Severe retail downturn forecast for 2009

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, the retail industry in California is in for some very difficult times:

After years of aggressive expansion fueled by easy debt and plastic-wielding customers, the industry is in for a major correction in 2009, analysts predict. The shift could recast much of the Bay Area retail landscape, blighting shop-lined streets with boarded storefronts, clearing out shopping centers and doing in struggling malls.
After one of their worst holiday seasons in decades, few retailers are in expansion mode and few banks are eager to hand stores cash, so much of the space is likely to sit empty for the foreseeable future. That will place considerable pressure on landlords – especially those who bought or developed buildings near the top of the market.

Publicly traded mall real estate investment trusts hold more than $23 billion in debt coming due this year and next, according to a report by Newport Beach (Orange County) real estate research and consulting firm Green Street Advisors. At least 200,000 stores and 2,000 to 3,000 malls will close in the United States this year, the bulk of them in the next few months, forecasts Burt Flickinger III, managing director of New York consulting firm Strategic Resource Group. “In the more marginal malls, a quarter to a half of the space will have the lights turned off, and then you’ll see whole abandoned shopping centers,” he said.