Lloyd Center to reopen Monday after shuttering due to electrical fire (original) (raw)
People beat the heat at Lloyd Center in Northeast Portland on Sunday, June 27, 2021.
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Lloyd Center will reopen Monday more than three weeks after a two-alarm fire damaged the Northeast Portland mall’s electrical system and forced it to close.
Shoppers were ordered to evacuate Lloyd Center on Aug. 6 after an electrical fire in the basement caused a power outage and led to smoke cascading into the mall.
While the mall will reopen to the public Monday, its iconic ice skating rink will remain closed until Sept. 5 as staff work to refreeze the rink, said Ann Grimmer, the mall’s marketing director.
“We are thankful for everyone who helped get us to this point and for our tenant’s and the community’s patience as we safely reopen,” Grimmer said in a statement.
The closure came at an inopportune time for many businesses that have already been navigating changing pandemic restrictions for the last year and a half.
Eleazar Puente, the franchise owner of the mall’s Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and Cinnabon shops, said business had picked up this summer and that he was expecting August to be busy with back-to-school shoppers.
Puente said he was able to continue paying his employees during the three-week layoff and is hoping to recover most of his losses through his insurance policy.
“That’s been what’s helping us get by,” Puente said.
Even before the fire, Lloyd Center was facing an existential crisis. Businesses have departed en masse over the last several years, and the mall lost its last anchor tenant when Macy’s left in December. Ambitious plans to re-envision the mall as an entertainment destination haven’t materialized either.
But several owners of Lloyd Center stores said they had seen a steady wave of customers coming through the mall in the months before the fire.
Troy Douglass, owner of Cultural Blends clothing shop, said his sales were booming before the fire and he was actually doing better than he had before the COVID-19 pandemic. The uptick in sales gave Douglass the cushion he needed to weather the closure and allowed him to focus on business operations — like revamping his website — while offering curbside pickup to customers.
“It’s definitely presented another challenge, but we’ve tried to stay optimistic,” Douglass said.
Faith Jennings, the owner of handmade gift shop Animal.Plant.Mineral, said the three-week closure allowed her to work in her studio and focus on her wholesale business. But she said other businesses and employees may have been harder hit by the temporary shutdown.
Jennings said she’s hopeful Portlanders will come out to support those businesses and workers when the mall reopens.
“Hopefully, this will also draw attention to Lloyd Center and people will come back and shop once it reopens,” she said.
— Jamie Goldberg; jgoldberg@oregonian.com; @jamiebgoldberg
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