INDIANAPOLIS — With the holiday shopping season around the corner, tenants of downtown Indy’s Circle Centre mall say they're unsure about the future. A new company took over the mall with new plans for it, but it’s leaving some business owners frustrated.
“Some believe we’re being pushed out, but we’re being kicked out,” said Apollo Bean, the owner of a fashion store Apollo’s. “The majority of the business here are 90% of the small businesses are minority based.”
Bean has been in the mall for more than a year but signed on under different management.
“I don’t think we fit within the vision of what Hendricks wants for this mall,” Bean told WRTV.
Hendricks Commercial Properties took over in April and announced plans for a major revamp, converting the shopping center to a mixed-use development.
They are also the firm behind the development of the Bottleworks District and Ironworks at Keystone.
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"Beyond the development and the money, our responsibility is to put something together that the community, Indianapolis, and the state can be really proud of,” Rob Gerbitz of Hendricks Commercial Properties told WRTV back in April.
It’s a future that businesses WRTV talked to said they feel like they are being left out of.
“We have no word; we don’t know what’s going on,” said Bean.
“I email so much. After like 10 emails they will respond but there’s never any follow through,” added Elise “Nikki Johnson.
She owns the Alkaline Electric Goddess, a vegan restaurant in the food court.
She told WRTV she believes issues in the building have also impacted foot traffic and her business.
“After we had the flooding, we were closed for the 11 days. A lot of the public thought the mall was closed,” Johnson explained. "There’s no publicity to bring them inside the mall."
Circle Centre's original star attraction, Regal UA movie theater, quietly closing down in October was another reminder of it's glamour being gone.
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The slow traffic is something a local marketing expert said can be detrimental to small businesses especially in an already struggling mall.
“You're paying a premium for that real estate, because you expect footfall to go by your store, and so when the larger entity doesn't deliver on that footfall, it's really difficult for you to be successful in that environment,” explained John Talbott, a Senior Lecturer of Marketing at Indiana University in Bloomington.
Talbott said he believes more malls will eventually turn to mixed-use developments.
We reached out to the Hendricks Commercial Properties, but didn't get a response.
They previously told us they hope to start the transition next year.
