retail black hole (place)

That particular commercial location in every town where virtually no stores seem to be able to thrive. To be a true retail black hole, the location has to be highly visible, thus invalidating the location as the cause of the high mortality rate. In other words, the crumbling strip mall behind the industrial park doesn't count.

A Seinfeld episode was focused on the restaurant black hole (even if it wasn't called that on the show), the one spot in town where nobody can keep a restaurant open for more than a couple of months. The retail black hole implies a larger chunk of land.

My town's retail black hole, which is right on the major road leading through the center of town, has seen the deaths of the following, among others:

• A Shoney's -- how can a restaurant with both a weekend brunch buffet and a generous senior citizen discount die?
• A Chi-Chi's -- the inability to keep one of these open (if you don't have them near you, imagine Taco Bell with Grade A food products and margaritas) implies a sinister force. The Tex-Mex dive that replaced it died itself within a couple of months, after failing to open on schedule.
• A 12-screen movie theater
• A Chinese restaurant -- though there's no shortage of these in my town, and it was inexplicably replaced with a French restaurant which ended up in a Washington-area Top 100 Restaurants list.
• A T.J. Maxx -- consignment prices without the consignment stigma.
• A Kids 'R' Us -- no demand for cheap kids' clothes??
• An independent pizza parlor -- with some of the better pizza and subs in town, too.

What makes it worse is that there's a Safeway, a Best Buy, a Kmart, and a Bennigan's in this shopping center. It's not as if nobody goes there, and it is on the main drag, so it's hardly out of the way.

There's got to be something behind it.