Across metro Atlanta are retail centers — many of them only a few years old — with vast, empty storefronts separating one or two occupied shops. Windows papered over with newspaper. Others plastered with colorful “for lease” signs.
For those going it alone, it can be a long wait for custom- ers. It could be an even longer wait for new neighbors.
Metro Atlanta’s retail vacancy rate, which soared in the last six years, shows few signs of improvement. It was 10.2 percent in the first quarter of 2011, according to a report by real estate services firm CoStar Group. It has hovered around 10 percent since 2009, nearly double the rate only a few years earlier.
Atlanta’s glut of empty retail space is among the biggest in the nation — in the same league as Detroit, Phoenix and Sacramento. The region has enough vacant space to fit 183 Walmart supercenters. That’s 48 more than exist in the entire state now.
In Sunday's newspaper, the AJC took a deep look at the impact of metro Atlanta's empty retail spaces. It's a story you'd get only by picking up a copy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution or logging on to the paper's iPad app . Subscribe today .
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