Quote Originally Posted by Patrick View Post
I don't know how you can say it's on the decline when it's 100% leased and has a waiting list of over 65 major national retailers and 50 local upscale retailers, with Nordstrom and Saks both interested in occupying anchor space if a new northwest wing is indeed built. The problem is that these retailers want a certain sized space, so they sometimes have to wait for other leases to open up so they can get the space they want. That's been the case with Forever 21. Yeah, there are about 3 or 4 short term leases, but that's the case in any mall across the country. They keep the space filled with short term leases until they find a long term tenant. And some of the spaces, like the old Rockport, for example, and the space occupied by "Honey's, Handbags, and More," are hard to lease due to their small size. Forever 21 has been on the waiting list forever (no pun intended), because they wanted a flagship store in that mall and had to wait for some leases to expire on existing tenants. Malls will never have 100% long term leases. Never have, never will, just because of the different sizes of spaces that open up and what a specific retailer's actual needs are.
I think it goes way beyond "Honey's, Handbags and More." That particular store isn't even listed. Here are some that are:

A Pea In The Pod
Akoo Pavilion
Apricot Lane
AT&T
Backstop, The
Bare Escentuals
Body Central
Body Shop, The
Cache
Campus Ragz
Claire's Accessories
CNS Jewelry & Watch Repair
Designs Place
Dial N Style/Cell King
Elegant Nails
Francesca's Collections
Game Stop
Hallmark
Hot Topic
Icing by Claire's
Jason White's Store Divided
JCPenney
Journeys
Journeys Kidz
Justice

I'll stop at the J's. These tenants are all the anti-thesis to upscale. However, I will say that I understand a lot of these are grandfathered tenants that the mall is waiting for their lease to expire--and if they have a new wing planned that really does have interest from those kinds of retailers, then good for Penn Square and OKC.

But I think right now, to call Penn Square "upscale" by any stretch of the imagination is absurd.