The Changing Face of Retail

Retail trade, a core component of the American economy and a pillar of the American experience, has undergone seismic shifts in the last half century. In the 1960s, 70s and 80s, retail moved away from main streets to main highways with the increasing popularity of the automobile and the rise of strip malls and shopping centers. The recession of the late 1980s and early 1990s severely hurt the financial viability of many small downtown shopping locations.

Even the large malls and shopping centers that dot the crisscrossing highways of America have recently shown they are no longer the ultimate beacon of American consumerism. In the Mid-Hudson Valley, malls have struggled in the past decade as e-commerce giants Amazon and others who have learned to leverage the internet for retail sales, have eroded revenues for traditional brick-and-mortar stores.