Best Buy leaving Hudson Valley Mall
Store will close at end of October; company cites local retail weakness
Best Buy is closing its store at Hudson Valley Mall at the end of October, the retailer said Tuesday.
A company spokeswoman said the decline of the area’s retail landscape is to blame.
“Unfortunately, retail in this area ... has been in decline for many years,” Claire Larson said in an email. “Other anchor stores have left the [mall] in recent years, including J.C. Penney, Macy’s and Sears, and that has led customers to shop other retail areas.”
Larson did not cite the economic weakness resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason for Best Buy closing. All of the previous closings at the mall that she cited predated the virus outbreak.
Penney left the mall in 2015, followed by Macy’s in 2016 and Sears in 2018. The Macy’s store ultimately was torn down and replaced by a multidiscipline medical office complex, but the Penney and Sears spaces remain vacant.
Best Buy’s last day of operation at the mall will be Oct. 31, Larson said. She
said the store has 50 fulland part-time workers and that the company is “doing what we can to help our employees find positions at neighboring [Best Buy] stores.”
The next-nearest Best Buy stores are in Poughkeepsie, Middletown and Albany.
Best Buy opened near the north end of Hudson Valley Mall around 2000. It sells such electronic items as computers, TVs, cellphones, stereo equipment and video players, as well as appliances.
A representative of mall owner Hull Property Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Best Buy leaving.
Hull, based in Georgia, bought Hudson Valley Mall in early 2017 from PCK Development of Liverpool, N.Y. after PCK defaulted on debt related to the property.
Even with new owners, though, the mall has been unable to bounce back from numerous store closings over the years. The opening of a new movie multiplex in the mall in 2019 was seen as a possible catalyst for a revival, but the theaters had to close when the COVID outbreak took hold in New York state six months ago, and they’ve yet to reopen.
In addition to three anchor stores leaving, clothing retailer H&M closed its store near the center of Hudson Valley Mall in January of this year, and Old Navy moved its clothing store from the mall to the neighboring Kings Mall in January 2019.
With Best Buy’s departure, the only anchor stores remaining at the mall are Target and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
Hudson Valley Mall, at 1300 Ulster Ave. (Route 9W) in the town of Ulster, opened in the early 1980s and was expanded in 1982, 1989 and the early 2000s.