WSJ ($) columnist and Clear Thinkers favorite Holman Jenkins (prior posts here) is on a roll today in his Business World column as he addresses the hypocrisy of Europe pursuing its anti-trust case against Microsoft while simultaneously indulging such transparent European-based anti-trust violators as Airbus. Money quotes:

“Antitrust is untrammeled bureaucratic whim masquerading as law and science, and sometimes the only effective check is a political check.”
“Antitrust always and everywhere ends up being a neurotic response to ephemeral issues of corporate power, yielding only when the spasms of a previous administration can be politely swept out of sight.”

Read the entire column. Good stuff.

Despite the success of Wal-Mart, operating a successful retail business in the U.S. during the best of times is difficult. In that regard, recent years have not been kind to retailers, particularly “big box” retailers — i.e., those companies that lease large, warehouse-type buildings that anchor a strip shopping center containing any number of smaller retail businesses.
As a result, many of those strip centers have lost their anchor tenants, which often prompted smaller businesses to vacate the premises because of reduced customer traffic. Moreover, inducing a new retail anchor tenant to come into a center that has already lost its previous anchor is usually a dicey proposition, so owners of such centers often are left with the vexing problem of attempting to turnaround a relatively new retail property in a market that is devoid of potential tenants. What to do?
Well, as this Thaddeus Herrick/Wall Street Journal ($) article reports, Houston is at the forefront of an innovation that is helping owners of such properties solve their problem — big chuches buying or leasing such centers to house part of the growing space needs of the churches:

Several years ago, when leaders at the 5,000-strong Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston realized they needed more space to expand their congregation, they considered building a new church on the outskirts of this sprawling Texas city. Instead, they opted for a less conventional site: a strip mall on the Katy Freeway.
Last year, Tallowood began services in a renovated 32,000-square-foot building that was formerly a Circuit City store. In addition to a 300-seat auditorium, the location now boasts 30 offices, a conference room that doubles as a day-care center and a Christian bookstore. “Not everyone comes to church for the architecture,” says Larry Heslip, Tallowood’s minister of education and administration. “Some people just like to be in a space that’s usable.” [. . .]

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