Kate Spade and Aerosoles Close on Palmer Square in Princeton

Two shops in downtown Princeton on Palmer Square closed this week – Kate Spade and Aerosoles.

Kate Spade sent out an email Thursday informing customers that the store on Palmer Square was closed and encouraging them to shop online. Aerosoles was offering deep discounts this week for its going-out-of-business sale. Friday the store was closed.
After the holidays, the Palm Place Lilly Pulitzer signature store on Palmer Square also closed. Earlier this month, the Princeton Army and Navy Store closed on Witherspoon Street, and after Christmas the Blue Ridge Mountain Sports store in the Princeton Shopping Center also shut its doors for good.
Krystal Knapp is the founding editor of Planet Princeton. Follow her on Twitter @krystalknapp. She can be reached via email at editor AT planetprinceton.com. Send all letters to the editor and press releases to that email address.
What’s with all the closings? Also closed recently, the Cheeseburger place, Naked Pizza, the Jewelry shop, the Silver shop, Subway, two florists (Witherspoon and Nassau). Change happens but there seems to be more closings recently than in the recent past.
Is traffic down? Are rents going up a lot?
It is very simple: rents set by greedy landlord[s] are going up.
This is exactly what they want:
by increasing the rent they set the bar so high that small business can’t come in (rents are $10000 per month and higher) and the current ones are going down slow…unless they sell very expensive goods.
Have you noticed that ‘The Bent Spoon’ has increased their prices recently? Of course they did so they can keep up with increased rents.
There goes our diversity!
The stores that are closing are stores that I have in shopped in once or never. But Chucks, Public, Hogie Haven, Tico’s etc? All still here. Naked Pizza made expensive pizza that didn’t pair well with any ale I would ever drink.
Rents too high? Not enough business?
Amazon strikes again