With mall vacancies at a 10-year high, churches are moving in to fill the space.
Mall vacancies are at a 10-year high, forcing mall owners to consider nontraditional tenants such as churches.
Over the past year, large churches have moved into the Gateway Mall, the Vancouver Mall and the Three Rivers Mall at Kelso/Longview.
Churches can be an ace in the hole for mall managers who want to maintain a lively atmosphere for shoppers.
“Churches will take a side space. They’ll take a location that is difficult to lease in a center — on an end or in an area that has a history of being difficult to lease,” said Ron Glover, the former general manager of Gateway Mall.
“We could either have it empty or have somebody in there paying rent,” [Vance Lile, the operations supervisor of Three Rivers Mall] said. “We pay $2,000 a month just for the electricity bill for an empty space — versus somebody being in there and paying $50,000 a year.”
Read more at The Register-Guard.
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