mall

Champlain Centre mall
Photo by Mike Betts

JC Penney, located in the front of Champlain Centre mall in Plattsburgh

"Alternative Silvermine was a pothead's dream store." College student Pauline Ramsey said about the Rasta-bohemian, incense selling, hippie store once located in the Champlain Centre Mall. The store welcomed people into an ambience adorned with posters of Bob Marley and Dave Matthews, smelled like patchouli oil, and provided colorful, animal-friendly clothing for a reasonable price. Ramsey favored the store because it had all the "psychedelic stuff" she liked. Much to the dismay of Ramsey and other hippie-going college students, the Alternative Silvermine is no longer available in Plattsburgh.

As bogus as it is, the mall in Plattsburgh is taking out most of the stores that college students cherish. I found out the hard way one particular day when I expected to make a purchase at Waldenbooks and found that the store was no longer there.

The Champlain Mall is quite small

The Champlain Centre is the home for paid mall-walkers to wonder around the one-story establishment and for Plattsburgh patrons to shop to their heart's content. It also welcomes Canadians who cross the border just for a delicious bite of a homemade, soft pretzel from Auntie Anne's. But going back as far as 1997, the Champlain Centre Mall has been losing stores left and right due to certain circumstances. Sterling Optical, World Safari, CVS, and the dollar store are just a small number of the places once found in the mall, but have left. People who shop regularly at the mall, such as myself, who find that they are running low on cigarettes can no longer purchase them in the mall seeing as how there is no longer a CVS.

Shopping centers located throughout New York State can be described as a two-story shopping spree adorned with various clothing stores, music stores, sports stores, and so on. The Crossgates mall located in Guilderland, not far from Albany and owned by the Pyramid Management group in Syracuse, shares ownership with Champlain Centre but a person wouldn't know by looking at it. The Crossgates mall is a shopping spree while the mall in Plattsburgh is a pitiful one-level establishment with only seven differentclothing stores, one music store, and no sports lack of stores within the mall stores, as of yet. General Manager Kurt Pluckhorn of Champlain Centre says that demographics play a big part in deciding what stores go into a mall and what stores are taken out. Plattsburgh is a small city compared to the size of Albany and as you increase demographic, there is a greater depth in retail stores.

Photo By Micheal Betts

The Great Disappearing Trick

Why are stores disappearing from the mall in the first place? According to Pluckhorn, malls are like landlord companies to the stores that they have. Stores within the malls have retail leases for an extended period of time that they must follow just like a person would have a lease on an apartment that they were renting. CVS, which was once located in Champlain Centre, had a 10-year lease just as GAP and Old Navy do. Taking a look at the drugstore retail market, older stores such as the one in Champlain Centre did not have a pharmacy in it. CVS decided to close its branch within the mall because of this reason. When it comes to the Toys-R-Us branch that was once located in the mall, the legal term "option to relent" comes up. This means that the mall, or "landlord company" has the right to recapture the space without notice but the mall has to replace it. Once they are asked to leave, they still owe every months rent that was discussed in the lease. Most tenants leave on their own because of the price of these leases.

Taking a look at demographics again, competition is also important on why stores are leaving the Champlain Centre. Toys-R-Us was in direct competition with K-B toy store located in the same mall, as was the Parade of Shoes with its owners Payless Shoes. Parade of Shoes is no longer located in the mall and Borders bookstore is now in the same space that Toys-R-Us once was. Two competing stores within the same mall mean that one store is going to make more money than the other, and Plattsburgh is too small of a city to support this.

Customers Choose the Stores

So out of the many stores that once resided in the Champlain Mall, how many and what kind of stores are going to fill their places? If I had my way, not only would the mall have more music stores, but a better variety of eating establishments at the so-called "food court" as well.

Pacific Sunwear, bringing "skater-type" clothing to the people of Plattsburgh has already moved in and Cherry Bone has a new location within the mall with its skateboarding apparel. The mall is also looking forward to a Dicks Sporting Goods store in the year 2004, but where the store will be placed has not yet been decided.

"Customers are the factors that decide what stores are put into a mall," says Pluckhorn. Taking a look at demographics again, stores are put in based on a fact for need. The reason that a sporting goods store hasn't been put in Plattsburgh yet is because a real need for one hasn't come up. Stores such as Pacific Sunwear are now prevalent in order to target the nation's number one consumers, teenagers. "We are not a major metro area," Pluckhorn said. According to this quote, North Country people must be concerned with tractors and farm apparel then, not basketball hoops and golfing bags.

Just Another Rumor

Rumors are constantly going around that eventually the mall will either cave-in or closedown due to the number of stores being lost. Pluckhorn denies this ever happening and calls it an urban legend. Champlain Centre has the only enclosed movie theatre around and people in Plattsburgh want to take their families on the weekends to go shopping. Besides, if Champlain Centre were to closedown, then where would Canadians get their pretzels?

Take a Stand

Give us your opinion on what stores should be put in the mall and what you think about stores that have gone.