MARQUETTE, Mich, (WZMQ) – The power in most of the Westwood Mall in Marquette has been off since Wednesday.
Now many businesses based in the mall are struggling to keep their doors open.
“It’s devastating,” said Martin Sports Owner Scott Martin, “it’s hard enough being a small business in this climate anyway, and when we’ve got an area that we’ve worked so hard to revitalize as a local shopping center and it was just stripped from us with no notice, it’s tough.”
“Newly established businesses that depend on this,” said Timber Yeti Axe Owner Avery Smith, “and when this kind of stuff happens, this is revenue that we have to use to pay our employees and our bills and when it’s not there what do we do?”
According to a letter sent to business owners from the Marquette Board of Light and Power, the power was shut off after a building’s corporate owner, a New York based company called Kohan Retail Investment Group, failed to pay the bill.
Martin said this is not the first problem he and the other business owners have had with the Kohan Group.
“It’s unfortunately not uncommon for us to get shutoff notices for the mall property,” said Martin, “but it is a little more uncommon to see our power shut off. This is the fourth time it’s happened in a year, but it’s the first time we’ve had it on sequential days.”
Business owners that rely on the mall said they are fed up with the unreliability, and Smith said he would like to see the mall under new ownership.
“This guy needs to sell the mall to somebody local,” said Smith. “Let’s get local ownership of this, and somebody that takes pride in having a building like this that offers so much to the community.”
Martin said mall management is hopeful that power will be restored by Tuesday of next week, but with the corporate owner ignoring all attempts to contact him, there is no way for them to know for sure.
“The owner stopped taking everybody’s calls,” said Martin. “He’s not returning mall management calls, he’s not returning those of us who rent here, he’s not returning any of our calls, the corporate calls aren’t being returned, he’s just ghosting everybody right now.”
We reached out to the Kohan Investment Group, but we have not gotten a response.
This is a developing story we’ll keep updating this story as more information becomes available.
