Xiaoniu 小妞

Another two stores at the mall are closing their doors. Both are from big chains and the closing of two stores is unlikely to cause them too much pain. It does look really bad for the mall though.

We heard yesterday that Burger King is closing their store at the end of this month (about one week from now). They’ve been closing at 7pm for a few weeks now so we are kinda used to seeing their store dark. The only other place to get food is the pizza place and they only open up when they feel like it; which isn’t all to often.

Today Price Chopper announced to their employees that they are closing their store. They are quickly reassigning people to stores around the area so that they don’t have to fire anybody. Their doors will be closed 6pm on July 15th. It’s a real shame too. I really liked this store best.

That doesn’t really much left in the mall. The only anchors left are Burlington and Kmart. There are about 20 stores left in all, including the movie theater. It’s ever so common for people to stop by and ask, “When are you closing?” I always explain that we don’t have any plans of closing, but they really don’t care. They still like to point out the obvious and say, “This mall is dying.” No kidding.

The odd thing about this situation is that the new owner of the mall released some of their initial plans for the property. It was in the Poughkeepsie Journal. They plan to bring in some new stores like Christmas Tree Shops and National Liquidators. Price Chopper, Burlington, Kmart and Namco were all supposed to stay.

However, that was all they really said. They didn’t say when or how they were going to do this. They didn’t say how this was going to affect the existing stores. It’s almost as if they want to do nothing and keep people in the dark so that they close their stores and quietly walk away.

What they don’t seem to realize or maybe they just don’t care, is that so many people depend on their businesses and jobs at these stores to live their lives. Keeping the public in the dark is one thing. Keeping your tenants in the dark about your plans is foolish and in poor taste. I’ll sleep good tonight, I wonder how they’ll do.