As Pierre Bossier Mall declines, one store finds it is a great spot for the Halloween season

As Pierre Bossier Mall becomes a retail husk, Spirit Halloween has chosen to set-up shop in the mall's abandoned department store space.

Over the past few years, Pierre Bossier Mall has suffered a serious decline in revenue, as well as lawsuits regarding loan payments, and most businesses are unable to remain viable. Approximately 32 store spaces inside the mall are empty.

Spirit Halloween has garnered a reputation for scouting out deserted retail real-estate, opening Spirit Halloween stores that stay open for about 10 to 12 weeks, before leaving the space deserted once again.

Now, Pierre Bossier Mall has become the newest location for a Spirit Halloween storefront.

Spirit Halloween takes over abandoned Pierre Bossier Mall

Spirit Halloween has become a some-what ubiquitous, at least during the Halloween season. Each year, seemingly overnight, in cities all over the U.S., Spirit Halloweens will open in previously abandoned buildings.

Then, once Halloween has passed, these Spirit Halloweens pack up their inventories, vacate the premises, and lie in wait until the next year. During the Halloween off-season, the company begins its search for vacated properties with temporary-leases.

As more and more big-time retailers depart from store locations, and leave behind empty structures with no other businesses to fill the spaces, Spirit Halloween has opened more stores than ever.

Since Spirit Halloweens are open for only over a month out of the year, the business opts to enter short-term leases on buildings and retail spaces rather than building permanent store locations, or signing long-term leases.

It only takes nine to 11 days for Spirit Halloween to prepare and open one of these temporary stores. Since store openings move at such a rapid pace, Spirit Halloween isn't able to devote much attention to details of the stores' internal infrastructure.

Inside some stores, both patrons and employees alike have said they experienced air conditioning outages at temporary store locations. Some have also said that they have visited stores where multiple plug-in fans had been setup, and were being used as a form of make-shift air conditioning.

According to Spirit Halloween, the retail entity looks for certain criteria when it comes to selecting a location for stores. The corporation looks for retail spaces in areas such as ‘lifestyle’ centers, strip malls, free-standing stores, major malls and popular retail locations.

On Spirit Halloween’s website, there is a page providing additional details regarding ‘ideal’ locations for potential landlords. The webpage says that the brand aims to set up stores within communities that have a population of at least 35,000, with an adequate amount of residents living within a three-to-five radius, as well as areas with a car count of at least 25,000 vehicles per day. Also, Spirit Halloween typically decides upon retail spaces that are between 5,000 and 50,000 square feet.

Additionally, the company specifically seeks out three-month leases, from early August to early November, for retail space. Within the leases is a 'kick-out clause' that allow the property owners to back out of the leasing agreement if a more permanent tenant is found before the month of June.

This has proved to be a reliable process for the business because most of these large, empty spaces are deemed mostly unusable within local economies.

Spirit Halloween, and its process of acquiring storefront, is said to be a by-product of an urban-development approach that has been dubbed "The Suburban Experiment."

"The Suburban Experiment" is an urban-development approach that is categorized by a heavy investment in permanent structures such as large retail buildings. The constructions produced are often hard to repurpose if the businesses inhabiting them, which are typically large chains, decide to leave the building or go out of business.

What's left in the wake of these large chains are vacant, spacious retail buildings that local businesses are unable to afford, or do not occupy because of unnecessary space.

This is when Spirit Halloween swoops in, occupying these unused spaces for as long as needed and then leaving them to fall into disuse once again.

This article originally appeared on Shreveport Times: As Pierre Bossier Mall declines, one store finds it is a great spot for the Halloween season