Greenacres: more signs Palm Beach County is emerging from Great Recession

Kevin D. Thompson at The Palm Beach Post, with article about empty plaza storefronts in Greenacres and a positive city manager, Wadie Atallah:

     Vacant shopping plaza storefronts isn’t an issue unique to Greenacres. Drive through Palm Beach County and you’ll see a host of dusty “For Sale” or “For Lease” signs hanging in stores where there were once customers.
     The city said it has 29 commercial plazas, with many of the smaller ones on Jog and Lake Worth roads and 10th Avenue North. Of those plazas, the city said as of February, Riverbridge and Trafalgar Square, also on Forest Hill Boulevard, have the lowest occupancy rates at 77 and 81 percent, respectively.
     City Manager Wadie Atallah said there are some plazas that are 100 percent occupied, but the average occupancy rate ranges from 85 to 90 percent.
     “To me, that’s good since we’re coming out of a recession,” he said. “I don’t know what the expectations are, but it’s almost virtually impossible to have all plazas at 100 percent occupancy all the time.”
In the mid-1990s, Atallah said, some plaza occupancy rates were as low as 50 percent.