The shopping mall in 2025 is walking along a precarious precipice, with more retail shops closing and consumers shopping more online. Two Flinthills Mall tenants recently announced closures, leaving people to wonder if the mall era is coming to an end.
With the closure of two Flinthills Mall stores — Buckle and Bling — the Gazette reached out to mall management to find out more.
“Buckle informed me last month in December, and Bling probably around the first of the year,” said Flinthills Mall Manager Clarence Frye.
Buckle recently shuttered its storefront, and Bling will follow suit Jan. 20.
“They’ll close and pack out that following week,” Frye said. “They haven’t been replacing anything…no deliveries are coming in. I’ve texted back and forth with the owner of the company, or at least my contact out there, the guy that originally started the company, and they’re closing.”
He indicated the mall had 22 stores but is now just over 80 percent capacity with 18-19 establishments. However, the empty spaces are concentrated in the center, creating the impression that the mall is empty.
“When JCPenney went out, they dropped us down to 65 percent capacity,” Frye said. “And then Dunham’s came back in and obviously boosted us back up. It’s just glaring because they’re (empty stores) all right there in the middle. So people that are walking in here, they look at it and they say, ‘Oh, this is sad.’”
As it stands, Sutherlands, Dunham’s Sports, the Flinthills 8 theater and newly arrived Harbor Freight have become the anchor businesses. While not true anchors, Flinthills 8 and Harbor Freight have been instrumental in maintaining occupancy above 80 percent.
Frye said he has reached out to national chains to gauge their interest in setting up shop at the Flinthills Mall. He said most of these retail corporations are excited about the retail industry heading into 2025 but reticent about establishing a presence in smaller markets. He cited declining sales volume as the reason why Buckle and Bling left town. Though there aren’t stores in the queue to replace the departed retail establishments, Frye said mall ownership has given him the discretion to be flexible with potential tenants.
“We are beginning a kind of a local area campaign to see if there is anybody thinking about relocating or maybe opening a storefront kind of thing,” he said. “The owners have given me a pretty wide berth on the negotiations I can have with anybody who wants to move in here. You see on Facebook or you see on some of these sites that the mall charges too much rent. Well, I’m able to negotiate that stuff.”
And despite all of the negative news and commentary about shopping malls and brick-and-mortar retail, Frye said Flinthills is surviving.
“The mall is in fine shape. The mall is not going to close.”
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