Jaime Torres
The Diary of the Step
Friday, March 5, 2021 | 00:08
Considered the ‘mall’ par excellence in El Paso, Cel Vista has not been immune to the crisis due to the pandemic and the fall of Mexican customers. The Abercrombie & Fitch store, one of the mall’s classics, closed its doors recently, as did several businesses that opted to cease operations.
The lack of Mexican customers in the commercial sector in the city has caused the closure of countless establishments, located in various parts of the Comtat del Pas, following the partial closure of border bridges due to the health emergency that is delivered since March 2020 in the border region.
Almost a year after the authorities issued the order to partially close the crossings by land, located in the Pas sector, and denied entry to people with tourist visas, employers have suffered the decline in their income until at 70 percent.
“This has been catastrophic and if it continues like this it will surely end in closing the business in the short term,” said a trader based at Cel Vista Mall, a trading emporium that throughout its history had been rescued by the presence of Mexican buyers.
Opened in 1974, two years after the first substantial devaluation of the peso against the dollar, Cel Vista has witnessed various financial crises that Mexico and its buyers have gone through, due to its strategic location, 10 miles away. (16 kilometers) from the Center of the Step-five (8 kilometers) of the international limits.
The resilience of Cel Vista did not consider the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced the partial closure of the southern border to non-essential traffic and which at the time last year led to the closure of most of the stores for several months to prevent the spread of the virus.
The absence of consumers from northern Mexico has sunk deep into the South Texas commercial industry and El Paso has not been the exception and both small businesses and medium and large corporations have suffered the economic onslaught. .
Abercrombie & Fitch, an American retail store focused on casual clothing for teens and adults, and headquartered in New Albany, Ohio, is one of the stores that recently abandoned its operations in the plaza due to not getting the budget for the desired sales.
After years of staying and being part of the national prestige brand portfolio in the shopping area, in the band of specialty stores like Dillard s, Apple Store, Michael Kors, Sephora and H&M, its executives decided close the doors to the surprise of your clientele.
During a tour of the corridors of the mall, the place that housed Abercrombie & Fitch and its glass covered with black blankets was seen empty and closed.
“More than a dozen of the big ones have already gone and the truth is that this is empty and more so now that traders open and close at the time they want precisely because of the lack of customers,” said Iván Sánchez, in charge of a commercial module dedicated to the sale of protectors for mobile phone screens and other electronic devices.
He commented that other stores that abandoned their operations were Banana Republic, a clothing and accessories retailer owned by the American multinational corporation Gap, originally called the “Banana Republic Travel & Safari Clothing Company.”
As well as this was also ‘Call it Spring’, another chain dedicated to the sale of shoes, boots, bags and fashion accessories for men and women. “As long as they don’t open the bridges and allow the crossing of‘ mexas ’this won’t pick up,” he said after recalling that this place was crowded with customers from Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua and other cities of the North and the South of Mexico.
“Let’s see now what store comes to the mall. Some go and some come, so it happened with Banana Republic, whose premises were occupied by another California company, engaged in the sale of dresses,” he said. a visitor while observing the small influx of customers.
According to businessman Tammy Berg, former president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of El Paso and founder of the Society of Merchants in the Center del Paso, locally Mexican customers account for 60 percent of sales.
“The impact is huge. It’s not just these sales but the people who work here and have lost their jobs, it’s something that’s happening and it’s affecting us quite a bit,” he said after stressing that they’ve already been 12 months of uncertainty and losses in the trade spill.
He noted that within store managers considered ‘strong’, such as Walmart, Ross, Target, Marshals, among others, “everyone agrees that 60 cents on every dollar comes from customers from Mexico.
He stressed that although this has been due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the reality is that it has also influenced the political aspect, referring to the rhetoric adopted by former President Donald Trump against the migrant community.
“It affected us a lot, it was an impact that we suffered a lot, but we hope that this new president – Joe Biden – will encourage this good neighborhood to remain a single united community as it always has been.
In a serene and confident tone that this will happen soon, Berg showed confidence that the border will gradually be reopened so that families on both sides can live together again, trade will be revived and the word community will become a unit.
In turn, traders established in both the commercial emporiums and the Central area expect that with the massive immunization programs against Covid-19 and health measures and care adopted by the authorities and the community as a whole, lower rates of contagions to be able to reopen the economy 100 percent on the border with full confidence.
According to executives, the Borderplex region is in the initial phase of a slow return to economic normalcy, once the leaders of the United States, Canada and Mexico agree to reopen its borders.