From Reuters.
Of the 600 stores that Starbucks closed in 2008, 88 of them were in the Inland Empire. That is around 15%.
I feel somewhat guilty. The retail brokers that used to work here were heavily involved in pushing the power center concept to its logical extreme in the I.E. These centers are now the headstones in a retail graveyard. One of my investment broker friends is doing a presentation tomorrow at the San Bernardino Economic Summit on the retail market. Will post those slides later.
The coffee chain moved in -- and cashed in -- when high-density housing developments were springing up near highways and on hillsides in the area well east of California's famous coastal cities. Now that the party is over, Starbucks is pulling up stakes.
Starbucks' predicament offers a glimpse into fortunes of U.S. retailers, who are retrenching after easy credit fueled a consumer spending binge.
...
In 2004, on the heels of unexpected success in red-hot real estate markets like the Inland Empire -- which claims some of the nation's highest percentages of children under the age of 20 and "aspirational" consumers aged 20 to 34 -- Starbucks predicted it could rival the size of hamburger chain McDonald's Corp.
Just a few years later, the Inland Empire is best known for its leading role in the housing bust.
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