About the Cover: Gone

I hate to begin the year with a downer, but I chose the new defunct Marquee Cinemas for the first header of 2015.

There are lessons to be learned here.  There is room for bad luck, but for the most part, in the business world, you get what you deserve.  Grouping the movie theater and the mall complex of which it was a part...  Treat your customers with indifference, contempt for the media, failure to modernize and improve, failure to promote, and this is what you get.

The mall is now mostly empty, and Marquee closed this part of its chain.  I feel sorry for the people who worked there.  They deserve better.

It's amazing how there are more people living in downtown Scranton, and the mall/theater can't attract them around the corner to take in a movie and walk across the street to buy a pair of socks.
The mall is now 75 per cent vacant.  Predictions of a new anchor store coming, along with two other companies interested in leasing the theater space are still being tossed around.  Pardon me if I raise a skeptical eyebrow.

Scranton is now without a movie theater.  On the surface, it's not a big deal.  Cineplexes are just a very short drive away, in Dickson City and Moosic.  But, this is a symbol of something more-- the empty box office above, no clues, no ideas, no spirit, and what looks like a dark 2015.