Okay, this was announced, like, last month, and I really didn't feel a need to mention it on here. After all, they don't carry Archies, and I'll be able to order the collections through my local used bookstore. No real loss.

However, the manga is marked down to 60% off, and they have a book about drawing manga art that I'm considering getting. The thing is it comes with a CD full of clip art - for use with Photoshop. I don't have Photoshop. How much would that cost me?

Well, the store's officially closed - and the lights are still on inside. Huh?

Anyway, I wonder what will come in.

The Rainbow (or whatever it's called) in the local mall is closing as well.

The Carlton Cards closed a while ago and seems to be replaced by a kids' clothing store.

The Ritz Camera (or whatever it's called) store closed a while ago, and the Tae-Kwon-Do class moved in there from another location in the mall.

Our mall is laughably small as it is, so a store closing is a big deal.

Sounds like your mall is becoming a dump.

One WOULD assume that. However, one would first have to assume the mall was not always a dump.

One would be wrong.

Our mall has four anchor stores: Kmart, Sears, JC Penney, and Belk. Kmart and Sears are at opposite ends, as are JC Penney and Belk, and the small food court is in the middle.

When you can stand at the entrance of one store and see clear across to the entrance of another store, you know the mall is too small.

There's also a Gamestop, an fye, a Spencer Gifts, a GNC, and a few other misc. stores.

Yesterday, the Champ Sports was closed, and there were workers inside. A sign on the door thanked people for their patronage and told them to visit the store in the Paddock Mall in Ocala (an hour away). I'm not sure what to make of that.

Here's an update on my mall:

There was a restaurant called Gabby's in the Spencer Gifts / GNC corridor. It's been gone since at least last year, and nothing's moved in there.

The Ritz Camera store closed, and the Tae-Kwon-Do school moved into its location.

The Tae-Kwon-Do school's old location is now occupied by something called Coupon Hut (or something similar). It basically consists of a Pepsi cooler at one end, a desk in the middle, and various brochures for other businesses on the walls.

The Champ Sports closed.

The dollar store moved to Champ Sports' old location.

The dollar store's old location remains empty.

The Rainbow closed. Its location remains empty.

The Carlton Cards closed. In its place is a consignment shop that sells kids' clothing.

Yesterday, I noticed the Tae-Kwon-Do school is gone. The location is empty.

The Waldenbooks closed. In its place is a table tennis club. They have three tables set up. Come in and play table tennis: $3 for a half-hour or $5 for an hour. It's empty most of the time.

There has been a leak in the mall's roof by Kmart for quite a while. Buckets or trash carts are often set up to catch the rain. However, there seem to be more of them now, which means the mall owner either won't or can't pay to have the roof patched.

There's hearsay that the mall owner is having trouble with payments. If that's true, and the bank files a foreclosure action, does that mean the mall will close?

I'm not sure what happened with that. I did find a bit more info on the situation (see http://cincinnati.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/stories/2010/02/08/daily50.html), but have no idea what the outcome was. The township and the company that owns the mall are still trying to redevelop it, despite the mall having lost another anchor store last year when Dillard's closed.

Most of the malls in this area are doing pretty well still, particularly Kenwood Town Centre and Tri-County Mall.

I find stuff like the opening and closing of stores in malls fascinating for some reason. Living in Edmonton, we have a TON of malls with fairly easy access, including the largest mall in the world (which still has a ton of trouble keeping tenants, of course- there are so many huge sections that people often skip entire WINGS of the mall in a full day's worth of shopping- like the pet store/bakery/small boutiques section- the rent is low in the small wings, but still there's constant closures and openings). It seems that there's always a billion jewelry and clothing stores, but the specialty shops can have trouble staying open. I don't think I've ever seen a real MAJOR retailer close out of a mall in a good long while.

Although in my old home town, where there are two malls, one had the Sears close down and move to the other location (across the city... about twelve minutes driving ). The mall was already faltering (in a town with two malls, you do NOT want to be known as "the crappy one"), and losing an anchor store like that (and replacing it with TWO different cheap-arse used clothing stores separated by a big wall) didn't help matters. It used to be the nicer mall, but once the 'worse' one started renovating and getting newer and better stores (right around when they got a Toys 'R' Us years after I was too old to buy toys ), there was no turning back.

I think in Edmonton, we've only had one mall close-out, and it was on the far end of town, and was a really puny mall to start with. The other malls vary from "really busy" to "mostly for old people". How many malls are in your hometown, Mark? Usually I find if there's only a couple options, and one is noticeably better, it kills off the other location really fast, especially if it's as gheto as your mall sounds like. I've seen some sad malls in my day, but nothing quite as bad as "Table Tennis Club" and "mostly empty store with brochures". That sounds like a full-on death march.