That's crazy. I find it sad because it has so much potential and it is just sitting there going to waste. Like you said though, it probably hurts the big wigs, so that isn't a bad thing. I bet it would be so creepy to walk through all that emptiness.
friends of mine that are more adventurous than I am and rented scooters went all up and down all the roads only to see that there is maybe a dozen functioning shops in the 3 to 4 hundred that are available. That massive hotel in the middle that I have in one of my pictures apparently isn't even open.
Who is going to rent one of these things knowing that nobody is going to come and there is no foot-traffic to speak of? I think the only way they could turn this around is if the owners offer massive incentives to prospective business owners and all of them at the same time.
I found myself being reminded how a sleepy little town of 40,000 people or so that I went to high school in was super excited about a relatively huge Outlet Village shopping mall that they built near the interstate. At first every shop was full but as time went by more and more of them dropped out until only about 1/4 of the entire place had anything in it. I recall going there one year at Christmas and saw what is probably the only Santa in a mall anywhere in USA that had nobody lining up to sit on his lap for a picture. After years of losing tons of money the owners finally closed it entirely. It was sad to see but I think whoever did their probability analysis was a dope to think that a city that small with zero tourism would be able to pull in large numbers of tourists to a shitty outdoors outlet mall that is freezing cold 1/4 of the year.
We have an outlet mall down the road in Birch Run and one up the road in West Branch. They aren't anywhere near as busy as they used to be back in the day. I think that is everywhere across the board. The indoor malls they started converting to outdoor malls, but like you said, in Michigan, that doesn't make a ton of sense. Maybe if they held a festival in that place it might bring people in initially and make them realize how cool it is. Of course the businesses aren't there to support the people. It kind of feels like a catch 22 at this point.