RadioShack no longer serves an important role in most American consumers’ everyday lives. Yet one group will miss the chain quite a bit: mall developers, who will need to find replacement tenants for about 2,000 current Shacks that are expected to close.
While the bankruptcy hasn’t been announced or finalized yet. Shoppers and mall owners are only seeing bits of news attributed to people familiar with the negotiations who report that the most likely outcome is that most of the chain will close, with about half of its store remaining open as co-branded Radio Shack stores and Sprint mobile phone shops. Amazon was apparently part of these negotiations, as were the new owners of massage chair vendors Brookstone.
No matter who ends up bidding on remaining stores, there will still be thousands of locations that will close, and mall owners are preparing for when that happens. One mall owner in Florida has already listed the Radio Shack location even before the company has announced whether it will stay open or not. “It will take me four to six months of rent lost to get a tenant in there,” he explained to the Wall Street Journal.
Worse still is that Radio Shack already is delaying rent payments on some of its stores, which means that mall owners could miss out on even more income.
RadioShack Store Closings to Jolt Some Developers [Wall Street Journal]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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