NEW photos have revealed the no man’s land that a New York City mall has become after dozens of stores shut their doors over increasing theft.
Fulton Center is a conveniently located travel and retail hub that opened in late 2014, linking Fulton Street and Broadway in lower Manhattan.
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Although the NYC retail center was celebrated by its ideators as a way to rehabilitate the busy area, the mall has fallen into disuse as several stores have ended their leases there.
Eery photos of the empty mall show a handful of people walking around stores with no customers or even many employees.
When compared with images of the shopping center from when it just opened a decade earlier, the lack of people is shocking.
The mall owner, retail operator Westfield, has attempted to end their twenty-year lease on the property — ten years early.
But as an important subway hub for the community, the Metropolitan Transport Authority sued the mall owner — retail operator Westfield — for trying to end their contract early.
Westfield representatives cited the soaring crime rate in the area and quality of life concerns for workers as the primary reasons for wanting to cut their agreement short.
“The rate of subtenant vacancies is at an all-time high,” they said in a legal filing.
“Few businesses want to open and operate a store where their employees and customers regularly would experience theft, property damage, bodily harm, or threats.”
Residents said that many homeless encampments also regularly congregate outside the building.
“The real problem is homelessness here, you can just look out the window and see people roaming around, it probably lessened because it’s getting nicer outside but during the winter months, it’s a lot,” said Nia Moore, who works at Birch Coffee inside the mall.
CRIME SKYROCKETS
Retail theft is estimated to have resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in losses for retailers across the country last year, a cut that has increased for many stores in recent years.
New York City recently reported an increase of 4% in losses due to “shrinkage” — the industry term for product loss which includes theft — over the last year alone.
“While we are unable to comment on specific pending litigation, we have full confidence in the NYPD, which has surged officers into the subway, to ensure safety across the transit system, including at Fulton Center,” a spokesperson for the MTA said in a statement.
Many stores and shopping centers have attempted to institute new antitheft measures or relocate their stores to cut back on the problem, but loss rates have continued to rise.
ONE CITY STANDS UP TO SHOPLIFTING
Retail theft costs retailers hundreds of billions of dollars annually — and continues to rise each year, so officials in one city are trying to fight back.
City council members of Aurora, Colorado voted to heighten existing anti-theft measures in the hopes it would help protect local business owners.
Havana Business District in Aurora, Colorado, is one of the biggest targets of retail theft in the country, according to CBS News.
One business in the area, Province Car and Dog Wash, was targeted by thieves four times in the last six months and experienced almost $70,000 in damage, the outlet reported.
According to the city, there has also been an increase in “dine and dash” theft offenses, especially in this area.
The city has proposed a mandatory minimum jail sentence of three days for these type of defrauding offenses, in which the perpetrator owes $15 or more to a dining establishment.
The minimum for retail theft resulting in a penalty of a three-day jail sentence has also been lowered from $300 to $100.
The measure also increased mandatory jail time for repeat offenders.
The mandatory minimum jail sentence will be 90 days if the offender has already been convicted of retail theft before.
If they’ve been convicted at least twice for retail theft, the minimum sentence would increase to 180 days.
NEW YORKERS NOT ALONE
New York has not been the only state to see dozens of stores shutter their windows in recent months — California has also suffered from closures.
Five years ago, this place was thriving.
Tara Button
Most of the shops in the San Francisco Centre mall have already closed down, with representatives also citing rising crime rates as the culprit.
As of January 2024, the once-popular shopping center was at a 25% occupancy rate according to Westfield, who previously owned this property as well.
Westfield stopped making its loan payments on the property in 2022 and handed over ownership to lenders in mid-2023.
Sales had plummeted by $455 million in 2019 to $298 million in 2022, Retail Dive reported at the time, and company leadership saw few other options than to give up the property.
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Tara Button, a shopper wandering the empty halls of the San Francisco Centre with her daughter, told MailOnline how the mall had changed since her last visit in 2019.
“Five years ago, this place was thriving,” she said.
“It’s a bit of a shock, it’s very sad.”
More and more stores are pulling out of the quiet shopping center every day.
The cosmetics stores L’Occitane and Sephora announced earlier this month that they would close their stores in the San Francisco mall soon, as first reported by the San Francisco Business Times.
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