With the Lima Toys "R" Us as one of the nearly 800 stores closing throughout the country, that means that a large retail space will now be empty, and the question on some people's minds might be - what happens next?
"The first step that we will make is to understand who owns the building and what strategy they have to fill the space," said Jeff Sprague, President/CEO of the Allen Economic Development Group. "If you look at what’s happening in retail today, there’s a lot of retail that’s folding up or just going out of business, so we want to make sure that we’re working with the property owners and the building owners to identify future opportunities."
The building will join other empty storefronts and retail spaces in the Lima area - which can be a bit of a challenge to fill, especially with the way that retail has reshaped itself over the past few years.
"The Internet actually during the Recession shaped the landscape for retail, and a lot of these buildings have to be re-purposed - that’s kind of the process that we're seeing with the Toys "R" Us and other changes like that," said Tim Stanford, a broker with Superior Plus Realtors. "In the recent years we sold the Kmart center and we filled up about 50,000 square feet there."
But despite the surge of online shopping, the physical retail space is not completely obsolete, and officials say that there may be the perfect fit for filling that space somewhere out there.
"There's still a place for brick and mortar, and I think what we’re seeing out there is there are opportunities, you just have to identify the right tenant to fill the space, and making sure that our community is positioned to welcome somebody new into our community," Sprague said.
