Posts Tagged ‘Adandoned Malls’

Report On The State Of Hillsboro

Sunday, February 25th, 2024

Hillsboro is a large town/small city of some 8,000+ people that most Texans have probably driven through at some point. They’re a county seat, sit smack dab in the great plains agricultural belt and have some light manufacturing, but their main economic advantage is being right where I-35E and I-35W join/split to I-35 traveling south to Waco, Austin and San Antonio. Hillsboro is perfectly positioned to be a road trip snack and restroom break stop.

For years one of Hillsboro’s most notable features was its outlet mall, with a variety of national brands. I bought a Fossil watch from their store many, many years ago.

Well, I traveled through there to and from the Metroplex for a funeral, the outlet mall is dead. Though the two open air mall segments have space for some 86 stores, there’s now precisely one open, a Bath and Body Works. The Hillsboro outlet mall was already ailing before the Flu Manchu lockdowns, but that seems top have accelerated the decline. (San Marcos outlet malls, also on the I-35 corridor, seem to done a much better job weathering the economic headwinds.) This would suggest Hillsboro has entered a period of economic stagnation and decline.

Not so fast! Buc-ess, the Texas mega convenience store chain, is opening a store in Hillsboro. Also, Buc-ess pays pretty good wages for a convenience store: “$18.00 * Medical * Dental * Vision * 3 Weeks Paid Time Off * 401k 100% Match up to 6%.”

This is the point where I’m supposed to insert some pithy “when one door closes another opens” aphorism. But I rather strongly suspect this particular mall closing scenario plays out very differently in a blue locale like New York or California, where everyone with the means to do so is moving away from those failing high-tax, high-crime states as fast as they can.

There’s no one coming to save those towns.

Texas vs. California Roundup for October 9, 2014

Thursday, October 9th, 2014

Another Texas vs. California roundup:

  • If Stockton bankruptcy judge’s ruling is upheld, a lot of California cities could actually start working for citizens again, rather than public employee unions.
  • There are plenty of lessons to be learned from Stockton’s bankruptcy. Too bad Stockton’s officials seem unwilling to learn them:

    Pension contributions for public-safety workers now amount to 41 percent of payroll. That would put the total cost of salary, health benefits, and pensions at about $120,000 annually for a fifth-year officer…The long saga of Stockton’s decline dramatizes the inefficiency and illogic of union-dominated, monopolistic, government-labor markets.

  • But letting cities escape their crushing public sector union pension burdens doesn’t sit well with California’s looter class. Solution: propose eliminating Chapter 9 bankruptcy. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • According to the September labor report, California did manage to add 313,900 jobs between August 2013 and August 2014. But Texas added 395,200. (Hat tip: WILLisms Twitter feed.)
  • California legislature decides that students don’t need any of that stinking due process.
  • Hey, remember those “temporary” tax hikes Jerry Brown got voters to approve? Guess what?
  • California’s roads are among the worst in the country.
  • Someone should tell that to the city of Stanton, California, which reached for tax hikes rather than cutting the pay of unionized workers.
  • How San Jose reformed their finances using transparency. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • How California browbeat Toyota over closing a money-losing plant.
  • The California-based manufacturing facility of Colorado-based Boulder Electric Vehicle shuts down after receiving a $3 million grant from the California Energy Commission.
  • How California’s for-profit Thomas Jefferson Law School got itself into serious financial trouble through excessive dependence on loans (both the student type and the tax-exempt bond type).
  • Americans don’t want their state to secede so much as they want to kick California out of the union. (Hat tip: Karl Rehn of KRTraining.)
  • A look at PSAT participation rates in Texas. (Also via WILLisms.)
  • Californian Trip Hawkins, of EA, Apple and 3DO fame, filed for bankruptcy in 2011. This year, the 9th circuit ruled that a profligate life style (for certain values of “profligate”), does not, in fact, constitute a “willful” attempt to avoid bankruptcy. Mr. Hawkins seemed to be living well, but not necessarily living large
  • California owner of Akron, Ohio mall abandoned since 2008 declares bankruptcy. And since it’s the Halloween season, and abandoned malls are wonderfully creepy places, here’s a pic: