Poll: What should go in the Value Village spot in Brewster?
Value Village, where you could buy socks, greeting cards and sit down in a cinema for a new-release movie all at the same location, closed in Brewster.
What's going there?
There's no word yet on what will replace the store and three-screen Empire Cinemas in the back that helped to anchor Towne Centre shopping plaza at the Routes 22 and 312 intersection in Putnam County's southeastern corner. Value Village closed at December's end.
The Value Village space and adjacent properties are listed for lease by brokerage Aries Deitch & Endelson.
"We've had inquiries but nothing to report on," said Richard Freedman, president of Stamford, Connecticut-based Garden Homes Management that owns the shopping center.
When Value Village opened in 2002, the Journal News reported it had a 20,000-square-foot retail store plus the movie screens that also opened that year. The first showings were "Road to Perdition," "Signs" and "Goldmember.”
Moviegoers once could walk through Value Village's health and beauty aids area into a cinema lobby of cream-and-green colored tile with a wood fireplace mantel. There were 360 seats with cupholders, spread across three rooms to screen films.
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"It was a great setup," Freedman said of the walk through Value Village into the cinema, adding: "It was a great combination, it was a great concept and it actually worked well for a long time."
But Freedman said people's shift to buying things online and shutdowns in connection with the pandemic hurt the business.
The shopping center was completed at the dawn of the 1990s, a time of recession, and Freedman said that back then the plaza was something like 70% vacant, went into foreclosure and "was like a ghost town." Garden Homes Management then bought the plaza in the mid-1990s and leased a key 31,000-square-foot space to a Pergament store that Freedman said was successful and there for perhaps five years.
Freedman said Garden Homes Management next leased part of that space to Value Village. Garden Homes Management also built and owned the movie theater in the back and Value Village operated it.
Today, the plaza has a World Gym, AT&T store, Brewster Pastry, a Chinese restaurant, Fiesta Mexicana, Froggy's Deli, a Japanese restaurant, and a wine and liquor store.
Michael P. McKinney covers growth and development in Westchester County and the Lower Hudson Valley for The Journal News/lohud.com and the USA Today Network.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: What will replace the Value Village store and cinema in Brewster?
