Gaithersburg police responded to a report of a stabbing at Lakeforest Mall yesterday at 10:52 AM. A Montgomery County police spokesperson later confirmed that the vicim had died.
It's disturbing to hear this tragic incident being used to promote redevelopment of the mall property, as if crime will disappear in that area simply by building housing and urban-style retail. The crime doesn't come from the mall - it comes from the criminals who are active in that area, none of whom live on the mall property today, at last check.
Lakeforest Mall was once a thriving destination with packed parking lots. A succession of greedy owners have run the mall into the ground, in the hopes of justifying a demolition. They've been facilitated and coddled in their willful negligence by developer-beholden politicians. The joke will be on them when their mall is replaced with a new-but-equally-high-crime neighborhood of "missing middle" townhomes and apartments, a short walk from the very high crime area of Lost Knife Circle.
“We've seen it for probably 15 years where it’s a mall in decline,” he said. “And, it's not unique. It's like many malls in America, but it is happening.”
ReplyDelete"Many storefronts inside the mall are vacant. Only one of the four anchor locations inside the mall are currently occupied."
This is the real problem of Lake Forest, which is like the Mayor said, like many other malls, it's a mall in decline, an actually no different than what White Flint or Mazza Gallery experienced recently. At nearly thirty years in age, this retail site has completely amortized any investments made by the original builders and the community, and has run out its cycle of life. Time's up.
White Flint was actually fully-leased not long before Lerner pulled the plug. Lakeforest and Mazza Gallerie (to a lesser extent) were poorly run in contrast, and the successive owners really just wanted to demolish them and get more money out of the land underneath.
DeleteThat's their right as the owners, but the media tends to overhype these situations as evidence that malls are outmoded or failing. Similarly, the impact of Bain Capital/Carlyle Group firms draining retail chains of their value for cash and throwing the husk away is also misinterpreted as "bricks and mortar is dead!" in too many cases.
One need only look across the river at Tysons to see that malls can still be successfully operated today.