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A Town's Single Largest Taxpayer Is Also Its Biggest Headache
In its heyday, the Berkshire Mall was the place to go in Lanesborough, Mass., drawing huge crowds of enthusiastic shoppers and producing plenty of tax dollars for the small town.
'There were times you could not find a parking place in this mall — inside, it was packed,' said Timothy Sorrell, a town selectman and former police chief in rural Lanesborough, which has a population of about 3,000. For teenagers in particular, it was the place to hang out.
'It was to the point where if we had to throw a kid out of the mall, it was like we were taking away Christmas,' Mr. Sorrell said. 'They would actually cry. It was almost the end of the world for them.'
The 720,000-square-foot mall, which opened in 1988, has long been Lanesborough's single largest taxpayer. In 2007, when the mall was near its peak, it generated $2.3 million in annual tax revenue. The money has helped subsidize the Police Department, schools and road maintenance. But these days, the mall is a mere remnant of its past glory.
Business had fallen off sharply by the mid-2010s. Big-box stores like JCPenney and Sears closed. And the movie theater went dark in 2019. Since then, the mall has been largely shut down, and what remains is in poor shape — one of the main doors is covered with plywood after someone purportedly tried to drive a car through the entrance, and the roof needs to be replaced, at an estimated cost of $5 million.
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