COURTESY DARIN MORIKI
The locally owned Robins shoe store at Ala Moana Center will close Sunday, declining to renew its lease.
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Robins is closing its only shoe store Sunday at Ala Moana Center after 50 years at the state’s largest shopping mall.
The locally owned retailer, which opened at the center in 1966, didn’t renew its lease at the mega-mall, which recently completed the bulk of a $572 million redevelopment project that expanded the Ewa end of the center.
The face of Ala Moana has changed drastically in recent years as decades-old tenants — some of them locally owned, family-run businesses — have found themselves unable to compete with larger national
retailers and eventually have shut down.
“It’s been difficult for local-based companies at the mall. The great majority of them have left over time,” said Renton Nip, president of Chun Kim Chow Ltd., former owner of Robins. Nip’s cousin Rodney Chun, who has run the business for decades, declined comment.
Local retailers do not have the same kind of leverage as national or big-box companies, making it difficult to land prime locations within the center, he added.
“You have the large boxes and national retailers that have come in. Generally over time, General Growth has accommodated the national retailers and retailers who have an interest in malls throughout the nation where General Growth is also active,” he said. “General Growth hasn’t been that accommodating to local merchants.”
Robins has about a half-dozen employees who will be laid off, he said.
