Massive new Bronx mall lures biz away from nearby outdoor plaza, merchants gripe

The Bronx’s dreamy new mall — the first indoor, suburban-style mall built in New York City in 40 years — is causing nightmares for some longstanding store owners.

Shoppers have been flocking to the Mall at Bay Plaza forsaking the businesses that operate in the outdoor shopping center at the plaza’s eastern tip.

“They are killing us,” said Kada Boudjeltia, the manager of Portabella, a menswear boutique. “There’s no traffic. This section of the mall is dead. We have gone from 40 customers per day, spending $3,000, to making $1,000 yesterday. We made $10,000 all of last week.”

He said he cannot meet his payroll, and workers have begun to quit.

A few doors down, Maria Collado, manager of Easy Pickins, said back-to-school sales were down 13% and business at the shoe store was down 20% overall.

“We hardly have any customers since the mall opened,” she said.

Collado and others lamented the relocation of the Bx12 bus stop back to its original location, closer to the indoor mall.

“The bus used to drop people off at the corner at Applebee’s and they would walk around,” she said. “But now, the buses all go directly to the indoor mall. This is hurting our business.”

Sam Shalem, the chairman and CEO of Prestige Properties and Development, which runs Bay Plaza, sees things differently.

“I walk every day between the stores and the traffic is high,” he said. “There are lines.

“We just invested $5 million in the older center,” he added. “We own both of them; we are not going to let one of them suffer.”

Shalem said the late-August relocation of the bus stop to a new terminal near the mall was planned all along, and an MTA spokesman backed him up.

“The Bx12 route was previously rerouted on a temporary basis during the expansion of the mall at Bay Plaza,” the spokesman, Kevin Ortiz, said in a statement.

The change, however, is creating a hardship for the businesses that occupy the older shopping center.

“Every day I have my workers coming to me to say they are afraid to walk so far to catch the bus when they leave work at 9:30 or 10 at night,” said Mohammed Khawaja, the manager of Jimmy Jazz.

But another change seems unlikely.

“It sounds like these business owners were not aware that the Bx12 was on a temporary reroute,” Ortiz said. “We have not received any complaints from anyone up to this point.”

Nobody had a negative word to say inside the mall, where Macy’s and H&M opened gleaming new outlets last month. Business has been robust, and customers have been crowing.

“The new mall is nice and has lots of stores,” said Tamera Joseph, 15, who was browsing with her cousin, Alexis Joseph, 14. “I’m not going back to the outdoor mall.”