This was how it always was going to end: the reckoning of Bossier City throwing away tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on something that now is little more than a rejected waystation for electric vehicle chargers.

For many years the writing has been on the wall concerning what’s now known as the Louisiana Boardwalk Outlets. Opening just over two decades ago to great fanfare, the outdoor mall most recently sold for less than a fifth of its cost to build and since continues to hemorrhage lessees. In the past month, four tenants— including three of the hospitality venues, now leaving only two–have abandoned the area, making almost 40 retail spaces empty.

That adds to a completely discouraging picture. By the middle of last month, of the 185,000 square feet of leasable space, about 77 percent was available. Since then, the subsequent closures will add a few thousand more feet of empty space – keeping in mind that most of the remainder is dominated by the two remaining restaurants, a movie theater, and a church.

Nationally, the concept of outdoor malls (or, as they prefer to be called, “lifestyle centers”) was hopping in the early part of the century. So, when the city was approached with the idea of taking largely undeveloped land and putting it into use, it seemed like a good idea. A return on investment from property and sales taxes seemed more than adequate to justify spending $20 million on creating a street layout, extending in water and sewerage, and shoring up the river bank with a seawall (part of that money was going to be spent on the final reaches of the Arthur Ray Teague Parkway in any event).

But then the city idiotically gave the developer an expensive free gift for usage in the form of a parking garage adjacent to the property adjoining essentially the separate Bass Pro Shop retailer that had opened a year earlier. It’s unclear whether the developer solicited it, but the chuckleheads on the City Council and Democrat then-Mayor George Dement all went for it – for absolutely no good reason. Basic infrastructure was one thing, but directly aiding a particular builder by giving away something that only could be used by that owner was something government has no business upon which to blow taxpayer money.

Whether it a matter of the city feeling it couldn’t land the opportunity or the developer threatening the city that it wasn’t profitable to build it without the garage, the city’s answer should have been negative and telling the developer that, if this was a deal-breaker, then don’t let the door hit him on the way out. And now we see why, when the inflation-adjusted value of the property when last sold three years ago actually was less than the $21.5 million initial cost of the garage: the city was never going to make this money back on this kind of concept.

Yet city politicians appeared deluded by the idea – which would replicate itself a few times over the next two decades – that there existed magic bullets like the Boardwalk (and previously the arena, and subsequently the Cyber Innovation Center, and so on) which could cure whatever economic development ailments the city suffered if just fired, at considerable taxpayer expense, of course. But it was rank stupidity to think plunking down a bunch of retail establishments could entice enough consumption to bring the city the economic growth it craved in an egomaniacal quest to turn itself–through big government fiat–into a diversified center of wealth creation, rather than a bedroom community highly dependent upon government and next-door Shreveport, if nothing else just to count coup on Shreveport. These bozos should have known you can’t shop your way to prosperity.

The whole Boardwalk idea was ill-suited to bring about any kind of economic transformation. For one thing, there was that whole Internet thing starting to drive physical retailers into the ground, and especially perniciously affecting malls which already had been on the decline for two decades. And, keep in mind the whole mall idea began as an indoor concept, partly to avoid uncomfortable weather, and the hot summer months didn’t exactly encourage patronage if the goal was to suck people in from afar who would wander from store to store with stops in restaurants or food vendors to refuel.

Because that was the original plan. Unless you drew a significant out-of-region crowd, you simply were beggaring other area shops and entertainment venues, including those in Bossier City not already beggared by the arrival of casinos a decade earlier. And the Boardwalk never did achieve that. Nor were casinos, that at the beginning (the arrival of Margaritaville did place one somewhat closer) weren’t that nearby, going to grant significant spillover of out-of-town patrons: gamblers are there to gamble and when they need a break the casinos do everything possible to keep them in the casino with their own shops and food/drink establishments.

The “Field of Dreams” strategy pursued by the city—authored in part by three then–City Council members, Republican David Montgomery, Democrat Bubba Williams, and independent Jeff Darby, all of whom will be leaving the Council at the end of this month—might have been enough to cover the infrastructure and increased service costs, such as police and fire protection. But it was never going to compensate for the giveaway of the parking garage. Recently, Republican now-Mayor Tommy Chandler admitted as much.

Chandler, who ran against Montgomery in 2001, seems unlikely to have rallied forces to stop the folly had he beaten Montgomery (or the other rube elected at-large then who bought into this dreck, Tim Larkin), given his response to the issue now. He’s chosen a jawboning strategy to get the owners to tell him something—anything—about the future revitalization of the properties. He’s talked to the general manager, which he proclaims was unproductive, and now claims he’ll engage in a sit-in at the owner’s office in Texas to get answers (which means business as usual at City Hall, since you could seat a cardboard cutout of Chandler in his office chair and basically replicate the policy-making influence he has had on the city during his term, while the City Council’s graybeards—including Montgomery, Williams, and Darby—have run amok until recently).

Good luck with that. Boardwalk ownership owes nothing to the city, knows the city can’t afford to cut off access to the garage or streets, and they can tell Chandler to pound sand. At least Chandler has stated—two decades too late for the city—that no extra financial largesse is coming the Boardwalk’s way.

Offering at least more leadership than is Chandler’s wont, one of the councilors having to pick up from the mess left by the Council graybeards, Republican Chris Smith, has tried to engage ownership as well. But you can’t solve a problem if you don’t define it in realistic terms–which he hasn’t.

Smith asserts the Boardwalk was founded as an “outlet strip mall” (see the above about “lifestyle centers”), and he appears to want it to embrace that format through reconstructing it into smaller spaces.

However, that strategy caters to the same delusion that shopping creates wealth—and comes with the same baggage that notion has—that makes it fail. It’s making prime real estate into a bigger version of the Arcadia Outlet Mall (minus Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days to boost sales) just to the east. That worked out so well, huh?

Smith also claims that the property isn’t “dying.” If that’s so, I’d hate to see what “living” is like. Like Pierre Bossier Mall isn’t dying either–facing the same economic and social dynamics. Still, give Smith points for trying to improve a situation not of his own making, and he also might onto something.

Both Smith and Chandler have suggested mall repurposing. In fact, a sign this may be on tap is that the owners have been letting leases expire and move to month-to-month. Unfortunately, the Boardwalk would be a difficult property to repurpose–and has trends working against it.

The lifestyle center concept continues to be the wave of the future for these developments, but that means decreased emphasis on retail and increased emphasis on entertainment, health, and sports. That is the opposite direction the Boardwalk has been heading—now left with just the pair of restaurants, the theater (which isn’t going to cut it), and a church, which is episodic in use and attracts next to no itinerant foot traffic. That isn’t the answer either.

Worst of all, the two biggest trends in repurposing can’t be options for the Boardwalk: introducing a residential aspect and filling out parking space. There’s no vast acreage of parking lots to fill and around which to repackage existing buildings into residences—necessary because there would be little interest in living in places more than a trivial distance from available parking and requiring the ability to walk more than short distances to amenities. Because there’s the city-owned parking garage.

In retrospect, the absolute worst thing the city could have done was to build—using taxpayer dollars—the garage: an immovable structure useful only for narrowly defined purposes and an impediment by its very nature to becoming part of something more useful. And you didn’t have to be a savant to see this: it was obvious 20 years ago. There was no need to act as a sugar daddy out of desperation to make a big splash and draw attention to yourselves as big fish in a small pond (which could have been done far more cheaply, in any event, by building a monument to yourselves).

So, Bossier City is left with a white elephant that has become so useless to those who paid for it that, some months ago, the city rejected its use for the installation of electric vehicle chargers, brought on by hunger for an unneeded federal grant. Even though this recent waste of money runs just about a third of a percentage point of the amount blown on the garage, the fact that it’s still going on tells us how little the ethos of city governance has changed—even after two decades of unforgiving experience.