Recession makes East Valley a retail black hole

The recession has turned the East Valley into the king of empty storefronts. The region has more vacant shops than the rest of the Valley, and the area also had the biggest gain of empty space in the last three months than any other part of the Valley. The increasingly ghostly nature of strip centers is the work of overbuilding followed by a harsh correction when the recession hit. The Valley's overall vacancy rate is now 12.2 percent, with the Mesa/Chandler/Gilbert sector at 14.7 percent. "I don't think that we have been in waters like these in any of the cycles that any of us have seen," said David Josker, an associate director at CB Richard Ellis. "It's been at least two decades."

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