MAJOR HAILSTORM DINGED THE LIVES OF MALL WORKERS
The Colorado Mills’ closure is unique — so many employees working for so many different companies abruptly idled at a single location — and has complicated local efforts to help or even get a handle on how many are looking for work.
In a tumultuous and terrifying half hour last month, Jenifer Chinn’s life took a turn as wild and unpredictable as the storm that flung baseball-size hail onto the roof of the building where she has worked for the past 3 1/2 years.
Chinn, who managed a gift store at Colorado Mills mall, now has a different job, a longer commute and a smaller paycheck in the wake of what is projected to be the state’s most destructive hailstorm.
“It was crazy how fast it can change your life,” the 43-year-old mother of three said this week, just days after her boss transferred her to the Conifer location of the company she had been working for, A Borgata.
Chinn is one of several thousand people who had been working at Colorado Mills before being suddenly left to scramble by the May 8 storm. The unexpected situation — so many employees working for so many different companies abruptly idled at a
single location — has complicated local efforts to help the newly jobless or even get a handle on how many are looking for work, though historically low joblessness in Colorado could ease that burden.
The 1.1 million-square-foot shopping center, which in the storm lost its roof and was deluged by millions of gallons of water, is expected to be closed for the next half year as it undergoes repairs.
“I don’t know what people are doing,” said Jeff Cleveland, owner of Cleveland Creek Lodge & Log Furniture, which has done business inside Colorado Mills for a decade and is looking to open a storefront in Broomfield’s Flatiron Crossing mall
to keep his handful of employees working. “This whole thing coming out of the blue like that — it’s crazy.”
Cher Haavind, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment, said the sudden, longterm closure of a major regional retail center is a rare event and one that officials had little time to prepare for. Employees at Colorado Mills were spread across more than 200 stores and restaurants, each of which makes its own decisions on personnel matters.
“It’s different (from a round of corporate layoffs) because of the broad impact of the closure, the variety of the employees involved and the inability by us to make contact immediately,” Haavind said.
According to Nanette Neelan, Lakewood’s economic development director, Colorado Mills employed 2,000 to 3,000 people. But she said the city hasn’t received any information about displaced workers “and we have no way of tracking that number.”
Several retail chain managers told The Denver Post last month that employees would be transferred to other stores in the metro area by the parent company, but trying to determine how many workers were kept on board is not easy to determine without asking each company individually.
Simon Property Group, the mall’s owner, declined to comment for this story.
The first substantive gauge of the shutdown’s impact will likely come Wednesday, when the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment and the American Job Center, a workforce office in Jefferson County, jointly put on a job fair at the Marriott Denver West in Golden aimed at displaced Colorado Mills workers.
More than 20 companies will be there, including Firstbank, Natural Grocers, Ameristar Casino Resort Spa, Walmart, Homeadvisor, Home Depot, Staples, Lyft, and the since reopened Supertarget at Colorado Mills.
“We’re hopeful that the event will connect those impacted with their next employment opportunity,” Haavind said.
The cities of Lakewood and Golden also are advertising positions for mall workers and small, local businesses have gotten into the mix as well. The mall’s owner last week created a jobs resource web page for Colorado Mills employees.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose your job with no notice,” said Lorri Alden, owner of the Genesee Country Store, which is one of the listed companies on the website encouraging former mall employees to apply for work at the shop 10 miles west of Colorado Mills. “I’m just helping out mankind.”
A little help would be welcomed by Dyllan Melendres, a 21-year-old manager in training for Journeys shoe and accessories store at Colorado Mills, after his employer offered him a position at its location in Flatiron Crossing, but at reduced hours and with a much longer commute.
That prompted Melendres, of Lakewood, to put out feelers elsewhere, including to his previous employer, Smashburger. He also is looking at starting a career in bartending.
“I got a bunch of bills to pay,” he said.
Melendres hopes to rejoin the staff at Journeys if and when it reopens at Colorado Mills.
“I’d definitely go back with them,” he said. “I’m hoping I can get my job status (as manager in training) back.”
One notable silver lining for mall workers now pounding the pavement is Colorado’s historically low unemployment rate, which in April dropped to 2.3 percent. Haavind, with the state’s labor department, said “it’s a job-seekers market right now.”
University of Colorado at Boulder economics professor Terra Mckinnish said while there’s no downplaying the negative impact of suddenly being unemployed, today’s robust job market provides more choices for where to land work while prospects for upward mobility are greater.
“This is more about longterm prospects for their earning potential and their earnings trajectory being better than it was before,” she said. “What a low unemployment rate does is reduce the size of the longterm effects of losing a job.”