When I was a child growing up in a medium sized town in southern Minnesota, it was always fun to head up to the "Twin Cities" and hit the Burnsville Mall. This was probably not the largest of the Malls (there was Southdale, Rosedale, Brookdale and others) within the Twin Cities, but Burnsville was the closest and was large to someone who did not have any sort of mall in their own town.
I went out the other night running some errands. It was busy at Guitar Center, it was busy at Costco, but when I went to the Burnsville mall to see if I could find a specific calendar I buy for my wife every year, I was shocked when I started walking through. Just last Christmas the mall was probably 80% full in terms of full time retailers, with Christmas kiosks and temporary stores filling everything, including the hallways. This week, the stores were bare (barely 25% occupied if I had to guess), there was almost no kiosks, and there were only four open restaurants in what used to be a very significant food court.
From what I understand, the whole mall is looking for new ownership and the current owners are fighting possible foreclosure on their loan. Rumor has it that parts of the mall are up for auction and may be sold to be used for something other than retailing (generally you would think office space, but who is using offices anymore).
I did find the calendar kiosk (possibly the only open kiosk - even the coffee kiosks were closed). But there was no calendar store (the same person generally has two locations for this one mall with the store having more choices than the kiosk). Unfortunately they did not have my calendar as they only got minimal stock due to the lack of foot traffic.
I spoke with the guy who runs it and he suggested that Covid or no Covid, it's unlikely he will be coming back next season either way. Many of these retailers were hanging on a thread and the Covid shutdowns put a ton of them out of business and convinced larger chains to pull up shop. Thinking back, I didn't even see a Jewelry store open, when back in the day there were more Jewelry stores than Carter has pills (Gordons, Zales, Helzbergs, Kays, Hoff's, Wedding Day, Goodmans, is just what I can remember off the top of my head).
I get that times change and more people are shopping on line. I also get that there is still a place for attractions like the Mall of America (which seems immune from this so far). But it is sad to see what used to be a busy festive Christmas mall with all sort of Christmas action, turned into a ghost town with almost no stores and almost no customers.
5 comments:
My friends who live in Rapid City South Dakota, said the same thing about The Rushmore Mall. I worked on that back in the late 70s.
This year, because of the pandemic, millions of people are buying online.
The small businessman in retail might not recover. The giants like Walmart and Target will survive
And Costco
On Wednesday, YouTube announced that it will begin removing any content alleging widespread voter fraud influenced the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election.
In the immediate aftermath of the November 3rd election, YouTube came under fire for allowing channels to publish videos making false claims about election results. In one instance, One America News Network, a verified YouTube channel, published a video declaring that “Trump won” the election. At the time, YouTube defended its decision to let the video stand, saying in a statement, “Like other companies, we’re allowing these videos because discussion of election results & the process of counting votes is allowed on YouTube.”
The company went on to say that content from “authoritative news organizations” were “the most popular videos about the election.”
In its Wednesday blog, YouTube said that its decision to begin removing misleading election videos follows the US’s safe harbor deadline and that “enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect.” Starting Wednesday, YouTube will begin removing any new content that misleads viewers about the outcome of the 2020 election.
YouTube’s announcement follows a series of lawsuits placed by the Donald Trump campaign challenging the results of the election. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court rejected a request to block certification of Pennsylvania’s election results, making it nearly impossible for Republicans to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory in court.
In the post, YouTube said its election information panels had surfaced over 200,000 election-related videos and were shown over 4.5 billion times. The company said that it would update these panels Wednesday, linking to electoral college results provided by the Office of the Federal Register calling Biden the official president-elect.
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