Generations of American teenagers may consider the mall essential, but authorities trying to slow a pandemic did not. Virtually all U.S. shopping centers closed as the coronavirus started to spread—exacerbating the already perilous financial position many mall-based chains were in before the pandemic. So far, Neiman Marcus and J.Crew have sought bankruptcy protection, and analysts predict they won’t be the only ones. Some national retailers and restaurant chains refused to pay rent in April and are playing hardball with mall operators for May, even as stores in some markets begin to reopen. And each chain is having to navigate how extensively to staff stores, without really knowing when customers will come back in force.
To conserve cash, many chains have furloughed store employees, cut dividends, stopped buybacks, canceled orders, and delayed investing in updating stores—all things that in the long term will weaken many of them as businesses. But the industry is in survival mode right now. A recent S&P analysis found that the risk of default at many national retailers had risen quickly. To show how this crisis is playing out in America’s shopping centers, Fortune took a close look at Oakbrook Center outside Chicago, a sprawling mall owned by Brookfield Properties. Here’s who is poised to best ride out the crisis—and which of your favorite brands are hanging on by a thread.
Inside the Oakbrook Center
Source: Bloomberg
Bloomberg default risk analyzes the credit health of each company by estimating the default probability over the next year as well as other factors.
A version of this article appears in the June/July 2020 issue of Fortune with the headline “Misery at the mall.”
