The infamous and long-vacant hole left in Boston’s Downtown Crossing by the closure and demolition of the Filene’s and Filene’s Basement properties was bad enough. But now, it’s set to be joined by four additional retail holes in Eastern Massachusetts – holes unlikely to be filled for up to two years.

New Jersey-based Syms Corp. bought Filene’s Basement in the summer of 2009. Syms purchased Filene’s Basement at auction, and vowed to bring the discount retailer back from the grave. Now, just two years later, Syms is closing four Massachusetts locations, leaving only three open for business – in Boston’s Back Bay, Newton and Norwood.

Filene’s Basement locations at malls in Peabody, Braintree, Saugus and Watertown average 30,000 square feet apiece, and all are set to close by the end of the year.

There are many local retail operations that would fit into the existing Filene’s locations, including Bob’s Discount Furniture, Big Lots, Ocean State Job Lot, T.J. Maxx and Marshalls. If the spaces were sub-divided, then DSW, Michael’s, Pet Smart and REI could all be candidates.

The problem is, most retail leasing activity these days – roughly 70 percent – is in relocations. Given the current uncertain economic climate, it’s unlikely a company would be expanding into any of the sites, said Donald Mace, vice president for leasing at Burlington-based KeyPoint Partners, which tracks retail real estate in eastern Massachusetts.

And while rents for a typical junior-box store, anchor-tenant space varies, right now it’s hard to get above $15 per-square-foot, Mace said.

“In today’s world, if you’re back-filling a junior-box store, it will take at least 12 to 24 months,” Mace said.

He pointed to the new Northborough Crossing development, which poached a B.J.’s Wholesale Club and a T.J. Maxx from nearby Westborough, as well as other stores, leaving four or five stores vacant in total, Mace said.

At this point, it’s just a game of retail musical chairs.

“I don’t see anyone coming in to backfill those vacancies,” he added. “There’s certainly been some interest in those, but no one knows how long it will take to amend those vacancies. We haven’t seen a ton of new retailers come in, but New England is still a place people want to do business.”

Four On The Floor

Beyond the general retail malaise, each of the four Filene’s Basement locations features their own leasing challenges.

First off, the space at Watertown’s Arsenal Mall sits in an older mall property, built in 1983. It features two levels and is bemoaned by retail real estate professionals as having a challenging configuration and somewhat nonsensical floor plan.

It doesn’t help that right across the street is a thriving, open-air strip mall anchored by a Target and Best Buy, said Ted Chryssicas, executive vice president for Colliers International in Boston.

In Peabody, the Filene’s Basement is literally in the basement of the Northshore Mall – a layout similar to the onetime flagship store in Downtown Crossing.

The Peabody location is likely to see tenant interest sooner than Watertown, since the mall itself is healthier and has a more high-end tenant mix with stores like Nordstrom and Zara, Chryssicas said. Even so, he added, finding the right tenant for basement space is like searching for “a needle in a haystack.”

Saugus’ Square One Mall isn’t on the same level as the Northshore or Natick malls, so it will be equally challenging to get a new tenant in the closed Filene’s Basement space there, Chryssicas told Banker & Tradesman. The Square One property along Route 1 is Class B, if not Class C, mall space, he said.

The most likely candidate to fill first is the Braintree location at the South Shore Plaza, a highly desirable space at the crossroads of multiple highways. Additionally, the area’s retail market is very tight, and will likely get plenty of attention from prospective tenants, Chryssicas said.

Silver Lining

The shuttering of the Filene’s stores will add roughly 120,000 square feet of space to Greater Boston’s retail supply, which may contribute to a reversal in recent retail occupancy gains.

According to a second quarter retail vacancy report from KeyPoint, the 25,000 to 50,000-square-foot contiguous space category was 9.85 percent vacant, down from 10.4 percent the same time last year. And the 10,000 to 25,000-square-foot category dropped to 7.7 percent vacancy recently, from 8.4 percent last year.

But local retail experts said every vacancy offers potential opportunity for a company looking for a foothold in the local market. Those opportunities are hard to come by when the economy is thriving, since rents are higher and space is generally tighter, said Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts.

“We’ve seen a lot of shaking out in this downturn, just as we did in the early ’90s when there was a significant housing crisis and job loss and fairly slow job gains,” Hurst said. “We lost a number of companies back then. But as consumers get a little more confident and more employers start adding to payrolls and job rolls, you won’t see this type of closure continue. And now there are bargains to be had and open storefronts and footprints to fill. Every bad story creates an opportunity for someone else, and there are a lot of companies that would like to get into New England.”