Vacant Spaces
The global property business tries to adapt to e-commerce
Many retail properties will slump but others have brighter prospects
Dec 14th 2017 | NEWYORK
FIFTH AVENUE in NewYork is the most expensive stretch of retail property in the world, now festooned with lights in the approach to Christmas. The pavements heave with crowds eager to see the diamonds sparkling at Tiffany & Co, a jeweller, and festive displays at Saks Fifth Avenue, a department store. But storefronts further downtown in once-thriving shopping districts remain vacant.
( slump: to decrease suddenly and by a large amount
纽约第五大道的店铺是全球最贵的零售店铺！好想去玩
festoon: to cover or decorate something with many small objects, pieces of paper, etc.)
The global retail property business is having to adapt as consumers spend more online.Consolidation is in vogue.On December 12th two retail property companies, France’s Unibail-Rodamco and Australia’s Westfield, agreed to merge in a deal worth $24.7bn to form the world’s second-biggest owner of shopping malls by market value. Westfield earns about 70% of its revenues from property holdings in America.
In November, Brookfield Property Partners, another mall owner, bid $14.8bn for the 66% of GGP, a rival, that it did not already own. Two activist investors, Third Point and Elliott Management, took stakes in two others. They are among several investors to recognise that change is hastening, as many retail properties labour and others discover brighter prospects.
( consolidate: to join or combine together into one thing
vogue: something that is fashionable or popular in a particular time and place
Westfield 是澳洲老牌零售商，在新西兰也很多mall)
Location, as ever, is key. In France and the Netherlands, as elsewhere, retail properties in smaller cities are struggling while those in big ones thrive. Well-known thoroughfares can attract luxury-goods firms that like having flagship stores to advertise their brand. One example is New Bond Street in London, which is booming. Rents jumped by 34% in the year to June, according to Cushman &Wakefield, a property-services firm. But even prominent streets in some places are experiencing a correction in prices. In Hong Kong rents in shopping hubs have slipped along with rates of visitors from mainland China.
( thoroughfare: a main road
商圈主路经常都吸引奢侈品牌进驻，开旗舰店来宣传品牌。所以这些位置好的商圈租金还在不断地涨，但还是有一些商圈尽管位置很好，价格还是有在调整。香港的商圈租金就因为来自大陆的游客多少而变动）
In America, which has about five times as much mall space per person as Britain, “there is a huge bifurcation”, says Todd Caruso of CBRE, a brokerage.Some areas and certain types of properties are expected to fare well and others to slump. Atlanta and Orlando are among the cities particularly saturated with stores, with only paltry levels of disposable income and retail sales, according to Green Street Advisors, a property research firm. These will probably see more shop closures. Enclosed malls are usually filled with department stores such as Macy’s and other clothes retailers that are all closing outlets. But strip malls, which have shops connected by a car park, often have a supermarket, so are less susceptible to e-commerce—most Americans still buy food in person, at least for now.
（bifurcate: to divide into two parts
there is a huge bifurcation: 两极分化严重
susceptible: easily affected, influenced, or harmed by something
那些有停车场，有大型超市连着的商场受到电子商务的影响比较小，毕竟现在很多人还是开车去超市买食物，暂时来看是这样，亚马逊和沃尔玛在电商生鲜市场的竞争，发展起来的话，那商场就真的不太好过了
上一期的一篇文章讲这两个公司的竞争，点击阅读）
What will happen to retail properties as stores shut is on the minds of city authorities.Other types of companies may fill vacant space in larger cities. In October Hudson’sBay, a retailer, said it would sell its Lord & Taylor department-store building on Fifth Avenue to WeWork, a shared-office firm, for $850m. Mall owners hope to find new tenants from service industries such as restaurants and gyms. Retailers such as Bonobos that once sold clothes only online are opening more shops.
Bigger groups are better placed to spend on the best malls and sell others. Unibail-Rodamco’s plan for its American shopping malls is to“focus on improving them, ride out the storm and see where we go from there,”said the company’s chief financial officer this week. GGP in October announced an agreement to add flats to a mall in Seattle; Sandeep Mathrani, GGP’s boss, wants to make retail centres into“mini cities”. Other property companies face more of a challenge. CBL Properties, for instance, owns malls in smaller American cities that have less shopping traffic. CBL’s share price has fallen by more than 50% this year, making it harder to invest and turn around ailing spaces.
（大零售商可以集中火力发展好的商圈，卖掉表现欠佳的，但是一些经营着小城市小地方商场的零售商来说就比较难了，这些商圈人流量较小。所以一个公司的战略发展是非常重要的，一步走错就整个大船很难掉头）
As the property market evolves, at least one type of investor can be unequivocally cheerful. Vacancies for industrial real estate, including e-commerce warehouses, are at their lowest rate in three decades. Prologis, the biggest owner globally of such property, has seen its share price jump by nearly 20% this year, while other property firms’ value has remained flat.
（unequivocally: very strong and clear: not showing or allowing any doubt. unequivocal evidence
电商公司办公室，厂房仓库的租金都在历史最低水平，无疑对于他们来说，这是一件可以捂着嘴偷笑的事情）
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Results
Lexile®Measure: 1200L - 1300L
Mean Sentence Length: 17.06
Mean Log Word Frequency: 3.08
Word Count: 614
这篇文章的蓝思值是在1200-1300L， 适合英语专业大三的水平学习，应该是经济学人里属于普通难度。
使用kindle断断续续地读《经济学人》三年，发现从一开始磕磕碰碰到现在比较顺畅地读完，进步很大，推荐购买！点击这里可以去亚马逊官网购买~