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Vacant stores are sign of times

08.02.10

WAILUKU - Maui's commercial genuine estate industry sure isn't as bad as on the Mainland, said veteran townsman leasing broker Ed Bello of Bello Realty Inc., who on a fresh business trip to Colorado saw a bankrupt big-box stock converted into a charter school and a former Blockbuster Video into a veterinary clinic.

If they had any tenants at all.

When he looks around at Maui's shopping centers, Bello said, rather than possibly one empty storefront, there may be four. Three more vacant spaces is a big rearrange for an island that just two years ago had a hardly 100 percent occupancy rebuke, he said.

The vacancy rate for retail, commission and industrial space is estimated to have doubled to about 5 or 10 percent, depending on the variety of retail center and the location, while the bumbling economy keeps typically free-spending tourists away, said Gift Howe, Commercial Properties of Maui LLC die and managing general partner.

Look up to the following floor of those strip malls, and there are also more "For Contract" signs taped to the windows of empty offices than ever before, townswoman Realtors and lease brokers said.

Source: Maui News