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An empty mall

Dave Daniels posts photos of an almost completely empty Cambridgeside Galleria the Saturday after Thanksgiving:

... It was totally DEAD in there. Totally. Dead. We were in there wandering around for almost an hour before we saw another person in there, and that included some of the staff at a few stores. ...

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Last Saturday (12/13) at the Target/Best Buy (Watertown Mall), every single space in the large parking lot was taken -- along with several cars idling in every single aisle. I left and came back in the evening when I could find parking.

Conclusion: people aren't shopping so much at the upscale stores (CambridgeSide Galleria), but are swarming to the downscale stores (Target). Matches Adam's earlier observation of the Natick Mall... er, Natick Collection of Empty High-End Stores.

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I wonder what time of day these pics were taken. If you notice on the ground floor one of the carts is closed up. The doors to the stores were open.

I was in the galleria last monday morning and the mall was very busy.

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Maybe so, but I agree about the Saturday after Thanksgiving: I went to the Target in Framingham and had the whole store to myself.

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Took about 20 mins to find a parking spot at the Natick Collection last Saturday. Mall was absolutely packed, although foot traffic was lighter in some, but not all, of the new, high-end stores.

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Natick mall was suitably full on Monday. Not packed, but not bad for a weekday. Very comfortable.

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Here's Adam's photo / description of the Natick Mall before Thanksgiving.

Where's a Globe reporter when we need a story to be written based on anecdotal evidence?

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I have little doubt that people are (justifiably) spending less this year. I know I sure am spending a lot less than I ever have before. But this kind of histrionic doom and gloom cheerleading is neither accurate nor beneficial; I've been to plenty of malls (or just out in the city shopping) during the Christmas season and have seen tons of people shopping. Are they spending as much? Probably not, but that doesn't mean the entire Cambridgeside Galleria is about to fail.

And again, as my own blog documents, there's not really anything particularly joyful about a major mall failing, either.

There's still a ton of *local* people who work in and manage these stores. Local people who could very well lose their jobs soon, and even if not, they're probably terrified of it about now. I don't understand why it's so fun to cheerlead the failure of a chain store while we would never do such a thing for a local store. I'm all for shopping local--I worked for Newbury Comics for years--but this is still a pretty shallow viewpoint, I think.

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It's pretty easy to get into Cambridgeside before anything is open. The garage opens earlier than the mall and the stairs aren't closed off (or are opened, not sure) at least an hour before anything opens.

When the iPhone was causing lengthy lines at Apple stores, there would be nobody in the entire mall except for the 30 people (and growing) outside of the Apple store and the store employees.

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MY WIFE calls it the Shooting Galleria.

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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