When the mall sells, CabelTel's only real estate will be the 114-resident Pacific Pointe Retirement Inn in King City, OR, the lone piece of real estate from the defunct Greenbriar Corp. This week, AMEX put CabelTel on notice that it would be de-listed at the end of the year because shareholders' equity no longer meets the litmus test and CabelTel didn't live up to a compliance plan, filed last year when it came under fire for the same issues. In a press release, CabelTel says it will appeal.

Gainesville Factory Shops might be struggling with occupancy, but its location has attracted two hotels, Applebee's Neighborhood Grill and Cracker Barrel in the past two years, all on land either sold by or ground-leased to the outlet mall's owner. In the past 60 days, a 71-room La Quinta Inn at 4201 N. I-35 has opened right beside a 75-key Hampton Inn & Suites–both undoubtedly tied to the success of WinStar Casinos, which is one mile north across the Oklahoma line where gambling is legal and building in significant muscle power for the outlet mall and the vacant 40 acres.

The outlet center still has brand names, such as Oshkosh, GAP, Reebok and Springmaid. But with occupancy at 49%, it's no longer attracting the same number of busloads of bargain-hunting shoppers. Larger and newer outlets like the 650,000-sf shops in Allen and 1.5-million-sf Grapevine Mills Mall plus competition from massive retail developments in fast-growing Texas towns like McKinney, Prosper, Fairview and Denton and similar projects in Southern Oklahoma have cut into Gainesville Factory Shops' traffic.

“Grapevine Mills Mall was one nail in the coffin and Allen was the other,” says Ian Pierce, who is in the marketing and research division of Dallas-based Weitzman Group. “Everyone learned you can't do it on the small. We've seen the fallout in that only the extremely strong centers in that category have done well.”