This is entirely random, so forgive the digression. In thinking about the impact of Circuit City’s liquidation on commercial real estate companies I was trying to find a way to put the lost store square footage in context.
Assuming 567 Circuit City stores at an average of 40,000 square-feet per store, that works out to 22,680,000 ft2 in disappeared mall square-footage. Converting that to square miles so we can think about it in urban terms, that is roughly 0.81 square miles — which is smaller than I thought it would be.
So, what city would Circuit City be if its empty stores were a city? It would be a darn small one. After all, Washington DC is a little over 60 square miles, which makes it 75 Circuit City cities. The closest comparison is more like Driggs, Idaho, which has a population of 1,100 people and takes up almost exactly 1 square-mile. That makes it no less ignominious, and it is still a huge area.
Mind you, were it actually Driggs you would be close to Grand Targee and Jackson Hole.
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More here on Circuit City and CRE.
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One more CC CRE factoid: The aggregate Circuit City square footage across the U.S. is roughly one-half the size of the new Dubai Mall. The latter clocks in at 12-million square feet (including its new California Pizza Kitchen). Staggering.
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