By Mike Schneider
Senior Correspondent
Optimism is literally building when it comes to New Jersey’s busiest shopping corridor. New stores are rising on Routes 17 and 4 near Paramus. This area is considered by many to be the mall capital of America. And a brand new strip mall is going up just up the road near Ridgewood, the first in a decade.
“The unemployment is down. People, retailers are out looking for spaces again. And the most important thing is what we’re seeing is stores are getting leased up,” said The Goldstein Group President Chuck Lanyard.
Lanyard hasn’t always been so optimistic. Here we are back in 2011 outside a big box computer store that went out of business.
“As the economy got worse and these large boxes were available, these tenants are normally not gonna pay the high rents in northern Jersey, recognizing with the rents coming down there was a good opportunity here,” he said.
Computers were replaced by arts and crafts and that new store has thrived. Just down the road, another former electronics store recently became the new home for Tesla‘s high-tech electric cars.
And then there’s the next generation of burgers and fries. A few years back, before they became a billion dollar success story on Wall Street, Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack opened off right here off of Route 17 in Paramus.
Remember that new strip mall that’s going up? Lanyard says the plans for that go back to the 1980s.
“It’s not a small coincidence that this project now is well into the ground and ready for occupancy this year because they wisely waited until the economy improved because the one thing you don’t want to do is be carrying a building with high costs of construction and maybe really low rentals. You want to get really optimum rent which is what they’re getting now,” he said.
But what about those box stores? The places that used to be occupied by Barnes and Noble or Staples until they cut back.
“For every Blockbuster that goes out of business is this natural attrition. There’s always somebody standing in line,” Lanyard said.
Lanyard says the comeback proof is in the surveys his Goldstein Group has been compiling for years.
“Even in the worst of the economy, New Jersey’s northern and central New Jersey vacancy rate was only around 8.5 percent, maybe 9. Our vacancies in New Jersey are now close to only 6 percent,”
Still, challenges do remain. Lanyard says getting building permits in New Jersey is very complicated. And some of those would-be merchants who would like to come here are still put off by high taxes. But they ultimately follow the money and the vast number of New Jersey consumers still apparently have plenty of that to spend.