A friend of ours had a baby yesterday, so my wife wanted to swing by The Children’s Place Outlet in the Marketplace on Route 27 for some gifts.
The outlet always is busy, which makes the vast emptiness that characterizes the rest of the center that much more startling. There are maybe four open retail shops here — representing maybe a quarter of the usable space.
Part of the reason is that the center is old and in need of renovation. But that’s only part of it. A newly built strip mall down the street and the recently upgraded Kendall Par Shopping Center (now Town Place) also have large amounts of empty retail space.
Vacant storefronts, unfortunately, are the norm these days — it is nearly impossible to find a mall of any size that can claim no vacancy. Add this to the stagnant job market and one really has to question the president’s assertion that the private sector is holding its own and the governor’s boast of a New Jersey miracle — proving that both parties are out of touch with what is happening out here in the real world.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Hank Kalet 