The Tangerine Latrine's Shit Show

Man, this mess is worse than even I thought it would be.  The Tangerine Latrine, the Muskrat, and their merry mob of thugs aren't interested in just taking power.  They're intent on a full-on rape and run.  They're playing this as End Game, and at the rate they're going, they may make it happen.  We're about to live Game of Oligarchs, but with climate change looming in the background, so we may end up living Fallout.  But these goons don't care because they're all convinced they're Enclave.  I hope I live long enough to see them realize there isn't enough room for all of them and start picnicking on one another.

It's our own damned fault, really.  We didn't do the heavy lifting necessary to make the system work for us, certainly not since WWII.  We didn't replace the Constitution, even though it needed replacing from the start.  We acted like Mormons, pretending the thing was divinely inspired, rather than admitting it was just an ugly compromise between slave owners masquerading as farmers and land speculators masquerading as merchants to keep all real power in the hands of white, propertied, Christian men while pretending to share it.  And we never corrected this, the result being the 1% made sure we couldn't have nice things.  The barest in civil rights.  The minimum in employment, workplace, and personal autonomy laws.  Hells, even Obamacare barely passed muster under this Constitution according to the Extreme Court.  And they cemented it all with Citizens United, which opened the money gates.

And now even our vaunted rule of law is being exposed for what colonized peoples have always known it to be: a device to protect and preserve the position and power of the 1%.

More Vacancies

And once again I am left scratching my head over local real estate management practices.  First, though, a moment of silence for the downtown Baskin-Robbins.  It's closed, and it sports a fatuous sign inviting you to the Sugarhouse location, a wholly useless alternative for anyone downtown.  All that's left for ice cream downtown is chi-chi shops with such high fat content your arteries clog just walking by and inhaling.

Anyway.  Also closed now are all but one of the Firestone service centers in the valley.  Apparently, they couldn't agree on a new master lease.  I imagine Bridgestone (Firestone's parent) was driving a pretty hard bargain, and I imagine the landlord did not want taken advantage of, but now the landlord is stuck with a bunch of vacant properties and no revenue stream to cover the expenses.  Not a good business model.  Apparently Burt Bros. is expanding into a few of them, but don't expect me to darken their door any time soon, given that they borked two of my cars on three separate occasions.

At least the landlord doesn't have to worry about a pile of similar buildings being slapped up in competition.  The hot money is now in multi-family residential.  Man, I would like to be able to follow the tax and accounting tricks that make chronic overbuilding make sense.  There must be something there.  All I know is that we have medium-rise condos and apartments popping up like mushrooms on the Olympic Peninsula.  And don't think they're taking advantage of affordable housing programs.  A $400,000 condo or $2,000/month apartment isn't affordable housing.  Makes you wonder if there are enough people who can afford all this new space.  Probably aren't.  In which case, here comes the next bubble, everyone get ready for a big POP!

Vacancy Rates

Recently saw the Q2 commercial vacancy rates for Salt Lake County, broken down as residential, office, retail, manufacturing, and warehouse.  It looked like a very rosy picture, with low vacancy rates all around.  Personally, I think they smell.  Like mackerel in the moonlight, they shine and stink.  Manufacturing and warehouse are low because they're being converted into the other areas and aren't being replaced.  Multifamily residential is low because people can't afford to buy.  As for office, there are thousands of square feet that are leased but are currently unoccupied (ostensibly because the lessee needs room for expansion, but we'll see how much of that happens) or are being used for on-site storage.  As for the retail numbers, someone is lying.  They pass neither the eyeball test nor the smell test.  Drive around the valley and look at the empty space.  Doesn't matter what kind of retail it is, the vacancy rates are high.  Anybody who thinks otherwise is living in a cave.  It's like just about every other bit of news about our "booming" economy: It only works by being highly selective with the data and then not examining the analysis very much.

A Word to Landlords

In case you simply aren't paying attention to your own business, which I submit a number of you aren't, let me break this to you: Everything is overbuilt.  Office space class A through Z, retail, office-retail, warehouse, light industrial, manufacturing, name it, there is more of it than there are folks who can afford to lease it.  So if you think your little strip mall is some special snowflake, think again.  Retail is really bad.  Anchors are going dark everywhere, and the little guys who depend on the anchors for traffic are following them into the ground.  This is not the time to jerk tenants around.

But some of you haven't gotten the memo.  There is a strip mall near where I live that has a visibility problem.  Most of the spaces in the mall can not be seen from the street.  That includes the restaurant space.  All retail depends to some extent on passing eyeballs, and restaurants die without them.  The prior restaurant in this space avoided dying by moving to the west side with lower rent, higher traffic, and much better visibility.  I don't know if the current one will make it that long.  One thing is certain: The landlord is not helping.  No extra signage or anything.  It's a recipe for high turnover, and that can't be good business.

Then there is the Reams plaza in the neighborhood (Reams doesn't own it, it just anchors it along with Rite-Aid, with Walgreen's on its own pad.).  For those keeping score, the west end has to be 60% vacant.  The east end has at least two vacancies and will soon get more.  Reason?  Lease hikes.  In this market.  At least two of the former west end tenants relocated to more reasonable space, because there is plenty of it.  At least one of the east end tenants is about to do the same.  Nonanchor space will be at 50% for the new year.  I hope they have sweet deals from the anchors, because that's all the revenue there is, but knowing Reams and the pharmacies, I doubt it.  Makes you wonder what sort of business planning goes on at the landlord's headquarters.