Last Kmart In CNY Is Planned To Close In Mid-December THE LAST KMART IN CENTRAL NEW YORK IS CLOSING

Mattydale, N.Y. (NCC News)- The last Kmart standing in Central New York is closing it’s doors to shoppers in mid-December, right before the holidays. This may affect smaller businesses since this large retailer attracts many customers to the shopping plaza.

“If you are in a smaller metropolitan area and a few stores close, you are going to see the decline happening and stores just have a hard time keeping up,”  Economics Professor at LeMoyne College, Paul Blackley said.  “There’s just not the number of people in the income to help them stay in business so it is a changed economy.”

It has been a growing trend of bigger stores closing and smaller stores closing soon after because the foot traffic that the larger retailer would bring in, no longer comes to the mall to shop.  Reis  speaks of this national retail market trend in their Q2 2019 report.

Blackley believes stores will suffer from the loss of  Kmart. “They’re going to be hurt, they are going to lose foot traffic, they’re going to not have as many people stopping in  the mall as they did before,” Blackley said.

“The only way it will affect my business is when husbands drop off their wives at Kmart to shop and they come to my store to browse around and usually buy something,” Michel Hon said. Hon is the store manager for The Pawn Shop, directly across the parking lot from Kmart.

Some customers have been shopping at this Kmart for years and they are not happy they will no longer have a place to get deals in the neighborhood. Janis Endres loves to shop at Kmart and can’t believe they are closing and wonders what will come next.

“I just hope when Kmart leaves and the building is vacant it doesn’t attract vandals,” Endres said.

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