Welcome to The Dark Side of White Flint, an ongoing series about the not-so-wonnerful, wonnerful, wonnerful side of urbanizing the suburbs of Montgomery County.
Not surprisingly, profits did decline in 2014, after many restaurant draws and the mall's movie theater were shuttered. Twenty-six week August 2014 revenues for the White Flint location were $5,231,000. In that same period in 2013, D&B grossed $6,384,000.
Even this year, revenue far exceeded depreciation and rent costs ($646,000) for the White Flint D&B outpost. Along with The Cheesecake Factory and the theater, there is no indication that the mall's success would not have continued well into the future, had owners not decided to pull the plug. Not a dying mall until the demolition plan was announced, the retail center was fully-leased less than three years ago, and it was hard to find a parking space near the popular anchor tenants.
Will millennials hit the highways to go to D&B at Arundel Mills Mall? Dave and Buster's corporate office says so in its filing. "With past store closures, we have experienced customer migration to
other stores within the same market," the filing notes.
Explore The Dark Side of White Flint further:
Relive the final hours of Dave and Buster's at White Flint Mall.
Examine the unique architecture and memorabilia of a doomed White Flint auto dealership.
Make a final visit to the legendary Toys R Us.
Go back to the original post that started it all!
26 comments:
REBUILD BLOOMINGDALES NOW!
BRING BACK I. MAGNIN!!
BRING BACK THE DARK BROWN TILE IN TEH EATERY!!!1!
I went to D&B maybe once or twice a year here. No chance I'm commuting to the other locations.
Robert Dyer is such an ignorant troll that at this point I'm not even sure he's real.
9:56 I'm real, and so are the facts.
That's exactly what an expert troll would say!
Bravo.
"and so are the facts"
Facts?! Haha. Most posts on this blog are devoid of anything that remotely resemble "facts." I find it really hard to believe that even you can consider your posts as "objective reporting of facts."
Bob has here an exclusive fact based analysis of the health of one of the last places in the mall.
12:40 - Given that every post is based on actual facts and data, it's very hard for you to argue otherwise. "Anger and victimization at the loss of absolute power to control your message." - Jon Stewart
Bob,
I'll never understand these county guys. They're so sensitive if you're not praising them daily.
They have Neil and their whole PR team. They have their own radio shows. They have their own cable channels. They have several friendly "blogs". They have paid PR firms. They have the Post and Gazette.
All those resources and they still can't stand that you publish several widely read hyper local news sites.
Anonymous at 1:32 - what "county guys" are you talking about? I like Bob's writing but your post doesn't make much sense.
Good reporting. I was wondering if D&B did OK at WF, and it seems like they did. Smart way to find out -- check their IPO filing!
No one is really reporting on the WF situation except Dyer. I'm not as pro-mall as he is, but I also think they were indeed too quick to tear this down. Look what Montgomery Mall did -- they just doubled down on their bet that malls will do well, and are expanding rapidly. Tysons seems to be doing well every time I go there as well. WF seems like a case of mismanagement. The location is good, and the amenities were good. They just needed to improve their retail mix and do more promotions.
Good riddance to D&B. Yes, it was a unique entertainment venue and that leaves a hole in Montgomery County's market. But good god, man, did you ever eat in the joint? The last time I was in there was over 5 years ago and the place was flyspecked and tired, the food was either deep-fried frozen stuff or barely edible blind line-cook repertoire, and the service was invisible. I hope their departure from MoCo opens an opportunity for a better operator.
What "Rocksy" really needs now is a Waffle House.
Anon/4:11 p.m. -
White Flint was no longer viable after two of its three anchors - Borders and then Bloomingdales - closed. The mall did not have a choice in either of those closings.
And it had a couple of handicaps to begin with. First, it was much smaller than the other regional malls. Second, the location is poor. It is only convenient to one major road - Rockville Pile. Wheaton Plaza is convenient three major roads. Montgomery Mall is convenient to the Beltway and I-270 - White Flint is near both both but convenient to neither. And White Flint is near but not really convenient to the White Flint Metro station, either.
Anon @ 4:11pm
Your posts has more facts than Dyer's entire series of purely subjective, hyperbolic rants about WF Mall.
*post
6:22 If you want hyperbole about White Flint, go to Friends of White Flint or Greater Greater Washington. You'd think Utopia had been established. Then you come back to cold, hard reality: no economic development plan, no Fortune 500 headquarters signing on, no chef-driven restaurants coming aboard, etc. Remember when the county representative said White Flint could only compete with Tysons, etc. if it launched a Quixotic invasion into Rockville and seized Twinbrook? Which means that White Flint officially cannot compete, as Rockville repelled the Napoleonic invasion. "Just the facts, ma'am."
1:58 - It's true they didn't have an off-ramp like Montgomery & Lakeforest malls. But the mall was successful and fully leased when the plug was pulled. They just chose to gamble on a town center, rather than find 1 or 2 new anchor tenants. Bloomingdales is said to be coming back, and Wegmans wants the old Bloomindales spot. They could have just added Wegmans and kept going.
@ 6:22 p.m. -
I believe that this is called "moving the goalposts".
Sorry, I meant @ 9:06 p.m., not @ 6:22 p.m.
Also, Don Quixote /= Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon in ego and desire for developer wealth, but Quixote in manner and logic. Turned out to be an ineffective, but wildly-entertaining combination.
It's bad form to laugh at your own jokes.
3:09 Where was the laugh? Where was the joke, for that matter?
I certainly hope that Dave & Buster's decides to open a new location in MoCo. Traveling to the Arundel Mills location can be a bit bothersome at times, so the convenience of having one very close by will be missed.
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