Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

The de­clin­ing store count at Trinci­ty Mall has raised fears among the re­main­ing ten­ants over their sur­vival as they say even though the Christ­mas sea­son is here, the cus­tomers are not.

Around this time of the year, the hall­ways to Trinci­ty Mall are usu­al­ly decked with Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions and ea­ger shop­pers. To­day, sev­er­al of the glass store­fronts are wrapped with pa­per but, they may not be open­ing any time soon.

Since the be­gin­ning of COVID-19 re­stric­tion mea­sures in March, sev­er­al stores have shut their doors.

Kurleigh Ross, the own­er of K Ross De­signs at Trinci­ty Mall, told Guardian Me­dia the re­al­i­ty is be­com­ing more glar­ing. When asked how he felt to look around his kiosk and see so many closed stores, Ross sighed.

“It is re­al­ly fright­en­ing to see and you al­ways won­der when might be your turn,” he lament­ed dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

He said it has been an up­hill bat­tle for him to keep the lights on since the start of the pan­dem­ic. This as he ex­plained his busi­ness re­lies on events, which has been pro­hib­it­ed un­der the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.

“There was noth­ing re­al­ly hap­pen­ing in the last few months and that is re­al­ly what my busi­ness is about so I would do sport and fam­i­ly days, I will do uni­forms and that kind of stuff so ob­vi­ous­ly if there is a lock­down there is noth­ing hap­pen­ing,” he said.

Ex­press­ing re­lief that he has made it this far in­to the year, Ross said, “It is get­ting bet­ter as we go in­to the Christ­mas Sea­son.”

Sarah Mo­hammed, who owns Amelia’s Flo­ral De­sign and Home Decor lo­cat­ed on the north­ern wing of the mall, ad­mit­ted she is al­so wor­ried.

“We have been try­ing and work­ing very hard and the man­age­ment of Trinci­ty Mall has been as­sist­ing us in what­ev­er way they can thus far,” she stat­ed.

She added, “We are scared for our busi­ness at this time and I am scared but we are work­ing very hard.”

With just over a month to go be­fore the hol­i­days, she said peo­ple are still not com­ing to the mall.

Econ­o­mist, Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon, be­lieves while COVID-19 has had its im­pact, the ex­is­tence of all shop­ping cen­tres is re­al­ly be­ing threat­ened by on­line shop­ping.

“I think as time goes by, with­in the next few years, more and more re­tail­ers are go­ing to re­alise their sur­vival hinges on them adopt­ing this prac­tice as well. It is, of course, go­ing to mean the re­al es­tate mar­ket when it comes to com­mer­cial space is go­ing to take a hit,” ac­cord­ing to Ar­joon.

He al­so not­ed it is cheap­er to op­er­ate an on­line store than rent a space at the mall.

“Glob­al­ly, what many busi­ness­es have start­ed to do is have their own stor­age space to keep their in­ven­to­ries and have an on­line busi­ness so that peo­ple place or­ders on­line,” Ar­joon said.

Both Ross and Mo­hammed ad­mit­ted they have no­ticed an in­crease in on­line cus­tomers but be­lieve the need for an ac­tu­al store still ex­ists.