(Photo by Will Dendis)
Another bleak Hudson Valley January, another iconic brick & mortar store closing.
Sears announced today that its Kingston store, located in the Hudson Valley Mall, will close in early April. The company announced a total of 64 Kmart and 39 Sears closures.
“Sears Holdings continues its strategic assessment of the productivity of our Kmart and Sears store base
and will continue to right size our store footprint in number and size,” wrote the company in a press release.
The company said eligible workers will receive severance and have the opportunity to apply for open positions at nearby stores. (Sears locations in Poughkeepsie and Newburgh and the Kmart in Poughkeepsie were unaffected by the closures.)
The announcement follows the closure of two other anchor stores in the Hudson Valley Mall: JC Penney in 2016 and Macy’s in 2015.
I cant help but be saddened by the news, although in all honesty, it was very predictable….
Well, ‘every new beginning is some other beginnings end… Brick n’ mortar retail is declining, something will replace it. As for Hull, sorry, I don’t believe they’re in it for the long haul.
Frankly, looking at that view, I’m surprised that all anyone can see is a mall (or a medical center). Hopefully, someone else will help actualize the potential that property has…
Sorry Sears. I would have been happy to shop at your store if only my local community’s employers felt my Masters degree in Accounting and five years experience was actually work paying a living wage for!
It’s less about online shopping and more about Sears’ hedge fund owners buying the company just to lend it money at high rates so they can get a high return on their money. The company has trouble making the payments on their debt and they have to close more and more stores. The owners get their interest, also a writeoff for the loss and thousands lose their jobs. The rich get richer and the rest get poorer.
Sears Corp should have sold its assets and shut down 10-years ago. It is a long-dying brand that ironically started the goods and services delivery of virtually every proudct to our homes. Unfortunately, it didn’t keep up with the right fashion trends and has not had strong leadership for decades.
As for Hudson Valley Mall – it reflects NOT the Hudson Valley but the national trend in indoor shopping malls — they became dinosaurs in the majority of instances. Select any metropolitan region in the nation and you’ll see that the move is to basically one or two ‘power center’ malls — Garden State Plaza in North Jersey; King of Prussia in Philadelpia; Tysons in Northern Virginia/DC; White Marsh Town Center in Baltimore region; etc.
Then there are typically a few smaller semi-regional malls per metro area and the rest have either shuttered;
be demolished and re-developed as mixed use; or replaced by smaller mixed use town-center developments.
This is where HVM’s new owners Hull should do serious investment. The bit of HVM that is thriving is the north wing with Target, Best Buy, Dick’s and the Movie Theatres.
If I were Hull here’s a point by point plan that I’d pursue swiftly right the ship:
A: Consilidate all smaller retailers into the space between Target and the Theaters
B: Redevelop the Theatres with an IMAX and Entertainment venue
C: Demolish the entire mall structure beyond this
D: Build new, smaller footprint retail around the permiter of the mall structure that remains;
in this bring several new retailers to this shoppers market that fit the consumer groups in
the region.
E: Build a density of rental and condo residential to the areas once occupied by Macy’s and the
parking fields around that end of the mall; between the new residential and the new retail I would
build professional and office space targeting broadband and tech office tentants bringing online
some of the most modern office space in the region
F: Design a new, much better Logo and Brand Identity
G: Re-configure the parking lots, bring in extensive new landscaping including several hundred mature trees
H: Close the entrance ramp adjacent to McDonalds / Traffic light as that is inconvenient and congested >
this leading to a single ‘boulevard’ located further south off Rt. 9W with strong signage, branding, and
landscaping