A similar thing happened to many small towns in PA when malls were new and more attractive to shoppers than the same old stores they supported for decades. Those downtown areas that survived worked hard to make themselves more appealing. They offered better service and unique goods in contrast to the cookie-cutter experience at malls where shoppers found the same stores and merchandise from one shopping center to another.
That strategy has not been as successful against the big box stores, because of the price difference. The addition of one-stop shopping with grocery and pharmacy pushed more smaller stores out of business. Delivery seems to be killing the rest.
Property taxes are a real sore point in PA, though. There are too many people on fixed incomes who lose their homes because those rates go up every year. Pols have tried several times to find a different way to fund schools, because without corporate payments the remaining local taxpayers cannot make up the difference.
