East Grand Fork’s River Mall is thriving – Grand Forks Herald

Matthew Conley, owner of Tech Guru in Grand Forks, recently opened a satellite location in East Grand Forks’ River Mall. When a previous comic book store business left the space, he jumped at the chance to have a presence in the mall.

“This is a better location,” he said, compared to his North Washington Street shop, where parking was minimal and he shared a building with another business. That shop will move to the former Valley Dairy on South Washington in a couple of weeks.

“The exposure here has been amazing. When they have movie openings, people are walking in and asking, ‘What do you guys do?’ So that’s really been boosting our business,” he said.

The bulk of Tech Guru’s business is repair of phones, tablets, computers and gaming systems, and sales of accessories for those items.

“This spot is for quick repairs, replacing screens, batteries, charge ports, whereas we’ll do the soldering work and data recovery from the Grand Forks location,” Conley said.

The River Mall is thriving. It has 14 businesses located in 16 suites, with a couple of businesses occupying more than one space. It also features the 15-screen River Cinema, the only movie theater open in the Grand Cities.

The success of the area’s malls is mixed. Built in 1978, Columbia Mall in Grand Forks is faltering – a shell of what it once was. Scheels and JCPenney are the remaining anchors with limited retailers inside. Locally owned and managed Grand Cities Mall, which debuted in 1964 as the first indoor shopping mall in North Dakota, is doing better and features a variety of businesses and services, including the city’s Motor Vehicle Department.

River Mall’s owner-operator Penny Stai is not surprised Conley’s business is doing so well. Her team has worked hard to keep the mall attractive, clean and modern with regular upgrades. Her family has been in the theater industry for 43 years.

“We started with the Blackduck Theater in Blackduck, Minnesota, and then years later opened the Fosston Theater in Fosston, Minnesota, and then the Grand Theater in Crookston, Minnesota,” she said.

The River Cinema opened in 2007. Her parents first leased the building, about 90,000 square feet, from the city and her father, Bob Moore, created the movie theater inside. When her parents retired, she and her brother, Brian Moore, purchased the mall as well as the Grand Theater from them in 2020.

“Because we had to shut down for five months that year (due to COVID), we did a lot of remodeling during that time to keep the staff employed. It was a rare opportunity. We used that time wisely, did lots of painting, cleaning, reflooring, things like that,” she said.

She believes the River Mall has been so successful because of regular investments in the building to stay up-to-date, has smaller and affordable rental rates, and management is responsive to its tenants. Stai truly cares about the customer experience.

“If you don’t constantly put money into your building, into your business, it’s going to become old and out of date. We put a tremendous amount of money into it all the time, millions of dollars,” Stai said.

Some of those upgrades have included new flooring, new lighting and updated bathrooms. The movie theater has gone through renovations, too, including the installation of 450 luxury recliners in six of the auditoriums. New laser projectors are also being added.

Stai is an on-site owner and lives in an apartment inside the building. She’s there every day, making sure everything is running smoothly with the tenants, the business and her 45 employees.

“I meet with the renters. If they need anything, they text me and I take care of it right away. I keep the rentals within reason, they’re quite a bit cheaper than other places. The people come in and stay a long time,” she said. “One of the reasons they stay is because if their air conditioning goes out, I fix it. If there’s a problem, we take care of it right away. We’re very responsive, I hope, that’s our goal.”

Tim Tweten owns TNT Outfitters, which has a storefront in the building along DeMers Avenue. His clothing store has been in business since 1983, and sells a lot of safety footwear and work clothes. Many of his customers work at the American Crystal sugar beet processing plant and area construction companies. He likes the location because it’s along a busy thoroughfare and can be seen from the street.

“I have a lot of good customers who come from northeast North Dakota and northwest Minnesota,” he said. “Minnesota has no sales tax on clothes or shoes, I like to remind people.”

Further east along the building sits Bleu Goods Boutique, owned by Paula Kallinen and her daughter, Aubrey. The shop has been there about a year and a half, Paula Kallinen said, and sells clothing, jewelry and home decor. The women also own and operate seasonal shops in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and sell their merchandise at specialty shows throughout Minnesota and North Dakota.

“We make 90% of the jewelry in the store and design the graphic tees that are screenprinted here in EGF by another small business,” she said. “We moved over from Grand Forks. There’s no tax on clothing, it’s got great curb appeal and what I like the most is that most of the businesses around us are locally owned,” Kallinen said. “We think it’s very important to keep these local businesses within our community because if we don’t, the town dies. It’s very important for the storefronts to be rented out.”

Stai said it’s important for the community to have a nice place to go. The mall is the centerpiece and a destination of downtown East Grand Forks.

“You should be able to drop your kids off and not worry. We’re strict on loitering. We want it to be a clean, good, family-friendly building,” she said.