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Businesses leave Kmart center
The Hard Times Cafe, a 16-year commercial resident of the Herndon Centre, shuttered its doors for good at 2 a.m. on Memorial Day.
“The bottom line is our lease was up for renewal and the rents that they are looking for are just not conducive to the sales that store is generating,” said Hard Times Vice President of Marketing Doug Welsh. “It is unfortunate because we love Herndon. It is a very sentimental place for us and it has been a great, great neighborhood and a great, great store for us, but the economics of the situation are such that it doesn't make sense to continue at that particular center at those prices.”
Hard Times is not alone. Both Gold's Gym and Dharma Music, also tenants of the strip mall most Herndonites refer to as “the Kmart shopping center,” will be closing in July when their respective leases end.
“Our lease was raised to what essentially comes out to be almost double,” said Gold's Gym General Manager Alvin Snead. “We just can't absorb that.”
Snead said that while the club's membership was once about 6,000 members, it is currently down to about 2,800.
“You know, in a tough economy, people cut expenses,” he said. “People know they need to work out for their health, but something's got to give.”
Bobby Singh, owner of Dharma Music, agrees. “I am being hit from both ends,” he said. “Business has tapered back and my rent is being increased. You can maybe survive one or the other, but not both.”
In a letter Singh received from the center's landlord, A.J Dwoskin & Associates Inc., it states that his flat rental rate for a renewed lease would increase from $37.02 per square foot to $40.00 per square foot, plus applicable real estate taxes, called “pass through charges,” and a 3-percent annual increase in the rent.
Singh said that when he originally leased the space in 2003, his rent was $1,900 per month and is currently $2,700 per month due to those 3-percent increases. “I can't afford any more,” he said.
Brian Circosta, Vice President of A.J. Dwoskin & Associates, told The Times on Tuesday that county tax increases on commercial property are responsible for pass-through charge increases in real estate taxes. Fairfax County approved a tax rate increase on commercial properties of $0.11 per $100 of assessed value in its fiscal 2009 budget.
As for the the concurrent square footage rental increases, Circosta said that is strictly a way for the company to maintain "market rents" and attract desirable tenants.
"Typically in the retail business, you have to recreate your menu from time to time," he said. "We own the Panera Bread restaurant property, and that's the type of merchant that customers in our demographic area want for the future."
Welsh, of Hard Times, said that he is already scouting for a new Reston or Herndon area location. “We love Herndon and we will eventually find a new store,” he said. “We really didn't want to leave and we negotiated until Monday morning, but [Dwoskin] just wouldn't budge, so we said 'it's over.'”
Frankly until they do something with that ghetto Kmart and it's "stereotypical customers" from the upper Herndon area, it's always going to be a lowsy ghetto retail area that is best avoided. Only thing that whole center has going for it is Pho' 75, which in my opinion is unfortunately probably the best Pho' place in the area. Losing the Hard Times is very sad--what a fixture it was.
Posted by Enigma
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