Local Realtor to Eliminate Far Hollow Eyesore
At a packed Wednesday night meeting, the Far Hollow town council voted 5-2 in favor of selling the long-shuttered Salem Road strip mall to Tim Hodges of HodgePodge Realty. The vote, delayed multiple times due to zoning and permit red tape, paves the way for the abandoned retail space to be redeveloped, although Hodges hadn’t presented a plan to the board as of press time.
The six-outlet strip mall, which had two businesses operating dual storefronts, closed following a roof collapse during back-to-back blizzards six years ago. It’s been at the center of a town tug of war, with multiple developers seeking to obtain the property. Residents and council members alike, however, sought to keep the retail space locally owned/operated, and to prevent chain retailers like Discount Dollar and Sky Laundry, whose headquarters is in Orransburg, from moving in.
“This is just the first step,” Hodges told the Gazette. “It isn’t going to change overnight, but now we can finally move forward.”
The strip’s previous occupants all moved to other locations in town or, in the case of Blast From the Past, a vintage and secondhand shop, closed for good. Hodges, who wore a tie he purchased from Blast to Wednesday night’s meeting, said that the first order of business is to return the storefronts to code, upgrade the sprinkler systems and utilities, and in a surprise announcement—to offer the spaces to their original shopkeeps.
“We’ve only had preliminary discussions,” Hodges explained. “But I grew up with those shops, and if we could find a way to restore the center to how it was prior to the storms? we’d be happy to make that happen. This isn’t just about taking down the grates and turning the lights back on. There are a lot of memories in the Salem Road strip, and while I understand we’ll never see The Video Vault again, there’s interest in some businesses returning to their prior homes.”
For locals like Christina Pfeiffer, any progress is good progress. “It’s ugly,” she told the Gazette. “The steel shutters, the way it looks to visitors. Let’s get a book store in there or something, and give people besides teenagers a reason to go there.”
Pfeiffer was undoubtedly referring to the rollerbladers and skateboarders, who use the large parking lot behind the strip mall for its surviving concrete curbs. One thing is for certain, restoring the blighted shopping center to a functional, attractive revenue generator for the town is long overdue.
