Macy's has informed it's landlord that it will be leaving it's Water Tower Place store location in Chicago's "Mag Mile".
I guess they got tired of the looting, and the failure of the city's Administration to provide enough police to keep the peace when looters came out of the south and west sides to break windows and steal merchandise. The images of cops sitting in their cars, outnumbered 20:1 and helpless to intervene while (mostly) poor black folks brazenly walked through broken glass doors and windows and left with armloads of merchandise. While teams of people loaded large box trucks (some say U-Hauls) and left with tens of thousands of dollars of property. (One would have though that the cops would have taken license numbers, but what do I know?).
Merchants cannot do business without the rule of law.
I expect that in a year, three at most, the "Mag Mile" will not be so "Magnificent"... It will take a while, but it will soon be an empty shell, as merchants leave for safer places to do business, taking with them millions of dollars in wages, taxes and ancillary costs that will, instead, go to other, safer, communities.
Look at Detroit and other cities where riots happened. They still haven't recovered even decades later.
Macey's is just the first rock in the avalanche.
4 comments:
Macy's problems go far deeper than some looting at one of their locations. They'll be dying the same slow death as Sear's, Penney's, K-Mart and other brick-and-mortar chains.
Pete
Pete: you are absolutely correct. Doesn't change the fact that they are closing one of their most profitable store in the midwest.
NYC is seeing the same thing...
And not only are the shops leaving, the shoppers are as well.
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