Big Box breakdown

I remember when Future Shop opened in Saint John. I was in high school so it must have been the late 1990s or early 2000s. I waited in line outside of the store to pick up some burnable CDs that were discounted. Many more Big Box stores have followed and a diverse retail hub has been created (as diverse as Big Box retail can be at least).

As Saint John welcomes more and more of this retail format, the format is weakening in the US where these stores have existed for a few decades.

An article on Treehugger (a Discovery Channel blog I've been reading a lot of lately) discusses what happens - and what should happen - when these stores go out of business.

Some central themes to the article are the fact that these building are mainly built for single uses, making it difficult to convert these to multiple smaller scale uses. In the US some of the stores have been converted to mega-churches and schools - uses that are criticized for forcing users to drive.

A second issue described is that most of these buildings are not built to last. With this in mind some experts suggest that the buildings are best torn down and replaced with multi-storey buildings. I don't know how well this would work in Saint John where most big box stores are built on swamps with poor bearing capacity - though the Best Western hotel was built near most of the city's large format shopping, so it is possible to go up in this area.

I don't think Saint John shoppers are ready to convert back to walking about shops in the city centre for all of their consuming needs, but one day Big Box shopping will become passe and these stores will need new uses. It will be cool to see how the shopping districts evolve over the next decades.