Lounge Around Games Co.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\nLess than a year later, their gaming store faces a challenge they might not survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We heard that the mall has been put under contract, and they’re going to be demolishing the mall except for the Boscov’s spot,” Phillips said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without much information being told to them from the mall owners, they fear the uncertainty of the future.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There’s over 60 businesses in the mall, and they’re thriving,” Phillips said. “People are working in there, and it’s going to affect a lot of people if it’s demolished.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The owners say even a move would pose many challenges.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The developer who’s in the process of buying and making big changes to the Berkshire Mall in Wyomissing says his plans include leveling much of the existing building and starting fresh.<\/p>\n
“Especially for local businesses like us, to try to find another place would be very difficult,” Phillips said. “I believe we thrive very well in this mall environment. So for us to go to like a strip mall or something like that probably wouldn’t work as well.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Much of the need to sell is attributed to building damage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We were told that the whole storm drain and all that situation on this side of the mall has been repaired,” said Jonathan Mashburn, co-owner of Lounge Around Games. “Every once in a while, there’s a leak here and there, but it’s nothing detrimental to the space. The space is still structurally sound.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
They say business is good.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Anybody that’s saying that the mall is dead, come here on a Saturday evening, and it is packed,” Phillips said. “Sometimes we are packed to capacity.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
So much so, Mashburn and Phillips recently did renovations inside their store and signed a new lease.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Extending our lease and doing renovations, it’s very discouraging for us to hear that they’re going to demolish it after all our hard work,” Phillips said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As they keep pushing forward, they remind people that the mall remains open, for now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I want to tell everybody hearing things about the mall to still come out, continue to support us. We’re still open,” Phillips said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WYOMISSING, Pa.\u00a0\u2013 Javon and Jonathan followed the example of countless small businesses, and opened their dream spot, Lounge…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[214,60,128,130,129,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-4334","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-reading-city","11":"tag-reading-city-headlines","12":"tag-reading-city-news","13":"tag-reading-area"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}