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AURELIUS - Strolling through Fingerlakes Mall near Auburn on a recent Tuesday afternoon, a reporter sees only 15 of the 61 store spaces are open. Music echoes off empty walls and lonely storefronts. Still, Vin Gleason, the mall's marketing director, is confident that a new initiative is starting to turn things around.
The mall's occupancy rate is currently about 55 percent Gleason says in an interview in the shopping center's food court down from about 65 percent in 2013 and 2014 as the mall lost a series of national anchor tenants. Like other malls across America, the boom in online shopping and competition with high-end shopping centers has squeezed Fingerlakes Mall, which first opened in 1980. It also faces demographic challenges owing to the Auburn area's small population.
"Corporate businesses are leaving demographics like this all over the country. If you don't have an area with 50,000 people in it they're pulling out" says Gleason, who has been the mall's marketing director for three years. That's why in early December, Gleason decided to make a drastic shift in how the mall leases its storefronts. In the middle of a craft fair, he went up to the local businesses and asked them, "If I was to throw together a program that would put you in a storefront what would you say?" Three businesses signed up that very day, Dec. 13, before Gleason had even drawn up the paperwork. Today, 13 local businesses have applied and been accepted into Fingerlakes Mall's Buy Local program.
Buy Local
'Die program allows small businesses to set up short-term leases where the owners determine how many days they can afford to stay open. Local stores start with two to three days per week and slowly work toward a full-time lease, say Gleason. Business owners applying must have their business certificate and insurance to qualify.
Besides getting charged part-time rent benefits for these small businesses include free use or half-off the original price for any of the event rooms in the mall, depending on if the businesses are full-time or parttime tenants. Just having a storefront in the mall helps with advertising and marketing for these local businesses, says Gleason.
For Mike Soper, owner of Bradford Heights Delights, a bakery, catering,...