I live in an actual village in southern New Mexico, the closest "city" of 30,000ish, Alamogordo, (25 minutes away) has one alleged mall what has a JC Penney on one end and had a KMart on the other. The latter closed last year? Year before? and has since been subdivided into a Harbor Freight and a Melrose Place with plenty of space left for other things yet.
The mall is pretty run down with LOTS of vacant space. It was sold to some company that bought the mall in Gallup (NW corner of the state) and renovated it and got it up to 100% occupancy, so maybe there's hope for us.
Alamogordo, when I moved here, had two grocery stores: Walmart super center and Lowe's (local/regional chain). When Walmart opened a small store, there were 5 grocers. Then Walmart opened the super center and all of them died except the Lowe's, until about 3 years ago when Albertson's came back to town and finally gave us an alternative, whereupon Walmart opened a Neighborhood store.
Retail is a really weird thing. We lost our small Sears store, our call center, the KMart, they tried to build a Starbucks but after the building was completed the foundation cracked and it turned out they build it over the property line of the Ford dealership next door. We did get a Hobby Lobby, that brought a few jobs back along with the Harbor Freight. Now we've got a manufacturer coming in that makes truck ramps, so that'll be 3 dozen jobs or so, but they're not going to pay that great. It might form a hub though, so that might help the area.
But no book stores. We had one, Hastings, the entire chain died and I was hoping for an FYE as they have an area presence, but no joy. We have to drive 90-120 minutes for a book store.
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Date: 2019-01-23 07:01 pm (UTC)The mall is pretty run down with LOTS of vacant space. It was sold to some company that bought the mall in Gallup (NW corner of the state) and renovated it and got it up to 100% occupancy, so maybe there's hope for us.
Alamogordo, when I moved here, had two grocery stores: Walmart super center and Lowe's (local/regional chain). When Walmart opened a small store, there were 5 grocers. Then Walmart opened the super center and all of them died except the Lowe's, until about 3 years ago when Albertson's came back to town and finally gave us an alternative, whereupon Walmart opened a Neighborhood store.
Retail is a really weird thing. We lost our small Sears store, our call center, the KMart, they tried to build a Starbucks but after the building was completed the foundation cracked and it turned out they build it over the property line of the Ford dealership next door. We did get a Hobby Lobby, that brought a few jobs back along with the Harbor Freight. Now we've got a manufacturer coming in that makes truck ramps, so that'll be 3 dozen jobs or so, but they're not going to pay that great. It might form a hub though, so that might help the area.
But no book stores. We had one, Hastings, the entire chain died and I was hoping for an FYE as they have an area presence, but no joy. We have to drive 90-120 minutes for a book store.