Lawrence Shopping Center Weathers Economic Storm [VIDEO]

Lawrence Shopping Center, located along Brunswick Pike (Business Route 1) in Lawrence Township heading south toward Pennsylvania, used to be the grande dame of local shopping centers. In its heyday in the 1960s, it was the place to see and be seen, and drop a lot of money.

Bob Vecere grew up in the area and is now the second-generation owner of Vecere Jewelers. Founded in Trenton in 1970, the business moved to Lawrence Shopping Center in 1981. He remembers when this shopping center was the mecca of local retail.

“I can remember riding my bike here with friends in the late 1960s,” he recalled. “You couldn’t find a parking spot. You couldn’t find a space in front of what was the library. It was the place to be on a Saturday. Everyone shopped here.”

Vecere is also president of the shopping center’s Merchants Association and a walking historian with a treasure trove of memories about this strip mall and what it meant to this area. From its role as a local gathering place in his childhood, he witnessed the shopping center’s evolution into its heyday in the 1970s and even into the early 1980s.

And then, the seismic events of local retail kept rolling in. Quaker Bridge Mall, located a few miles north on Route 1, opened in the mid-70s and Lawrence Shopping Center started to lose shoppers and some of its luster.

Mercer Mall came in and then, much later, places like MarketFair, Nassau Park and Windsor Green brought in stores like Target, Walmart, Wegman’s, another Staples, Marshall’s and Whole Foods. The competition was growing fiercer, and the old, grande dame began losing even more of her shine.

A resurgence took place in the 1990s, said Vecere, when the owners gave Lawrence Shopping Center a facelift that included new lights and a new parking lot. And then, in 2008, the national economy hit the skids and like so many malls around the country, this one began feeling the ripple effects in the form of empty storefronts.

Herb E. Gishlick, an economics professor at Rider University and director of Rider’s Office of Regional Economic Analysis, said that the story of the Lawrence Shopping Center must be viewed within the context of the national and even global economic picture.

“It’s an old mall and we have a recession that tends to be harsher on the weak, just like a harsh winter is harder on people who don’t have central heating,” he observed. “A storm will take a tree down that looked perfectly good until the storm comes along and suddenly it’s in your garage.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that Mercer County lost 11 percent of its retail jobs in 2010, with 19,000 people employed compared to 21,000 at the peak. 

Some of those jobs were lost at Lawrence Shopping Center, which saw the closure of many businesses for one reason or another. The popular restaurant Simply Radishing, Photo Haven and Oskar Huber Furniture, among others, are gone. Other stores were national chains that either decided to move out or went bankrupt, including Strauss Discount Auto, KayBee Toys and CVS Pharmacy.

In the case of the drug store, the move was the result of a corporate direction toward opening stand-alone stores in highly visible, well-trafficked areas. After leaving the Lawrence Shopping Center, CVS built a brand new building at the corner of Brunswick Pike and Darrah Lane.

“It’s very hard to replace those kinds of stores,” observed Vecere.  The shopping center does have one major factor in its favor. There are four anchor tenants: the Burlington Coat Factory where Dunham’s once stood, Staples, Acme and MJM Shoes. 

The center is family-owned and operated by Platt and Plapinger, based in Lawrence Township. A spokesman for the Plapinger family said they declined to be interviewed for this story. But the merchants Lawrenceville Patch talked to say they don’t blame the shopping center’s owners for the vacancies. They see the empty stores and low volume of cars in the parking lot as the result of a perfect storm of recession and changing business models.

“They are very good and work with merchants when issues come up. And personally over 30 years, I’ve dealt with other landlords in other shopping centers and I think they’re great to have on board with us,” said Vecere, who says his business is not only surviving but thriving, with a second location open in Lambertville. He credits his success to his niche marketing strategy with high-demand brands like the Tacori bridal line.

Just a few doors down, Eileen Karluk – the “mom” in the mom and pop operation at Carl Fischer Candies – also spoke highly of the mall owners. Her family has run the popular chocolate shop for the last 28 years in various locations, with the last eight years at Lawrence Shopping Center. She said she’s had to tweak her production to cope with the recession, but loyal customers are still coming in.

“They may buy a little less rather than nothing at all, so it’s been hard,” she said. “We’ve had to adjust what we make and how much we make and so forth. But we like the location, we like our customers and we like what we are doing.”

“I’ve been coming here for years, and I will always come here,” declared Pat McElven. ‘They do have the best chocolate, so that’s where you go, and sometimes I do go into the Hallmark store if I need a card but other than that, none of the other shops have what I want.”

There’s a growing mandate to rejuvenate the center by drawing a quality mix of new tenants.  Economists see the fate of the shopping center tied to the fate of the local economy and there is reason to see optimism in that.

“The area, the Lawrence Township area, is still a very stable economic area,” said Gishlick. “People are still shopping. People are still buying. You don’t see homes going vacant in large numbers. This is not Detroit.”

Vecere is even more optimistic about the future of the Lawrence Shopping Center.  He’s counting on his quality products, niche marketing and customer loyalty to continue his family’s success.

“We would love to stay here and be here forever,” he said. “I don’t know that anyone can ever say forever, but this store, location, have been fantastic to us for 30 years, I hope we’re here another 30 years, if the customers we have continue to support us, we will be here forever.”

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