10 July 2014 (21:26 UTC-07 Tango 09 July 2014)/12 Ramadan 1435/19 Tir 1393/14 Xin-Wei 4712
The aged Westwood Mall in Pocatello, Idaho, recently made a partial payment on back due taxes (actually it was just an interest payment), narrowly avoiding takeover by the government. But that’s not stopping its tenants from shutting down (like rats from a sinking ship).
Click the pics to see more
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- The Family Fun store at Westwood Mall…gone!
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- This used to be a mattress store at Westwood Mall (has anybody noticed just how many mattress stores are poppin’ up around here?).
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- I wish I had some cash. All tools 85% off, everything must go!
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- These guys are trading one dying mall for another, moving to Chubbuck’s Pine Ridge Mall this Autumn.
The Westwood Mall is one of the oldest in the area, it used to have carpeted floors and felt very 1960s-70s. The carpeting is now gone, and the inside has been walled up, making it feel like a labyrinth (it’s actually perfect for the RPG gaming store that’s hidden away in one corner of the labyrinth). The latest tenants to leave are Family Fun, a mattress store, Industrial Tool & Supply and soon C-A-L Ranch.
But these aren’t the only stores that the city of Pocatello has lost in the past month.
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- This hole in the ground, at The Crossing Plaza, used to be the home for long time The Works sandwich shop.
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- This property was used by previous owners of KPVI as their in-house construction warehouse/workshop. It’s now for sale.
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- The Raven’s Nest outdoor clothing shut down recently. Guess what it’s being used for now? Storing mattresses!
The Works Deli & Grill is supposedly moving to a new location, which hasn’t been disclosed.
Outdoor clothing store The Raven’s Nest is now being used as a mattress warehouse.
I spent almost four years working at KPVI, helping to turn their 6 & 10pm newscasts in to the number one rated 6 & 10pm newscasts in the area by 1999. Jim Rogers inherited the reins to Sunbelt Broadcasting and at the end of 1999 decided to bring in new management who wanted us to go back to the old dumb ass way of reporting local news. Those of us who refused were pushed out, the first to go was Leslie Austin (Leslie Schei), then Carey Wickersham, then me, then John Young and Dave Reichelt and Scott Stevens (who now runs his own weatherwars.info website. Hey Scott why don’t you mention me, your former KPVI News Producer AAron Hutchins?), just to name a few. Now KPVI barely even ranks in the ratings, and now its in-house construction shop is up for sale!
For more than a decade now our exalted local leaders keep pronouncing that they’ve got big employers lined up, ready to move into the area just as soon as the proper “infrastructure” is constructed (at taxpayer expense of course). Working class people can’t wait a decade for a turnaround (which explains why east Idaho has a high exodus rate, according to the Gem State’s Department of Labor), and neither can retail store owners (which have become the only ‘industry’ in town).