When news came last month that Radio Shack would soon close or sell all of its stores as it went out of business, our research team did what it always does when a retailer fails. It identified each retail center where the company would soon close, mapped the locations, created a spreadsheet and updated Weitzman/Cencor’s retail database of more than 1,400 centers in North Texas.
Radio Shack was a retailer that did not have a large footprint, with most of the stores no larger than 2,500 square feet. Even with so many locations in North Texas about to close, the total square footage represented a fraction of a fraction of a percentage point of vacancy for Dallas/Fort Worth’s 190 million square feet of retail space.
But Radio Shack was so much more than just another blip on the vacancy screen. Almost everyone has a Radio Shack story. It was the place you bought your first computer or, more recently, your first drone. It was the place that rescued you when you found yourself on vacation in an unfamiliar town and a fuse in your GPS charger failed.
Our property management arm, Cencor Realty Services, manages Golden Triangle Mall in Denton. The Radio Shack store at Golden Triangle had been a loyal tenant since the 1980s, a steady presence in a retailing world that sees concepts come and go with each new shift in trends or competition.
So no, Radio Shack wasn’t just another vacancy. The mall’s manager, Matt Ludemann, realized the removal of the retailer’s sign from its vacant storefront offered an opportunity to say goodbye. The sign removal team was instructed to take down only the “R” and the “ack” from the storefront. The resulting “Adios” became an impromptu tribute that allowed the entire Golden Triangle Mall team to say goodbye in a very public way.
How public was soon to be seen. The mall’s asset manager, Jim Greenfield, sent me a digital copy of the photo, and I posted it to our Twitter and other social media. Within literally minutes, I received dozens of likes and favorites and shares and retweets. A few minutes after that, an editor in Fort Worth asked for permission to use the image. He saw it as a succinct way to memorialize the Fort Worth-based institution. He let me know later that the photo generated exceptionally high interest from his readers.
The “ADIOS” photo would later run in Dallas newspapers and on social media. It has shown up on numerous pages, shared by people as diverse as a PR specialist in Houston and the former chairman of the West Dallas Chamber of Commerce. A tech executive in Austin thanked us for the image, saying it helped sum up so many great memories he has of Radio Shack.
Radio Shack reminded our team of how important, and how personal, retail is to so many people. Those vacancies we track are so much more than that: they are a remnant of an idea that once worked, and now doesn’t; of a customer’s memories of a favorite place to shop or to dine or to get their hair cut. And the best thing about retail? Those Radio Shack spaces will soon welcome new concepts, and people will find new favorite places. That’s the way retail is. We pause to say goodbye to an old friend and then welcome a new one.
Ian Pierce is director of corporate communications for Weitzman/Cencor. Contact him at [email protected].
