Here’s another yardstick of economic distress that California tops: flattened shopping centers.
My trusty spreadsheet reviewed retail space data from CoStar tracking store demolitions between 2000 and 2025. It tells us that 23 million square feet of California retail space was demolished in these six years.
Golden State demolitions, No. 1 among the states, were followed by Florida and Texas, with 17 million square feet of retail space removed.
How big is California’s retail destruction? Well, it’s roughly on par with the combined amount of operating retailing space in Vermont and Wyoming.
Or the look at California demolitions this way: It equals eight South Coast Plazas, the wildly successful mall in Costa Mesa that’s also California’s largest retail hub with 2.8 million square feet of shopping and dining space.
Wrecked trends
Retailing’s wrecking ball has been active in recent years thanks to online shopping, which exploded during the pandemic lockdowns. That forced the closings or pullbacks by large, traditional brick-and-mortar retailers whose stores once filled shopping centers.
As a result, the finances of many out-of-date shopping centers soured.
Meanwhile, these retail sites are now prime locations for residential construction, hotels and new retail development.
Smaller slice
California’s big demolition number is not terribly surprising, given that the state is also the nation’s largest retail hub, with 1.7 billion square feet of retail space.
That’s equal to the total shopping areas of 22 states and is 11% of the nation’s 16 billion square feet. No. 2 is Texas at 1.6 billion, followed by Florida at 1.2 billion.
So, accounting for that size, California store owners demolished only 1% of all retail space over the six years. That ranks as the 21st-highest share among the states and below the 1.4% of square footage demolished nationwide.
The most aggressive demolitions, on a percentage basis, occurred in Hawaii (4% of space removed), Minnesota (3%) and Wisconsin (2%).
Demolitions were rarest in Wyoming, Alaska and Vermont, where only 0.1% of space was leveled.
On a personal note
Perhaps one reason for California’s relatively limited demolition pace was that the state has relatively modest retail space measured against its population.
There are 44 square feet for every one of California’s 39 million residents, only the 28th-highest shopping density among the states. It’s also below the 47-square-foot-per-person nationwide ratio.
The most? The District of Columbia has 374 square feet per resident, Rhode Island has 91, and Missouri has 62. The least? Delaware at 10, Vermont at 16 and Wyoming at 18.
By the way, California’s economic arch-rivals have 52 square feet of retailing per Texan and 51 per Floridian.
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com
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