from having paid my taxes and free from any weak obligation to buy anything otherwise I'm loitering.

yeah i can't wait to hang with friends at the bank
xps

bank party tonight!

yeeeaaaah!
i srsly wonder what would happen if banks and etc really did become appealing as hang-out zones to the masses...

the busiest libraries, in my experience, are those in a busy downtown core or a busy mall - as in, they're part of a broader destination. whereas it seems that Borders and B&N in most cases (outside of big cities) are in strip malls, so they become a destination in themselves? just thinking abt this

citibank ATMs are now pretty high-tech, I very rarely need to interact w/ a human. so banks should just be 40 ATMs + one DJ.

What about taverns, barber shops and McDonalds?

there's also the appeal of being a consumer rather than a citizen. this is the real historical change in identity/self-perception that is also at the core of this issue, imo.

lolll 40ATMS+1DJ

So in a big bookstore chain, where you can buy not only books but music and movies and coffee and food and toys and yoga mats, there's broad consumer appeal, and thus a sense of inclusion - you the consumer belong there, in this space, which you do not own but is there for you anyway; in this way, the means lose importance to the ends.

And then we have public space, which the citizen does in fact own (via living in a municipality with services, paying taxes, etc), but which in most cases appears to have a limit to its uses - it seems more controlled (policed), with both too few entertainment and leisure choices, as they are ultimately made by public officials, and at the same time too many, as the choice is now with us, here in the panopticon.

one nice thing is how relatively cheap and easy it is to get wifi for a public-public space. I think it can add a lot of value to underutilized spaces.

I will admit that the one thing missing from my porn perusal is a nearby ultimate frisbee game

And theoretically, true public space doesn't make people feel rich or poor, as it is for everyone, from homeless to independently wealthy dogwalker
I guess i'm thinking a lot about parks in this case.
Indoor public space though? With the freedom of a park? Far too few spaces like this - community centres, the foyers of libraries and museums, mall walkways? I think this is part of why winter in Montreal can be so damn brutal and why a lot people take up winter sports.

xp
free and reliable wifi does totally work! in the few public spaces it's available...

In what sense are you using "mall"? Shopping malls are semi-public space, aren't they?

do libraries count as "semi-public" or just regular ol "public"? they are great btw, though budget cuts worry me

i would like more outdoor cafes for old men to sit at and play checkers. ideally they serve both espresso and alcohol as well as sandwiches and look out over a gorgeous 16th-century palazzo

yes, malls are semi-public, that's true even if their common spaces are often used like indoor parks, shouldn't really be in that list
i think libraries are considered full-on public spaces

the future of libraries:

http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/283013_10150264014439704_540944703_7305326_7907444_n.jpg

i wish we could in north america sometimes go back to the old definition of mall
xp
haha so many confused senior citizens

I wonder how many kids get to the national mall and ask where the stores are

I guess enclosed malls count as semi-public but they exist in their own world. a large mall is more its own city than a semi-public spot within a city. usually.

i remember reading someone propose we take that all the way and add housing to them

what about those faux-public space malls, that are designed to look like old-fashioned main streets with public squares that are privately owned, and in the case of Emeryville, CA's Bay Street is right by the freeway.

god that area is horrible

i think it was modeled after San Jose's Santana Row, which also includes housing.

when I go to my local library, I'm constantly depressed by how empty it is.

my local library is always packed, even despite the creepy librarian dude

(not ned)

In Deptford there's a library/swimming pool which is pretty amazing imo

how does that even work

I would expect every book has gone fat

whoa that is like out of my childhood dreams

Well, you walk in, and there's a swimming pool to one side and a smallish library to the other. I mean, the idea is kind of cool in theory. I don't think they'd appreciate people taking out books and bringing them into the pool.

The commodification of public space as an area for commerce, or even the use of commercial space as public space really messes with me. The fringe urban/suburban culture of North America seems so shopping mall-centric and that just gets under my skin. Instead of providing public places in our cities, we've let it get eaten by property holding companies that are only interested in keeping the space up to par if they're able to rent retail space. I feel like there's some connection here with the cities that now zone new residential development in such a away that new housing almost has to belong to a homeowner's association. I've heard that this is a big thing in Texas, in that cities can force the subdivision to handle its own garbage collection and sewage systems. It's like people are getting smaller government by overpaying for less effective services.

That's kind of the end game, isn't it? Smaller government, fewer actual public spaces, and public space that is fragmented and suffers for it. I kind of feel like we've bottomed out on this and things are getting better now, right?

have you ever read Jennifer Government

Hah, I can't remember if I finished it, but yes.

Well, you walk in, and there's a swimming pool to one side and a smallish library to the other. I mean, the idea is kind of cool in theory. I don't think they'd appreciate people taking out books and bringing them into the pool.

― salsa shark, Wednesday, July 27, 2011 2:20 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

^^^ Outstanding post/display name combo

i wish we could in north america sometimes go back to the old definition of mall

Sadly at first I thought, "What, with like a Sam Goody's or Adladdin's Castle?"

a few years ago I took a tour of the boston bay w/ one of the founders of save the bay, and he talked a lot about how private companies can contribute to transforming public spaces in a positive way, and about how non-privatization can create sterile public spaces (those govt-maintained tomb-like facilities)

so boston bay got "saved" via bringing private interests into it, when there was money and an audience people cared about salvaging the nature aspect

http://www.savetheharbor.org/index.php/about-shsb

About Save the Harbor/Save the Bay

Save the Harbor/Save the Bay’s mission is to restore and protect the harbor and the bay, and to reconnect Bostonians from every neighborhood, regional residents and visitors alike, so that we can all enjoy the benefits of the enormous public and private investment in our revitalized harbor and waterfront.

We are not your “typical” environmental organization, and we don’t simply turn to government to solve every problem. Though we understand that government can make a difference, we know it can’t do everything. We thrive on our entrepreneurial spirit, and we are particularly proud of our track record of leveraging public dollars with foundation funds, private donations, and corporate support.

Working together, we have expanded our focus beyond clean water to include how to best realize the recreational, cultural, and economic potential of investment in our harbor and waterfront. The most important resource that we can bring to the harbor is people. We develop and implement strategies that make the harbor and waterfront an exciting and compelling destination for everyone. We are looking at models in other world-class waterfront cities to help us develop events, programs and destinations here in Boston.

his point was "I want a starbucks on boston bay, and so do you"

man i can not understand wanting to hang out in a borders at all

i have a lot to say about this topic but instead i'll just direct you to the work of william h. whyte.

the "social life of small urban spaces" video used to be on youtube but it was pulled. this is a start:

http://vimeo.com/6821934

I'm just trolling myself, never mind me

its an interesting qn, at least to me or at least to me and phrased slightly differently

yeah I should drop the specifically Western part but o/w I do care about that question, i.e. Nietzsche was right

I don't think nietzsche was an economist

No one is saying "all poor people are drug addicts" or "most poor people have no idea how to spend money," but the fact is that there are significant numbers of poor people who do in fact neglect their own and/or their kids basic needs due to drugs, mental health issues or w/e -- I don't want to even speculate further on the causes but it is a very real phenomenon.

right, which is why we need drastic policy changes to deal w/ it. food stamps and section 8 don't guarantee that mentally ill people and drug addicts are treated by doctors etc. etc... welfare programs shouldn't be the method through which we solve those problems. gov't welfare should be the method through which we solve the problem of poverty. and a cheaper, less bureaucratic, more efficient way to fight poverty is to...give people money. but even american left-wing people have sorta an ingrained knee-jerk reaction to the concept.

giving ppl money usually just makes the items everyone wants more expensive, partic with reference to rent assistance

well that's true for every object in the world and it's not always a bad thing. again I don't think there's anything wrong w/ people being priced out of certain neighborhoods, I think there's something wrong w/ the fact that what those neighborhoods offer (reliably public transit, density, etc.) are v. limited due to generations of poor policy-making.

reliable*

that's to say if giving poor people in brooklyn more money helps raise rents in brooklyn, there's nothing wrong w/ that in itself, it just highlights the need for building more brooklyns + makes it more profitable to do so

a cheaper, less bureaucratic, more efficient way to fight poverty is to...give people money.

That works for a lot of things, which is why I support EITC as one example of an effective, efficient way to give people money.

But the market isn't always the most effective way to guarantee services, especially to lower income people. Health services, mental health services, daycare, housing--all of these services are challenges for poor people, and in many cases they're becoming more out of reach for middle income people as well, as they become more expensive and unevenly distributed.

I don't think there's anything wrong w/ people being priced out of certain neighborhoods, I think there's something wrong w/ the fact that what those neighborhoods offer (reliably public transit, density, etc.) are v. limited due to generations of poor policy-making.

Rent control has a lot of drawbacks. Pretty much all economists agreed that rent ceilings reduced the amount of available rental space. Economists also pretty much universally agreed that rent control was actually bad for the lower and middle classes. In 1995 Boston deregulated. The positive effect: more rental spaces were created and landlords invested more in their properties and neighborhoods. The affluent flocked to the city.

The downside was that rent prices increased by 75% in Boston between 1995 and 1999. Deregulation meant that poor people were either spending most of their pay on rent, or they were moving out of the city. Middle class people also felt the squeeze. Fortunately, there is public transit so poor people can still bus into the city to pick up garbage and clean dishes and such.

again all of that is pretty meaningless compared to distorting effects of zoning + lack of investment in public transit

ie people were priced out of boston because there isn't very much boston because they legally prevent there from being very much boston

this may be 101 or w/e but it's never made any sense to me to consider something a universal right while allowing , for the most part, market control (am aware that states may be different wrt housing 'rights'). what you get with that attitude over here is inflated demand (social housing lists are far in excess of what they need to be ime), bloated rent support schemes, higher rents and boom/bust cycles in housing.

What little i know of the german (european in general?) housing model seems to make a lot more sense, stability-wise.

and, kind of tying in with iatee's wider point, i figure it's easier to plan infrastructural improvement such as he's discussing when you do what you can to take the heat out of the housing market and the periodical frenzy that investment & speculation brings

but food's also a universal right that's controlled by the market, which is why it gets subsidized in a similar manner. social housing was pretty poorly done basically everywhere in the 20th century, including much of europe (see: france) and I don't think there's any reason why the gov't would be *better* at building housing, ya know?

i'm not arguing for regulation of staple foods either, tbf, was trying to keep it to housing tbh

Maybe i'm arguing communism controlling a minimum standard of living, with the option of increasingly consumptive capitalism as wealth increases i dunno.

Govt housing, over here & these days, meets all minimum standards wrt energy efficiency, outside space, planning requirements, etc- which is a lot more than can be said for a high % (majority? maybe) of high-intensity developments built for profit.

and, tbf, social ~everything~ has been done pretty badly throughout p much all of human history, no?

damn, not arguing for *market* regulation of staple foods, either

I am currently in the 4th largest mall in he midwest. Eating salad.

I mean if high-intensity developments don't meet legal codes, there should be legal action. I don't think 'the gov't follows the laws, private industry doesn't' is a good argument for putting the gov't in charge of housing.

social ~everything~ is kinda a big category but I'd say social medicine has done a pretty good job?

i can't figure out do they cancel each other out selon iatee

as long as he walked to the mall and he is using his hands as the salad container and all the lettuce was grown within the mall I think he's okay

back to the homeless thing again

xxxpost who's got social medicine?

You're right, really my point there probably suggests that, if anything, housing standard enforcement should probably be outsourced to private sector.

Sigh.

europe! most of the developed world. and it's much more cost-efficient, etc. etc. not perfect I know but if you argue w/ this I am gonna make you go to a doctor here.

basically there's an inherent market failure w/i health care and giving people more money isn't gonna solve it (/hasn't) so the gov't comes in. same thing w/ education. whereas there's not an inherent market failure in housing construction, most of the problems are due to laws and poor infrastructure/land-use decisions. (but even w/ better policy there will be poor people, so give them money so they are less poor.)

i keep forgetting about europe since they kicked us out huh

You'll forgive my overlooking some of these things, most of these areas here are either rapidly collapsing (housing) or becoming less 'european' (health, education) by the day

yeah if there is anyone who I will forgive for turning into a communist it's an irish person in 2012

fuck that, what little i can grab on my daily scavenge is staying mine.

how are you defining 'poor', btw? Against a cpi of necessities, against a % of mean household income, flat dollar count? Giving money eases short-term problems but seems to me that medium-to-long term controlling the price/supply of the desired good is the efficient way to approach it?

that's a good question and really depends on what we think our end goal is. - getting people past a certain bar of poverty or creating a society w/ more overall equality. I think there are good social and economics arguments for the 2nd, so I'd prob go w/ mean.

I think controlling of price/supply is almost always the inefficient way of solving a problem, which is why it's better to frame the current housing market as one that almost-inherently has very controlled price/supplies (due to zoning, car-based infrastructure decisions). the inflated demand for social housing you mentioned earlier is a good example of the effects that come w/ simply controlling a price.

What about providing services? Sometimes the government is better at supplying services.

The market is ALWAYS efficient. I mean, in terms of the market, sometimes it's efficient when people starve to death. Or sometimes genocide is efficient.

yeah if there is anyone who I will forgive for turning into a communist it's an irish person in 2012

Why? Do you believe in market failure? Same shit happened in America. We just didn't have a tiger brand because we were supposed to be OG.

sure I believe in market failure, irish people just got fucked worse than we did to the extent that crazy mobs w/ pitchforks would have been a p rational response

and I agree that sometimes the gov't is better at supplying services, it's just prob not better at building houses

our housing market wasn't allowed to fail, they just offered the country as further collateral

ladies and gentlemen, Southridge Mall food court:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-wyJTsI3m4Kk/Tzg0cV5R2cI/AAAAAAAAAOo/vRj2rAXczks/s640/IMG014.jpg

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-FNTP4NqCf5Q/Tzg0bVf6KFI/AAAAAAAAAOg/Woyb-xi26-s/s640/IMG013.jpg

it'll be a nice town square when the mall is converted into apartments

jk it'll be a crackhouse prolly

I had this childhood dream of converting an old mall into a giant insane playground. I went to The City Museum in St. Louis a couple years ago and was all like THIS.

Store outside the windows in the second pic is a Target that's attached to the mall.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-business/post/in-white-flint-the-mall-is-being-turned-into-a-town/2011/11/17/gIQAgAJYUN_blog.html

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/04/big-box-stores-linked-presence-hate-groups/1745/

It's true, you hardly ever bond with your neighbors over the fact you're shopping at Wal-Mart.

Then again, I ran into my next door neighbors at Target, so I am the outlier.

that is a REALLY questionable connection to draw

the part about the "anonymous social experience" I mean. I don't think thriving small town main streets did anything to prevent Klan chapters in the pre-Civil Rights Act era that were much larger than any "hate groups" today.

I don't think the correlation is necessarily economic issues and the disruption of Wal-Mart as much as it is other cultural changes that have happened in parallel.

fwiw, towns without Wal-Mart don't have hate groups because there aren't enough people living there to form one. They probably commute to the nearest larger town... which would have a Wal-Mart.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/07/the-newsonomics-of-amazon-vs-main-street/

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/public-spaces/

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/05/google_maps_personalization_will_hurt_public_space_and_engagement.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/21/business/coronavirus-department-stores-neiman-marcus.html

Could some kind soul c&p this?

American department stores, once all-powerful shopping meccas that anchored malls and Main Streets across the country, have been dealt blow after blow in the past decade. J.C. Penney and Sears were upended by hedge funds. Macy’s has been closing stores and cutting corporate staff. Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy last year.

But nothing compares to the shock the weakened industry has taken from the coronavirus pandemic. The sales of clothing and accessories fell by more than half in March, a trend that is expected to only get worse in April. The entire executive team at Lord & Taylor was let go this month. Nordstrom has canceled orders and put off paying its vendors. The Neiman Marcus Group, the most glittering of the American department store chains, is expected to declare bankruptcy in the coming days, the first major retailer felled during the current crisis.

It is not likely to be the last.

“The department stores, which have been failing slowly for a very long time, really don’t get over this,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Business School. “The genre is toast, and looking at the other side of this, there are very few who are likely to survive.”

At a time when retailers should be putting in orders for the all-important holiday shopping season, stores are furloughing tens of thousands of corporate and store employees, hoarding cash and desperately planning how to survive this crisis. The specter of mass default is being discussed not just behind closed doors but in analysts’ future models. Whether or not that happens, no one doubts that the upheaval caused by the pandemic will permanently alter both the retail landscape and the relationships of brands with the stores that sell them.

At the very least, there is expected to be an enormous reduction in the amount of stores in each chain, which once sprawled across the American continent like a pack of many-headed hydras.

Department store chains account for about 30 percent of the total mall square footage in the United States, with 10 percent of that coming from Sears and J.C. Penney, according to a January report from Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm. Even before the pandemic, the firm expected about half of mall-based department stores to close in the next five years.

Even as they have worked to transform themselves for e-commerce with apps, websites and in-store exchanges, the outbreak has laid bare how dependent the department stores have remained on their physical outposts. Macy’s said on March 30 that after closing its stores for nearly two weeks, it had lost the majority of its sales.

The Commerce Department’s retail sales report for March, released last week, was disastrous. Overall retail sales numbers for this month are expected to be even worse, given that some stores were open for at least part of March.

Retailers have begun taking extreme measures to try to survive. Le Tote, a subscription clothing company that acquired Lord & Taylor last year from Hudson’s Bay, said in a memo on April 2 that the chain’s entire executive team, including the chief executive, would be let go immediately. It also suspended payments of goods to vendors for at least 90 days, citing “immense pressure on our liquidity position.”

Macy’s, which also owns Bloomingdale’s, extended payment for goods and services to 120 days from 60 days and, according to Reuters, has hired bankers from Lazard to explore new financing. Jeff Gennette, the chief executive, is forgoing any compensation for the duration of the crisis. The company was dropped from the S&P 500 last month based on its valuation.

J.C. Penney has hired Lazard, the law firm Kirkland & Ellis and the consultancy AlixPartners to explore restructuring options, according to two people familiar with the matter, and confirmed that it skipped an interest payment on its debt last week. It is expected to make a decision on what to do, including potentially filing for bankruptcy, within a few weeks, one of the people said.

But none of them were in as immediate dire straits as Neiman Marcus, which has both an enormous debt burden — about $4.8 billion, thanks in part to a leveraged buyout in 2013 by the owners Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board — and a raft of expensive rents in the most high-profile shopping destinations, signed during boom times.

In late March, Neiman stopped accepting new merchandise and furloughed a large portion of its approximately 14,000 employees as the rumors of bankruptcy began to swirl. Its chief executive, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, announced that he was waiving his salary for April. The brand denied to vendors and its own employees at its sister brand Bergdorf Goodman that it was engaging advisers to explore a bankruptcy filing, but on April 14, S&P downgraded Neiman’s credit rating. Last week, the retailer did not make an interest payment that was due on April 15, angering bondholders and further fueling suspicions that a bankruptcy filing was imminent. A spokesperson for Neiman Marcus declined to comment.

Even Nordstrom, widely considered the healthiest department store, said this month that it could be facing a “distressed” situation if its physical locations closed to customers for “an extended period of time.” Erik and Pete Nordstrom, chief executive and chief brand officer, are both receiving no base salary for at least six months. The chain has stunned some vendors with last-minute cancellations via email in recent days.

Across chains, prices for new merchandise sold via e-commerce have already been slashed by 40 percent in some cases. Order cancellations for the pre-fall season — which would normally have started delivering next month — have been increasing. Some brands said shipments have even been turned away upon delivery to warehouses, and extensions of payment terms are cascading through vendors, who are then forced to negotiate with their own manufacturers, marketing agencies, fulfillment centers and landlords.

“I’ve had a showroom for over 30 years, and we have always used the word ‘partnership,’ when talking about our relationship with the department stores,” said Betsee Isenberg of the showroom 10Eleven, which represents numerous brands such as Vince and ATM. “Through 9/11, through 2008, we worked hand in hand with our retailers. This is the first time the onus has been on the brands — many of which are losing millions and millions of dollars because of the canceled orders. It is just not fair that it is survival of the fittest.” In a new report, McKinsey refers to the situation as “wholesale Darwinism.”

The resort season has been canceled entirely, and fall orders have been put on hold, raising questions about what inventory will be left if and when shops reopen and consumers return to stores.

“Nobody knows what Q4 will be like, but you have to start putting the orders in now,” Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester, said of the holiday season, normally the most lucrative time of the year for the chains. “Some people don’t even have the money to put in Q4 orders, and may have to cancel Q4 orders anyway, and it’s a mess. There’s never been this much uncertainty.”

Robert Burke, the eponymous founder of a luxury consultancy, said he expected brands to move further away from a wholesale business, focusing on direct-to-consumer and a model with department stores where they control their own space and inventory.

Shares of J.C. Penney, which has temporarily shut its more than 800 stores, closed at 23 cents on the dollar last Wednesday after the retailer said it did not make a $12 million interest payment due that day. Brooke Buchanan, a representative, said it was a “strategic decision” in order to take advantage of a 30-day grace period before it was considered in default.

Ms. Buchanan said J.C. Penney had “been engaged in discussions with its lenders since mid-2019 to evaluate options to strengthen its balance sheet, a process that has become even more important as our stores have also closed due to the pandemic.”

Cash flow for all department stores has dropped sharply. In a note on April 13, analysts at Cowen estimated four months of liquidity at Macy’s, six months at Kohl’s and seven months for J.C. Penney. Nordstrom, they predicted, could withstand store closings for 12 months.

“The nature of the mall is if you lose a big anchor like a Macy’s, you have co-tenancy issues and you have more pressure on the mall traffic, which was already a big issue,” said Oliver Chen, an analyst at Cowen. Co-tenancy clauses typically allow other tenants to demand rent reductions if certain key chains depart. Mr. Chen said that could accelerate the ongoing divide between top-tier malls and the second- or third-choice malls in certain areas.

According to a report this month from S&P Global Market Intelligence, department stores were more likely than any other consumer industry to default on their debt in the next year. It estimated the probability at 42 percent.

In its April 2 memo, the management of Le Tote and Lord & Taylor said only “key employees” were being retained to preserve the business. A representative for Lord & Taylor and Le Tote declined to comment or disclose the number of employees who were furloughed and laid off.

“It appears to be a virtual certainty that Lord & Taylor will liquidate its business in the near future, either in or out of bankruptcy,” said James Van Horn, a partner at Barnes & Thornburg and a specialist in retail bankruptcy. “They were already one of the most challenged department stores prior to the coronavirus pandemic, and when the majority of the management team is leaving, the vast majority of employees are laid off and a minority of employees furloughed, there does not seem to be any other strategy but to liquidate the inventory.”

Mr. Van Horn said he expected that other chains might strategically employ Chapter 11 reorganizations to legally shed stores, lightening their rent burden.

“It will likely be a domino that falls,” he said. “Whether it is first or 10th, we don’t know.”

Thanks!