With or Without Apple

This afternoon, while getting a haircut at The Mall, Wayne Shepard and I got into a conversation about the fiscal health of the forty one year old shopping center. I told Wayne about this mall story by Stephanie Clifford in The New York Times yesterday that said  “as retailers crawl out of the worst recession since the advent of malls, many are realizing they are overbuilt and are closing locations at a fast clip.”

The article goes on to note that there hasn’t been a new mall built in this country 2006. In fact, more than a few have been torn down and redeveloped including the first enclosed mall on the east coast, Harundale Mall in Glen Burnie.

The Mall in Columbia is actually one of the more successful malls in the country. Since opening in 1971, the 1,200,000 square foot mall has adapted with the times through four renovations, the last being in 2003. Wayne recently asked GGP how the mall was performing on a sales per square foot basis.

“With or without the Apple store?” was the response.

It turns out that the Apple store, with sales exceeding $5,000 per square foot, skews the overall numbers by about $100 per square foot. With the Apple store, The Mall sales are averaging over $600 per square foot, well over the national average for malls of $386 per square.

And without the Apple store numbers?

It is still over $500 per square foot.

I was pretty blown away by these numbers. According to Wayne, the only store in The Mall that has a higher annual sales volume than Apple is Macy’s.