Thursday, May 11, 2023

Progress

 

I stumbled upon the scene above while doing some aimless wandering the other morning.  Crews are ripping off the front of the building that was most recently Burlington, before it moved to Dickson City.  Rumor has it a near by retailer is abandoning its rapidly deteriorating shopping center and will take up a portion of the old Burlington building.


This shopping center has a long and sad history,  It once bustled.  Now, it's mostly empty.
The main building began life as Masters, a huge discount store.  It didn't last long.  Independent Merchants Association and an outlet mall followed.  I liked them.  They didn't last.  This was also home to a "theater" that showed movies for $1 admission.  I saw one movie there, "Dave."  It became one of my favorite films.

The rest of the shopping center housed a supermarket, which would have been at my back when I took this shot.  It's claim to fame became just about the only place you could find cans of Canfield's diet chocolate fudge soda.  Delicious.  

There were some other cool stores here-- a pretty good pizza shop tucked in to a corner.  Carvel!  Packard Outlet, which sold men's clothing.  They all disappeared.  There was a Dollar General here for a while.  You know a shopping center is in trouble when DG deserts it!

The only thing left is Big Lots,  and a hair shop in a separate building at the shopping center's entrance.

The building is on a very busy Business Route 6, but it was never a hugely successful shopping center.  I believe it was hurt when Sugerman's next door went belly up.  Plus the Casey Highway took away some of the vehicle traffic.

I wonder if anything here will ever work.