Wal-Mart and Kohl's Not Positioned to Help Rhode Island Mall

While the 1,000,000 million square foot Rhode Island Mall features powerful anchor stores such as Sears, Wal-Mart, and Kohl's, the actual corridors of the mall are vacant both of shoppers and stores.

One of the problems with this mall is the lack of a direct connection from Wal-Mart, built on the lower level, and Kohl's, built on the upper level forcing shoppers to utilize the mall entrances to access both anchor stores.

I believe if both stores actually had access to the mall, it would help encourage small stores to open up in the mall especially in the area closest to where the anchor stores meet the mall.

Plus it would be much easier for people to go between Sears and Wal-Mart, Sears and Kohl's, and Kohl's and Wal-Mart.

Doing any of those movements, while physically possible by walking through the mall and around, has been discouraged and most drive between the anchor stores.

The mall can still handle about 70 stores on two-floors despite the fact that the two new anchor stores did take some capacity away from the mall.

I heard both Kohl's and Wal-Mart claimed they did not have a mall connection because they are "destination" stores and that they believed shoppers going to their stores would not utilize the mall connection.

It's obvious the layout of both anchors would have to change to some degree if they created mall entrances since it would require more cash registers and a reconfiguration of stock rooms since part of Wal-Mart's stock rooms abuts the mall's wall.

These two anchor stores took over a portion of the mall and a former Filene's, which was previously a G. Fox.

In 1994, the May Department Store acquired Boston-based department store chain Filene's and convert all G. Fox's to Filene's.

In 1997, this Filene's was closed since a much larger Filene's existed at the Warwick Mall which lead this one-time anchor store to act as a community meeting room until it was finally demolished only a few years ago to make way for Kohl's and Wal-Mart.