Sometimes a story doesn’t turn out as anticipated.
So says Business Report Editor Stephanie Riegel in her latest column, for which she recently headed to Cortana Mall—where Macy’s recently announced the store will be one of 40 underperforming locations around that country that will close—on a Sunday afternoon to see what some of the smaller tenants think about losing yet another large anchor.
“As expected, the mall was sparsely populated, especially compared to the crowds I would have found across town at the Mall of Louisiana on a weekend afternoon,” Riegel writes. “An estimated 40% of the storefronts are vacant, and a quick walk around seemed to confirm what everyone has been saying for years about the nearly 40-year-old Cortana: Its days as a retail center are limited.”
Then she spotted The Café at Cortana, a soul food restaurant with customers fresh from church lined up and waiting to order the Sunday Dinner Special.
“The restaurant’s owner and operator, Angela Stewart, hustled behind the counter, taking orders and dispensing plates of fried chicken or fried catfish with sides like green beans smothered with sausage and onions, candied yams and freshly baked cornbread,” Riegel writes. “Here was my interview, I thought: a veteran tenant of the aging mall, who would speak to the worry of the small business owners in Cortana and the steady decline of customers there.”
But that’s not the story Stewart told.
“She is a single mom and an entrepreneur who has made it at Cortana. She sees only good things there, and her optimism suggests there is a potentially vibrant future for the 1 million-square-foot mall—just not, perhaps, as a retail center,” Riegel writes.
Stewart came to Cortana in 2012, when she relocated there from The Flea Market on Florida Boulevard, where she had first opened her restaurant in 2006.
“In the more than three years since, her business has grown from two part-time employees to 10 full-time workers. Last year, she opened a bakery and coffee shop, Decadent Creations, in a space near The Café. Next month, she plans to open a third eatery in the mall in a space previously occupied by Monster Burger,” Riegel writes. “Stewart says her business is bolstered by a steady stream of customers—not just mall shoppers, but students and faculty from Virginia College, which occupies one of the mall’s anchor spaces, and employees from the other small businesses that have taken over vacant storefronts at Cortana. Many of the customers are regulars, but she sees new faces every day.”
Read the full column. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.
