When the Corner Store Closes

When I was deciding where to live when I got my current job, one factor I can admit to shaping my preferences was knowing one place was close to a branch library, but its also being right behind a small shopping mall seemed very convenient too. In the years since then, though, bigger stores have opened further along the road and the mall has seemed to dry up little by little; when its small bookstore closed, that seemed to have an impact on me. It did get my attention not that long afterwards when I heard the now somewhat shabby Zellers discount department store would be replaced by a new Target as that store moved into my country. Practically all of the Zellers was taken down and rebuilt over long months of waiting, months in which the mall seemed to get that much emptier.

The Target opened at last, but I'd already heard about all the problems the stores just before it had had stocking their shelves, and things never seemed quite busy at it. By this point, the only new stores in the mall seemed ones to buy cell phones in. Two holiday seasons ago, some "temporary" stores opened further along the mall (one of them in the old bookstore), but last Christmas there weren't as many of them. Then, the news that Target would pull out of the country altogether managed to make international news. It wasn't so much that I did a lot of shopping at it myself as I passed through it on the way to the grocery store at the other end of the half-abandoned mall, but at least it was there. I can only wonder how long the big store will stand empty at one end of the half-empty mall; as much as the grocery store still seems to do business I can now wonder about the whole thing being torn down.