Spooky Planning Terms

Halloween is upon us once again. A night of ghastly ghouls, unnerving undead, and….well, princesses and cartoon characters mulling about your neighborhood. It’s also a night of candy, lots of candy. So much that a dad tax will have to be enacted to “protect my kids’ teeth”.

But Halloween also makes me think of the spooky planning terms in planning. There aren’t many, but here are three that may make you shudder.

Dark Storefronts

The climactic points of most scary movies happen at night. The darkness typically adds to the scariness of the scene. The impacts of Dark Storefronts on a community’s downtown can be spooky as well. According to Wikipedia, a Dark Storefront or Dark Store refers to a “retail outlet or distribution centre that exists exclusively for online shopping. A dark store is generally a large warehouse that can either be used to facilitate a “click-and-collect” service, where a customer collects an item they have ordered online, or as an order fulfillment platform for online sales.”

The concept may be especially scary to those worried about their downtowns. Dark Storefronts are creeping into downtowns. Opening up in under-utilized commercial bays, but not opening their front doors. Usually, all the distribution activity happens out the back. So they don’t add anything to the activity and vitality of your downtown area.

Zombie Subdivisions

No, we are not talking about residential subdivisions populated by the undead. With residents mowing the lawn with that stereotypical limp and clammy, postmortem skin. Or sitting on their porch rocking away while unintelligibly groaning at zombie kids as they walk across his lawn.

No zombie subdivisions are quite different. Simply put, zombie subdivisions are neighborhoods that developers abandoned when money got tight. The nation saw several zombie subdivisions sprout up when the Great Recession hit. As people couldn’t afford new single-family homes with the downturn in the economy, fully developable land remained dormant. Developers would eventually disappear as they couldn’t afford the carrying costs relation to the initial development of the subdivision. Hence, the subdivision would be “left for dead”…or undead!

“Zombies were people too!!!”, by daveynin, CC-BY-2.0

Ghost Kitchens

Possibly the spookiest planning term is probably “Ghost Kitchens”. The thought of ghosts hovering around a commercial kitchen while they prepare your food is unnerving.

In general, ghost kitchens are spaces that are equipped to prepare meals for delivery-only restaurants. Also known as cloud, dark, shadow, or even zombie kitchens, they don’t usually have a presence in a community as you can’t eat there, and you typically can’t pick up your food there either.

The draw of this new restaurant concept to entrepreneurs is quite obvious when you think it through. It is similar in popularity to what food trucks have enjoyed in recent years as the initial investment is relatively low compared to starting a full-scale restaurant in a commercial district. But instead of investing in a vehicle that needs regular maintenance and inputs such as gas, they are typically investing in lower-rent areas like industrial properties that don’t need the overhead costs of a food truck.

Check out my post on Ghost Kitchens for more information on the term that might make you quiver and quake.

Know of any other spooky planning terms? Let us know in the comments section or on the social media posting of the article.