Can U.S. Big Box Retailers Adapt? Read Suzanne Hollander’s Comments Below!

Suzanne Hollander talks Innovation in Retail and Big Box Stores

on April 21, 2025

The Palm Beach Post interviews Suzanne Hollander on How Big Box Retailers Can Adapt and Succeed… read Suzanne’s comments below:

How west county is growing: Big empty stores dot State Road 7. Will retailers fill them?

Several stores in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach sit empty after chain retailers left. Imagine a future for them beyond retail, planners say.

Valentina Palm

Which big retailers have closed in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach?

The empty-storefront trend in the western communities dates to at least 2019, when Nordstrom closed at the Mall at Wellington Green. The two-story, 124,000-square-foot structure remains vacant today, and the mall’s owners have floated the idea of turning it into residences and a hotel.

2023 saw several other storefronts go vacant. In Wellington, the 30,000 square-foot Sprouts supermarket north of the mall sold its last bags of groceries that year and has remained empty since. In Royal Palm Beach, the Bed Bath & Beyond and Buy Buy Baby stores on Coral Sky Plaza totaled 53,000 square feet. They closed that year as well.

The past several months have been busy as well. A Big Lots inside the Commons at Royal Palm Plaza closed in December. The neighboring Party City store of 23,000-square-feet closed in February.

Cinema 8, a 1,200-seat movie theater on Wellington Trace, closed this year after 12 years in business. Joann Fabrics and Crafts is also set to close this year in the village.

Some major restaurant chains that have closed in the western communities include TGI Fridays, Red Lobster, Friendly’s and Ford’s Garage, which had an outlet at the mall.

Why are retailers closing stores across the U.S.?

Blame your phone. And blame the pandemic, too.

Almost 15,000 stores are expected to close this year in the U.S., double the 7,325 that closed 2024, according to Coresight Research.

Hollander said major retailers are closing brick-and-mortar locations for multiple factors exacerbated by the pandemic: lagging sales, a decline in foot traffic, the struggle to compete with online shopping and a changing retail landscape.

“It’s not an experience,” Hollander said. “Most of these things you can buy online.”

The commercial districts thriving in U.S. and Latin American cities are places where people can do more than shop, Hollander said. She said they feature a mix of businesses that bring in people daily such as grocery stores, fitness centers, educational facilities, pickleball courts and community gardens.

“Then it activates the community,” Holland said. “So it’s not just you get in your car, turn on your key, go to the store and go home.”

Why would live-work-play developments help Wellington, Royal Palm Beach?

Most of the big-box retailers in the western communities are along State Road 7, an area primed for redevelopment, according to studies by the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council. Royal Palm Beach and Wellington hired the council to imagine how it might respond if the big-box stores shut down.

Cook has seen major retailers close their doors in Palm Beach County and expects the outdated shopping plazas will eventually be torn down and rebuilt into developments where people can live, work and play.

She expects the empty store fronts in strip malls to be filled more service-oriented businesses instead of retailers.

For example, Tampa General Hospital and the Boston hospital Mass General Brigham will build an oncology facility at Legacy Place in Palm Beach Gardens. The mixed-use area at PGA Boulevard and Alternate A1A also sports apartments, retailers like Best Buy and Eos Fitness, a gym where people can watch movies while they work out.

“The reality is there’s only so much land, and you have to use the land that’s there,” Cook said.

Hollander said the trend will be to build less in a suburban format, where shopping and residential areas are separate, and more like one where commercial spaces are integrated into the community and feature many uses in one place.

Hollander added local officials need to be involved in the transformation of vacant stores because reinvigorating outdated plazas will require new zoning laws and negotiations with businesses and property owners.

“We encourage mixed-use to reduce dependence on the car and make the city a more active, interesting place to live,” Hollander said.

Shared from April 21, 2025 The Palm Beach Post article by Valentina Palm

Disclaimer: Professor Real Estate® written materials apply generally to real estate subjects and are not intended to apply to specific legal issues.

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Can U.S. Big Box Retailers Adapt? Read Suzanne Hollander’s Comments Below!

How west county is growing: Big empty stores dot State Road 7. Will retailers fill them?

Several stores in Wellington and Royal Palm Beach sit empty after chain retailers left. Imagine a future for them beyond retail, planners say.

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