Independent retailers at Cortana Mall are bracing for the impact of Sears’ pending closure. The store’s corporate office announced earlier this month it is shuttering more than 150 stores around the country, including the Cortana Mall anchor location.
The announcement comes one year after Macy’s, another Cortana anchor, closed. In the months since, several other national retailers—The Limited, Lenscrafters and Gordon’s Jewelers—have also shuttered their Cortana stores.
For tenants like Basil Hasan, manager of Hip Hop Fashion, losing Sears could mean the difference between viability and closure. After Macy’s closed last year, his sales dropped about 25%. He’s not sure he can afford to lose another 25%—or more.
“We’ll stay as long as I’m eating,” he says. “But it will be risky.”
Joseph Toma is worried, too. The owner of the T-Shirt Factory, which makes customized T-shirts, is the longest surviving independent retailer in the mall. His store opened in 1982, when Cortana was just five years old and was the biggest retail game in the market. Back then, there was a waiting list to get in, he recalls. Now, whole storefronts are vacant and one of his silk screen artists has taken it upon herself to water the tree in the mall atrium outside their door so it doesn’t die.
“They’re cutting back on maintenance, security, everything,” he says.
Toma, Hasan and others tenants say they’re particularly concerned by the seeming lack of action of the mall’s ownership, Las Vegas-based Moonbeam Capital Investments. Despite the company’s promises three years ago when it acquired the mall to remake the property and attract nontraditional tenants, existing tenants haven’t seen any evidence of progress.
“They’re investors. They don’t understand retail,” Toma says. “When we first opened the owners were decent. They walked the floor. They listened to our concerns. I don’t know what these owners even look like.”
Toma doesn’t blame local management, Woodmont Companies. He says the staff does what it can for tenants.
“Their heart is in it, but what can they do?” he says. “Their hands are tied.”
Several attempts to reach mall management last week were unsuccessful. One day, the offices were closed in the middle of the afternoon. Another day, no one answered the phone on numerous occasions. Previously, however, mall management has forwarded requests for comment to Moonbeam’s corporate offices. In response to an email to Moonbeam last week, the company reissued a written statement from Jan. 5, in which it reiterated its commitment to “repurpose the property to bring much-needed healthcare tenants to the community as well as job-creating and traffic-driven tenants.”
Local tenants say they’re tired of talk. Shoaib Mojy has owned and operated a jewelry cart in the mall since 2001. Over the years, he has seen his business gradually dry up. On good days, he might sell $40 or $50 worth of jewelry. On many days, he doesn’t sell anything.
“I don’t know how much longer I can afford to stay,” he says. “We’ll just have to see.”
—Stephanie Riegel
