Woes of a Shopping Center Emptying

I cut grass yesterday. Afterwards, my neighbor Jim came over with his edger and edged the driveway. As he edges I go behind him and blow the debris. Then, afterwards, as always we catch each other up on the latest gossip, man to man style. Instead of talking over a clothes line we talk while holding yard tools.

Which reminds me, I am not sure cloth lines are allowed now…. You never see them anymore, I suppose that in another example of the yuppie presence influence again.

Jim told me they are closing the Krogers Grocery Store slightly less than two miles away. That is a shame. That is a shame.

There is another Krogers exactly 2 miles in the opposite direction but it just isn’t home. It is bigger and in a more influential area. You will not see a workman with a name-tag sewed above his breast pocket there shopping. The store is designed to appeal to the yuppies, which have the money. It is a matter of economics – cater to the rich and ignore the others.

I know this is just about the same subject as I talked about yesterday. But this is a new development since then.

The shopping center that the closing Krogers is out has mostly empty stores now. A Radio Shack moved out two weeks ago. On one end are two stores an Italian restaurant and an office supply store and in the center is/soon to be “was” Krogers and on the other end is a Judo training place, a dance studio, and Buffalo’s Restaurant. And about 10 or more vacant stores.

After Krogers leave I am afraid it will cause a vacuum. And suck the five or so remaining businesses away.

This shopping center is across from a high school. I suspect after the adult traffic quits then you will see more graffiti, more clusters of kids hanging out, and in general a place to avoid.

About the same thing happened to another shopping center not far away. It emptied itself (their main store was a Winn-Dixie), and gangs hung out there and one night was a gun fight and a kid got killed. The state of Georgia moved in and opened up a drivers license place which took up a good portion of the shopping center and little restaurants and things returned.

Why are all the stores lifting their skirts and running? The shopping center is getting the aged look about it. Or, it doesn’t look modern enough. And it is not that old, they built it ten or so years after we moved to the area. Where the shopping center is used to be a regular size house, like ours, with a swimming pool and a patio in the back, and behind that was a big lake. It was an eye pleaser. But greedy developers had to make a shopping center out of it, it is in their blood… now, they don’t want anything to do with it.

That is progress.