-The New Plan-
We lived near a shopping center that died a slow death as we grew older. We were not complicit, the only shops left in the Elder Village Center by the time I and my siblings were "consumers of age" sold artistic frames, upscale furniture, and designer dog food.
We, by contrast, lacked valuable art, tended toward merely "scale" furniture, and lived in constant fear of our parent's allergies.
Even before I left the area for my scale-furnished southern University, something happened to hasten Elder Village's decline.
High Point Plaza rose from the adjacent lot that had once hosted an outdoor cineplex. It was not noticeably larger, but it was new.
It was brassy, it was bold, and the owners successfully petitioned the government to rezone in their favor, against that of Elder Village.
Elder Village's final three shops of the original fourteen closed less than a year later. Five years passed. The buildings faded. I had graduated from the University, knocked around for a year, entered graduate school.
And then I returned to an incredible sight: New construction. Big promotion. New investors. Same name.
Elder Village would be reborn.
High Point Plaza was only five years old, but it quailed before a collection of caterpillars and hard hats on the muddy field that had once been their defeated enemy. The promise of new competition alone pockmarked the upstart so much that its weaker businesses folded before construction on the new Elder Village Shoppes had completed. Those retail spaces remain vacant to this day.
If High Point Plaza is to survive - and it might - it will have to tightly clutch the chiropractor's office, the stable Haircuttery, and the organic grocery, which has no local rival. To thrive, it would have to die, decay and rise under the banner of "new."
We, by contrast, lacked valuable art, tended toward merely "scale" furniture, and lived in constant fear of our parent's allergies.
Even before I left the area for my scale-furnished southern University, something happened to hasten Elder Village's decline.
High Point Plaza rose from the adjacent lot that had once hosted an outdoor cineplex. It was not noticeably larger, but it was new.
It was brassy, it was bold, and the owners successfully petitioned the government to rezone in their favor, against that of Elder Village.
Elder Village's final three shops of the original fourteen closed less than a year later. Five years passed. The buildings faded. I had graduated from the University, knocked around for a year, entered graduate school.
And then I returned to an incredible sight: New construction. Big promotion. New investors. Same name.
Elder Village would be reborn.
High Point Plaza was only five years old, but it quailed before a collection of caterpillars and hard hats on the muddy field that had once been their defeated enemy. The promise of new competition alone pockmarked the upstart so much that its weaker businesses folded before construction on the new Elder Village Shoppes had completed. Those retail spaces remain vacant to this day.
If High Point Plaza is to survive - and it might - it will have to tightly clutch the chiropractor's office, the stable Haircuttery, and the organic grocery, which has no local rival. To thrive, it would have to die, decay and rise under the banner of "new."
posted by Benedict | 1:21 AM
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