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The company that runs the Fulton Center mall told the MTA last month it wants out of its lease because of crime and homelessness issues. Westfield signed a 20-year lease with the MTA, but wants to exit operations at Fulton Center more than 10 years before the end of the deal, according to a lawsuit the New York City Transit Authority filed days after receiving the news from the mall operator. The Fulton Center shopping complex operates above a transit hub that services eight subway lines, and is the busiest subway complex in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA. The...

One of the nation's major oil companies says it will close 1,000 gas stations. Shell made the announcement in its 2024 Energy Transition Strategy report, saying the measure is “in response to customer needs” and aimed at reallocating those resources towards EV charging stations. Shell said it will close 500 stations in 2024 and the other 500 in 2025. “We believe growth in oil demand is set to slow in the second half of this decade and could start falling in the 2030s because of increasing vehicle efficiency and growth in electric vehicles," the company stated in the report. "Today...

In-N-Out Burger will go ahead with plans to close its Oakland restaurant this weekend, the Irvine-based fast food chain confirmed in an email Thursday. The drive-thru’s last day will be Sunday, March 24, as the company announced in late January, citing crime in the area as endangering customers and employees. Statistics show the crime situation is starting to improve, city leaders have said recently. The announcement made national news In-N-Out’s “first time ever” permanent closure, as CNN put it. In-N-Out was founded in Baldwin Park in 1948 by Harry and Esther Snyder and in the following 75 years grew to...

Hundreds of hospitals in rural areas of the US are at risk of closure, according to new data from Chartis, a Chicago health care advisory services firm. A total of 141 rural hospitals have closed since 2010 — while another 453 are “at risk of closure,” according to a press release. The seven states with the most hospitals vulnerable to closures include Texas (45), Kansas (38), Nebraska (29), Oklahoma (22), North Carolina (19), Georgia (18) and Mississippi (18), as listed in Becker’s Hospital Review. In Florida, Tennessee and Nebraska, more than 41% of rural hospitals are at risk of closure....

BOSTON — A major drugstore chain is shutting down another location in Boston in just a matter of days and people who live in the area are concerned that they are now living in a “pharmacy desert.” The Walgreens at 416 Warren Street in Roxbury will shut its doors for good come Martin Luther King Jr. Day, becoming the chain’s fourth city location to close in a little over a year. In late 2022, Walgreens suddenly shuttered locations in Mattapan, Hyde Park, and on Washington Street in Roxbury. Some Boston City Councilors have blasted the company for closing stores in...

As Beege Welborn pointed out earlier this week, the owners of Westfield Mall in downtown San Francisco have announced that they’ll be giving the property over to the lender. The mall had already lost Nordstoms last month and this week the Cinemark movie theater also announce it was closing. In fact, today is the theater’s last day.The Cinemark movie theater complex sent an email to its customers announcing its final films would play Thursday, and the complex would close on Friday.In a statement to The Standard, Cinemark confirmed the decision to permanently close the Century San Francisco Centre 9 and...

The trend has been called a retail exodus. In the past few months there have been more than a dozen store closures in downtown San Francisco. I’ve written about the closure of a flagship Whole Foods which made 568 calls to 911 over the 13 months it was open. A 300,000 square foot Nordstroms is closing as is Office Depot, Anthropologie, Saks Off 5th and many more. The SF Chronicle put together this map showing the recent closures.And last week another major retailer announced it was closing up. Old Navy will be shutting down its San Francisco store this summer.The...

There are 646 rural hospitals at risk of closure due to financial issues, comprising around 30 percent of all rural hospitals in the U.S., according to the Center for Healthcare Quality & Payment Reform.The hospitals face losses on patient services as health plans aren't paying enough to cover the cost of care delivery. The losses will likely increase as inflation and workforce shortages persist, according to the report, which was released in April. While rural hospitals are receiving some support through grants, local tax revenues or other profits, they still have low financial reserves and remain at risk.More than half...

Last week, the largest West Coast port — the Port of Los Angeles — along with the Port of Long Beach experienced an unplanned 24-hour closure. The ports closed because dock workers simply didn’t show up, leaving the Thursday night shift and the Friday day shift unmanned. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union issued a statement saying workers not showing up for their shifts was no big deal:On the evening of Thursday, April 6, 2023, International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 13 held its monthly membership meeting as is its contractual right. … Several thousand union members attend the...

Whole Foods opened its 64,000+ square foot “flagship” store in downtown San Francisco in March of 2022. On Monday, the grocery giant announced it was shuttering that location — at least for now.“We are closing our Trinity location only for the time being,” a Whole Foods spokesperson said in a statement. “If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location.”A City Hall source told The Standard the company cited deteriorating street conditions around drug use and crime near the grocery store as a reason for...

Not unlike many other corporations with retail locations in cities nationwide, Target is calling it quits on Philadelphia. They follow in the footsteps of Wawa, who we noted last year had enough of Philadelphia's crime and also picked up and left shop at several locations in Center City.Target, located just blocks from one Wawa that recently closed, is taking the same action, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal. Its store at 12th and Chestnut streets in Center City will be closing after 7 years of operation. The 19,000 sq. foot store is going to be closing "due to several years...

In order to address the issue of shoplifting and retail theft, the final two Walmart stores in the city of Portland will shutter their doors in late March. FOX 12 Oregon reported that the Walmart locations at 1123 North Hayden Meadows Drive and 4200 Southeast 82nd Avenue at the Eastport Plaza would close on Mar. 24. "The decision to close these stores was made after a careful review of their overall performance. We consider many factors, including current and projected financial performance, location, population, customer needs, and the proximity of other nearby stores when making these difficult decisions. After we...

Washington state's biggest school district is considering shuttering some schools and laying off staff in the near future as enrollment rates continue to drop following the pandemic. Seattle Public Schools officials floated the idea of "consolidating" schools during a workshop reported on by The Seattle Times. Funding for most school districts is tied to the number of students, so declines in enrollment will likely contribute to budget shortfalls.

The Basilica at Cointe has been transformed into a climbing centre, the church at Bouhay into a shelter for women in distress, the chapel of Notre-Dame-en-Chemin at Boncelles into offices, housing is planned for the parish of Saint-Lambert de Soumagne or the former monastery at Chèvremont. There is no shortage of examples of changes in the use of religious sanctuaries in the Liège region, not to mention the hypothesis of a museum at Saint-Pholien in Outremeuse

For more than half-a-century, Uncle Sam has been giving banks the legal tools to snoop into the otherwise-private affairs of their customers. Now, they are monitoring the exercise of their Second Amendment rights. Thanks to a recent move by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO, headquartered in Switzerland), U.S. banks are starting to build databases on their customers’ purchases of firearms and ammunition. And, of course, they are ready and quite willing to share that information with federal law enforcement in the name of providing a public service to identify “mass shooters.”This invasion of privacy began in earnest with enactment...

Be our guest—at the unemployment bureau. Restaurants are failing faster in the United Kingdom than they did during the economically devastating COVID-19 pandemic, leading experts to predict over a third of UK “hospitality businesses” will close by 2023. I guess inflation wasn’t transitory there either. The Guardian blamed a “‘toxic mix’ of surging energy costs, staff shortages and falling bookings” for the crisis, as restaurant closures rose 60% this past year. And it’s not just restaurants affected, according to Steve Bannon, who posted on GETTR that “50% of all British small business said they would in all likelihood close shop...

As if John Fetterman’s debate with Dr. Oz wasn’t enough of a campaign killer, Joe Biden announced today that he will be closing coal plants in favor of wind and solar power.Joe Biden just said that he’s going to shut down coal plants all over America and replace them with wind and solar.Retweet so every voter in Pennsylvania and Ohio will see this.pic.twitter.com/65BvGIqzVG— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) November 4, 2022Let’s see how that goes over with Pennsylvania voters, especially considering that Fetterman claimed a while back he is against fracking, although he flip-flopped when asked about this in the debate.What happens...

Starbucks is closing 16 locations in cities around the nation after the coffee giant’s employees reported a string of “personal safety” incidents, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. Translation: Crime is skyrocketing and our workers are too terrified to even show up at these locations.The company will shutter six stores in both Seattle and Los Angeles, two in Portland, and one each in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. by the end of July. What do all those locations have in common? They’re in deep-blue areas with soft-on-crime district attorneys and past support of the “defund the police” movement. How’d that work...

The ruling on Wednesday is the first win in appellate court for a restaurant seeking business interruption insurance losses.. Oceana Grill, Bourbon Street’s tourist-centric restaurant loved by New Orleans hotel concierges, has won the country’s first victory in appellate court for an insured business seeking damages related to COVID-19 shutdown losses. A split Louisiana court found the policy’s definition of “direct physical loss or damage” ambiguous, ruling in favor of the restaurant on Wednesday, June 15. Cajun Conti, the company that owns Oceana Grill, among other French Quarter tourist haunts, sued Lloyd’s of London on March 20, 2020 — the...

Restaurant and bar operators spent much of the pandemic pivoting to adhere to everchanging safety guidelines, adjusting business models and feeding their communities to keep the lights on amid staff shortages, regular recurring closures and reopenings, disruptions in the supply chain and cost increases from food to rent.