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A comment on California’s Housing Crisis Reaches a ‘Breaking Point’. Parent comment

Re:California’s Housing Crisis Reaches a ‘Breaking Point’ by sbov on Monday July 17, 2017 @08:06PM (#14793350)
All of those, plus a mini mall for good measure, on land that used to be a large source of tech jobs for the surrounding area. How many mini malls does a suburb really need? I have a friend-of-a-friend who used to work for a big company decommissioning these old campuses. He claimed they always pushed heavily for commercial because there are fewer lawsuits related to groundwater contamination and such.
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Re:California’s Housing Crisis Reaches a ‘Breaking Point’ by ac29 on Monday July 17, 2017 @09:51PM (#14793782)
> How many mini malls does a suburb really need?

A lot of people live in the Bay Area. The 9 county area has 7.68 million people [0], enough that it would be the 102nd (of 234) most populus country in the world if it were its own country [1]. Countries with similar populations include Switzerland, Israel, and Hong Kong (all relatively small and dense).

Anecdotally, I dont see much vacancy in commercial/retail real estate (mini malls or otherwise) in the Bay Area, and with nearly 8 million people living here, there is an obvious need for quite a bit of commercial space.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

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Re:California’s Housing Crisis Reaches a ‘Breaking Point’ by sbov on Monday July 17, 2017 @10:39PM (#14793932)
I'm well aware of the population of the bay area. I speak to South San Jose because I was born and lived there for close to 25 years, basically around the corner from the former Cottle IBM plant. I still visit because my parents live in the same house.

And from my anecdotal experience when visiting, the older mini malls surrounding it have less foot traffic. Which makes sense, because everyone wants to go to the new shiny places. And it's not like these places were overly crowded in the first place.

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