Chico’s invites the community to the Santa Paws photo event
Chico’s Natural Pet Market is reopening in its new space in Barcroft Plaza on Dec. 1 – just in time for the annual Santa Paws event.
Chico’s owner Danielle Areco is bringing Santa and his elves to the store on Dec. 9, 10, 16, and 17.
Sign up here to reserve a spot for a photo shoot with you, your furry friend, and Santa. All animals are welcome. There will be music, entertainment, and the Santa Magical Gift Shop.
Santa Paws is a fundraiser to help Chico’s rebuild its cat adoption center. All proceeds will go toward that project.
After Chico’s was forced to move from its previous location in Barcroft Plaza, it moved into a temporary storefront while its new space in that shopping center, at 6464A Lincolnia Road, was supposed to be completely renovated.
That process has been dragging on for more than a year. The landlord, Federal Realty, agreed to completely build out the space by the end of October 2022, but Areco says that didn’t happen.
They didn’t build the cat adoption center, complete the bathrooms, or install a drain for the dog grooming station, and they didn’t provide a break on the rent as promised, she says.
“The promise made to us was that we would move from our original location into the new one with minimal downtime,” Areco says. “We expected, and planned for, being shut down for about a month or so. Due to construction delays and mistakes by the landlord, a year has gone by.”
Related story: Chico’s will stay at Barcroft Plaza
“The new location was finally turned over to us only recently. Construction, however, was never completed. We now have to finish it ourselves in order to open,” she says.
When negotiations with Federal Realty failed, Areco hired an attorney, who said the landlord wants her out of the shopping center and threatened to terminate her contract.
Areco says the attorney told her, “it will cost tens of thousands of dollars to go into litigation and you are better off cutting your losses and leave.”
But Areco is not a quitter. She is taking care of the work herself, funding it by selling inventory and liquidating assets – at a loss – and using credit cards to pay rent. “The long delay in receiving the new space has caused a near total depletion of our resources,” she says.
The new store will have a soft opening with minimal inventory. As more money comes in, she will add more products, complete the renovation, establish the adoption center, and add a wellness center.
Meanwhile, a GoFundMe site has been set up to raise money for the adoption center.
Areco says the adoption center will fill a need not served by animal shelters or existing adoption groups – such as a cat left behind when a neighbor moves.
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The animal shelter only accepts cats from the owner, and adoption groups obtain animals from shelters before they are euthanized and rarely accept animals from individuals, she says.
“We will take the necessary steps towards the physical and emotional rehabilitation of the animal so it can eventually find a forever home,” Areco says. “The amount of time this takes varies greatly from case to case. We never rush an animal into a situation it is not ready for.”
If she can raise enough money, Chico’s adoption center can start housing rescue cats in early 2024.
Why does the landlord want her out? Chico’s is such a nice asset to the community.
Many of the local strip malls are owned by Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS) that don’t care about anything other than their profits. Edens “removed” local restaurant Foxfire without notice during lease renewal at Pinecrest Plaza. Federal Realty determines the mix at Barcroft. It’s all about the $$$$.
I love this pet store and our family cat is from there. However it’s important to ask …..Do you have a 401k, do you have investments? Many now involve-invest with or in a REIT. Thus seeking profit has both upsides and downsides; but shareholders require a return for their investment and that necessitates a profit. So being about the money is a good thing. What you seem to want is the old owner-operator approach of business owning their buildings. That is extremely rare and almost never happens in shopping malls. How and where you do business is how to impact this. Not easy but it can happen.
And much of that resulted from the S&L crises in the 1990’s. It disconnected buildings from their communities by only answering to their stockholders. Great for the stockholders but not so great for the communities. So now the commercial sector generates almost no tax revenue to the communities they promised to support when they were built. Meanwhile, the community has to maintain infrastructure going to that building. And the commercial and retail sectors across the country and around the world have a major problem with empty buildings. So yes, I would think there needs to be a reassessment of how well that is working. It is a problem for banks as well as the commercial tax structure. They solved one problem but longer term created another.