The shopping mall experience in Baton Rouge is a good example of what mall developers and operators can do when buying habits and high traffic locations change. The capital city has been home to three major shopping areas — the large Mall of Louisiana along Interstate 10, the Cortana Mall at Airline and Florida boulevards and the Bon Marche on Florida Boulevard.

The Mall of Louisiana opened in 1997. Bon Marche started in 1960 as an open-air strip shopping center and was enclosed as a mall when it was announced Cortana was coming. After Cortana opened in 1976, Bon Marche lost major stores.

Each time another mall opened in Baton Rouge, shopping shifted to the newest center.

The opening of the Mall of Louisiana appears to be doing to Cortana what it did to Bon Marche. Sears and J.C. Penney are closing at Cortana, the third and fourth of six anchor stores to leave.

One Cortana storeowner told The Advocate he stayed at Bon Marche until the last minute, but major stores began to leave.

“I feel like once the national stores leave, that’s it,” he said.

The owner of men’s and women’s stores at Cortana told the newspaper he might be able to hold on for a year or a year and a half.

“The reason we stay here is that rent is a little bit low,” he said. The owner said the rent at one of his stores is $1,700 a month, but he would pay $10,000 to $12,000 at the Mall of Louisiana, at the least.

The closing of J.C Penney and Sears leaves Dillard’s and Virginia College as two anchor locations at Cortana. Dillard’s has reduced its presence to a clearance store that only takes up the first level.

It took some public funding, but the Bon Marche was redeveloped as the Bon Marche Business Center. It has a mix of tenants, various offices, a computer data center and the Louisiana Development Park business incubator.

Property developers believe the same process could lead to redevelopment of Cortana. They said it has a good location, but it would require significant redevelopment. The mall could become a hub for health care, they said, because of the changes in health care delivery and the expansion of Medicaid services.

The lesson to be learned by mall owners is to accept the reality that retail shopping is undergoing tremendous change, and consider future possibilities for use of the space. The Advocate noted that Dillard’s and Macy’s aren’t adding new locations and places like Sears and J.C. Penney are closing because of business they have lost to Wal-Mart, Target and Amazon.

Lake Charles has undergone some of the same shopping transitions with changes in the type of operations downtown, at the Prien Lake Mall and along Nelson Road, McNeese Street and other areas. Civic-minded citizens have helped to revitalize downtown, and the mall appears to be holding its own.

Political, business and civic leaders who keep abreast of the rapidly changing buying habits of Americans will see their cities survive.