AUBURN — At RadioShack in the Auburn Mall, the lights were out this week and the store newly empty but for a few forgotten computer monitors.

Around the bend, signs announcing 50 to 70 percent off and going out of business covered the windows of Deb, a teen clothing store, as customers picked over platform shoes and diminishing racks of glittery prom dresses. A naked half-mannequin could be yours for $40.

In either case, it’s nothing personal.

RadioShack closed more than 1,000 locations as it restructures and Deb is closing all of its stores after that chain filed for bankruptcy in December.

Auburn Mall owner and developer George Schott has two potential new tenants in the wings. Despite the empty storefronts — 19 out of 45 once Deb closes — he said in an interview last month that the mall is more than 70 percent occupied, making money and trying its best to attract tenants.

“A selective few are willing to move into malls, but I don’t think there’s a landslide to it,” Schott said. “We do anything we can. We have Realtors involved, we have our own staff here, so a little bit of everything.”

Lee Peterson, a consultant who spoke in January at the National Retail Federation’s annual convention in New York, said it’s a tough time for retail: Across the U.S., foot traffic has been consistently down 5 percent month over month, every month, for three years.

“I feel like Columbus (his hometown in Ohio) is a microcosm for the country,” Peterson said. “If there were six malls 30 years ago doing really well, now there are two.”

There’s a lot to be tried and a lot of current success has to do with the mix of stores.

“If you have Nordstrom, you’re doing pretty well,” he said. “If you have Sears and Penneys, ehh, it’s a much tougher row to hoe.”

National, Maine trends 

When it was built in 1979, the Auburn Mall was among the first indoor malls in the state. When Schott bought it in 2005, he described the roof on former anchor Porteous as “shot,” with the building in need of upgrades and a goal of being flexible to fill the space. The mall was about 70 percent occupied at the time, including the anchors.

Schott invested millions and attracted a TD Bank call center to the former Porteous space.

Factoring in JC Penney and TD Bank, the Auburn Mall is currently about 85 percent occupied, based on square footage, he said. Taking the two large anchors out, it’s closer to 72 percent after losing a few seasonal retailers that opened just for Christmas.

All of the empty storefronts can be deceptive, he said. “Some of the stores are larger than others. You’ve got a (Family Time Dine & Play) that’s the size of three or four small stores. (Occupancy) has been pretty much stagnant for the last two years. We gain some, we lose some.”

Michael Levin, an associate professor of marketing at Otterbein University in Ohio who teaches retail management and follows trends, said part of the issue is nationwide — decades of stagnant wages make it “difficult to manage a middle-class mall leased to middle-class retailers who all lack middle-class consumers.”

And part of the problem is specific to states like Maine.

Teenagers have historically liked malls, a lot. We don’t have the number of teens we used to.

“The demographic force that is causing such problems for Maine’s public universities causes the same problems for retailers like Aeropostale, American Eagle, Deb and Wet Seal,” Levin said.

Between 1990 and 2013, Maine lost teenagers — the 15-to-19 age group shifted from 7.2 percent of the population to 6.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census.

Additionally, he said, many stores in trouble now were mismanaged, missing “shifts in consumers’ needs and wants as well as competitors’ ability to serve those needs and wants.”

“Quite simply, RadioShack’s in-store experience was always suspect,” Levin said. “Apple’s emergence in the retail sector, though, laid bare how truly awful RadioShack’s experience really was.”

IKEA, Apple, Panera: hot

Some smaller, Auburn-sized malls have leased space to grocery stores, he said, converted empty storefronts to business meeting space or taken at least some of their tops off to create more of an indoor-outdoor, walk-able experience.

Peterson said the latter has been employed by one of the two last Columbus, Ohio, malls standing.

“One of their anchors went out, so they leveled the anchor, then they built a couple of restaurants, they opened up the ceiling and suddenly had 10 stores and three or four restaurants that were outdoors, so they converted to a little bit of a lifestyle center,” he said.

Another strategy: Wooing IKEA to build across the street.

“Instead of going after the traditional anchor, they got an anchor for the whole shopping center in IKEA, a massive regional draw,” Peterson said. “I thought that was pretty unique.”

A Canadian firm has rolled out a service called Penguin Pick-up — customers buy online and pick up their purchases from a kiosk outside the mall.

“That’s something developers can do to at least get people into the parking lot,” Peterson said.

Online shopping accounts for roughly 15 percent of purchases these days, and Peterson said he recently read that’s expected to peak at 40 percent. Because so often people today don’t have to physically go into a store to buy something, the key is to make them want to, he said.

Whole Foods is a draw. Panera is a draw. “Apple is like a major, major draw,” Peterson said.

Changes, tenants to come

Schott said the Twin Cities’ demographics have been a hard sell for national chains. That’s part of the reason he sees filling some of the empty space in the future with more businesses like TD Bank.

It was disappointing to lose RadioShack and Deb but not unexpected, Schott said. He said a restaurant and a hobby-type store “are fairly interested and we’re just trying to finalize the deal.”

Though he put the mall on the market in 2010, it isn’t actively listed for sale now, he said.

Schott has three retail pads yet to develop outside the mall, one near Best Buy and two more by Hobby Lobby. He hopes to have a new announcement soon for the closed T.G.I.Friday’s.

“Outside is doing good — that should help us attract people for inside,” he said.

He’s also willing to alter the mall space to attract new tenants.

“The reason that some people want to be free-standing is the need to get out of the car and get in (the store), so what we’ll do at the mall is we’re going to change the mall, and anybody who wants an exterior entrance will get an exterior entrance,” he said.

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Lewiston malls: Many ‘For Lease’

With the recent news of Flagship Cinemas closing in the Promenade Mall in Lewiston, it’s down to two occupied storefronts, Family Dollar and Staples, and five “For Lease” signs in the windows.

Broker Charlie Craig at the Dunham Group said he’s working on it.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of retail growth in Auburn, so you’ve had tenants focusing more on Auburn than on Lewiston, and then you’ve had tenants who’ve had some sort of structural changes in their industry, like Flagship,” Craig said.

That said, he says there’s interest.

“We’ve got someone looking at as much as 100,000 square feet of space,” Craig said. “We hope to land another big anchor tenant and we feel once we do that that we’re going to be able to fill the smaller spaces, but we have several big ones we’re talking to.”

At least one potential retailer might like to keep Flagship as a movie theater. He can’t name names yet but hopes to have anchor news by summer.

Across Lisbon Street, the Lewiston Mall has seven vacant storefronts, including former anchor Sears but shows more activity with Bull Moose, Rent-A-Center, Northeast Technical Institute and signs for Orange Circuit Fitness coming soon, among others.

Calls to WRE Brokers, the mall broker listed on its signs for more leasing information, weren’t returned.

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