Accord­ing to the Boston Globe, Best Buy Co. today signed a lease for the for­mer Tower Records/Virgin Mega­s­tore space on the cor­ner of New­bury St. and Mass Ave. But there is already an ample Best Buy store in Fen­way, a brief 10 minute walk from that site. And another at the Gal­le­ria, a mere mile and a half away.

How many Best Buys do we need?!

I’m already freaked out that there is a Bor­ders book­store open­ing on Boyl­ston Street, just a half-mile from the Bor­ders book­store at Down­town Crossing.

Mar­ket sat­u­ra­tion is noth­ing new. You can walk out the front door of my office build­ing and see three dis­tinct Sprint stores, two Cin­gu­lar stores, and a few other cel­lophone pur­vey­ors with­out even turn­ing your head.

Mean­while, com­pa­nies all over Down­town Cross­ing are going out of busi­ness. I tried to go to the century-old cut­lery store the other day, but I found that the build­ing was being gut­ted and refit­ted with lux­ury con­do­mini­ums. As I write, a crane is being assem­bled to demol­ish the Lit­tlest Bar. Two of the three cam­era shops have been shut­tered. And, inex­plic­a­bly, the Mass. Bible Soci­ety claims to be going out of busi­ness too. I’m look­ing for­ward to hav­ing these out­fits replaced by more homoge­nous chains. It will help “revi­tal­ize” this place.

At least Sam LaGrassa’s World’s #1 Sand­wiches is still in busi­ness. I expe­ri­ence a strange Pavlov­ian sali­va­tion when­ever I walk past their door. Tasty stuff.