The hundreds of condos and office buildings that were launched during the boom are finished or reaching completion, and only a few new ones are starting. A few projects have stopped, and one prominent project, an 80-storey tower at Yonge and Bloor, has failed to launch. There is only an empty bulldozed lot there. On the other hand, another 80-storey tower down the street is apparently still a go.
Our banks are still okay. They’re climbing the lists of world banks, even, but a lot of that is due to other banks falling. The trains are still crowded at rush hour; people still flock to the malls; and one of our airlines is actually expanding.
On the third hand, many many people have been laid off from the auto industry and we’re all watching the state of GM with some trepidation: if GM goes bankrupt, my stepfather loses half his pension.
Circuit City closing basically gave Best Buy a monopoly on the electronics market around here (Costco is the only other source for higher end home entertainment).
Also a job fair for 200-300 jobs drew over 2,000 people. I met one guy in line who came up from Salt Lake City to find one.
For some reason, though all these job losses there’s still a 45 minute to 1 1/2 hour wait at every single restaurant in town on a Friday night, I’ve never understood how that is.
I work for a landscaping company that specializes in large commercial work.
This season has been especially frustrating because, although we technically have work on the books, nothing is getting done. Job delayed a month because the excavator hasn’t shown up? The general contractor doesn’t care because the owner doesn’t care – there’s no tenents to take occupancy of the building anyway. Everything is moving at a snail’s pace because there’s no reason to hurry. Of course, since we’re on the tail end of the process, we’re sitting with nothing to do.
That’s for the projects that are actually happening. A lot of large planned projects are on indefinite hold. No reason to build a large shopping center/community destination if no stores are going to move in and no one is going to shop there.
Harley Davidson is making major changes to their plant here in York County. I don’t think that they are closing it totally, but there are major layoffs and a major restructure.
A group I’m involved with rents a large former factory as a practice and event space. The owners have only ever let us rent month to month because they really wanted to develop the property into a condo/supermarket complex. They have also slowly but surely kept upping our rent.
But you know what no one is building right now? Condo/Super Market complexes in sketchy areas of Los Angeles.
They are know offering us 3 month leases. We hope that soon enough they let us at least sign a one year.
Which of our malls are dead? Century III is flagging, but not dead. Ross Park, South Hills Village and Robinson are fine. I haven’t been to Monroeville lately. Some of the strip malls are a little decrepit, but not markedly more so lately, to my knowledge.
Off the beaten path, Midwestern town of 2800 people. Factory employing maybe 100 making soft side luggage closed up two years ago. Auto parts plant employing up to 800 people closed its doors, packed up the equipment and left in March. Food distributing outfit that has been in town since its founding right after WWII just went out of business – there will be an auction of inventory, equipment, trucks, real estate this weekend. 150 more people out of work. Kosher packing plant in the next town over was raided by the Feds last year and pretty well closed up. At its height it employed maybe 500, mostly Latin American and Ukrainian immigrants. They are all out of work now and have no way home short of deportation. You may have read about this one. This is not a happy town right now. Lots of despair.
OT but don’t you just LOVE those gentrification attempts? I’m just waiting for a developer who decides to try to gentrify East St. Louis or Camden NJ or Gary Indiana
Well moribund, at the very least, but that’s not new and not a result of the economic slowdown. It’s been in a KMart coma for going on a decade; the annex never recovered from the loss of Phar-Mor in 2001 and when Chi-Chi’s went in 2004 that killed that entire end of the building. The food court was scuttled by 2004 as well, and the whole the bottom floor closed when Eckerd/Thrift merged with Rite Aid and moved down to Noblestown Road in 2006 when the economy was still flush. Parkway Center was always a B-grade mall anyway, and long suffered from poor management, poor tenant recruiting, subsidence issues and the ridiculous and impossible grading problems of the parking lot. (If people have to climb two hills to get into your building, or could drive four more miles and go to Robinson, they’re going to go to Robinson.)
The MNC I work for has laid off about 5% of the global workforce over the past 6 months, travel is actively discouraged, raises are non existent.
In Shanghai, things have slowed. lot’s of retail or restaurants have closed doors and no new tenents. It’s not a hugely noticeable amount but 2 years ago those spaces would have been filled pretty quickly. Also off the top of the property market although it’s pretty flat rather than declines. (Actually thinking of selling a condo here, and buying 4 similar sized ones in the US for the same money).
The vaguely metrosexual-inspired men’s salon where I get my haircuts left me a phone message last week saying that they appreciate my business and hope I continue to patronize their establishment. Since I picked the place because it’s a one-block walk from my apartment and has a high-end motorized massage chair in their lobby, they’re not in any danger of losing my business. But they’ve never called me before.
My company, which is almost completely unaffected by the housing and credit crises, had a surprise layoff of 82 people this week. They’re probably looking ahead and preparing for future declines in the defense budgets, which is wise. There is a common understanding where I work that a TS clearance or an SSBI (the extended investigation you have to pass to get on code-word programs) will tend to give you job security. But at least one person with both a TS and a current SSBI got laid off in my area last week, so that rule of thumb is not as reliable anymore.
Traffic is light on PCH/Sepulveda. If I come home from work late at night, I can make the drive in 15 minutes; sometimes it’s 30 minutes with traffic. One day last week I made the drive to work in 11 minutes at 7:30 AM, which was about fifteen minutes less than I’d expected.
Twice in the last year, I’ve been surprised when some pretty good restaurants where I regularly got take-out food went out of business.
My divorced cousin is still living with her ex-husband; they have no other options.
Not a “visible” change, but at some time in the last two years, my vague idea of early retirement at 55 with some possible consulting work afterward has morphed into a certainty that I’m going to work at least until I’m 65. I went from shrugging my shoulders and thinking I’d stay with a slightly flawed business for two more four-year projects to thinking that either I leave right now and start a second career, or begin a hard push to make my current work environment better, because I might be around for 18 more years.