A strip mall on Route 94 in the town of New Windsor was once a pot-holed, littered pit stop that was gradually losing business. A few years back, the mall got a major facelift: a new blacktopped parking lot, a new fa̤ade; and along with it, some new tenants, including St. LukeӪs-Cornwall HospitalӪs New to You Boutique, the U.S. Post Office and the George Thompson Insurance Agency. The New Windsor Commons Mall was re-born.
The southwest corner of the property, however, is not exactly a business attraction ”“ certainly not to the tenants who lease space at the Route 94 location or to their workers or volunteers at the hospital”™s thrift shop.
At press time, the large space, which once held an antique store, remained not just empty, but wide open: broken windows, pushed-in plywood, graffiti and a wide-open door that invite whomever or whatever to walk into an empty cavern where walls have been stripped to the studs.
HVBiz spoke to one business at the mall, which said it has tried repeatedly to get the mall owner to fix the problem. As a result of the interaction, HVBiz reached out to Andrew Perkel, spokesman for The New Windsor Group, which owns the strip mall, on Feb. 5.
Perkel said he was “unaware of any problems and had received no complaints,” but would send someone to seal the broken windows and lock the front door, which was hanging open.
On Feb. 23, HVBiz returned to New Windsor Mall to find nothing had been done to reinforce the storefront. In another call, Perkel assured HVBiz that New Windsor Group was “soliciting bids to have the repair work done.”
While the Hudson Valley has seen a significant loss of retail business due to the recession the country is experiencing, many of its local strip malls are taking steps to make sure empty stores are properly maintained as they wait for new tenants. In 1982, James Wilson and George Kelling wrote an article titled “Broken Windows” for The Atlantic Monthly magazine, theorizing that buildings with broken windows have a tendency to attract more vandalism and lead to other, more serious, crimes. Fixing broken windows within a day or a week, wrote the duo, would alleviate the escalation of vandalism.
The “broken windows” theory may not deter crime, but fixing them can certainly send a message to the community, and to surrounding store owners, that the property is being maintained.
At press time, the New Windsor Police Dept. said it would alert the town”™s fire inspector to assess the situation.
