LIMERICK PA – What a difference a day makes.
The Philadelphia Premium Outlets mall at the Sanatoga interchange of U.S. Route 422 in Limerick was booming with customers yesterday (Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009), as they enjoyed shopping for post-Christmas bargains in bright sunshine and temperatures that reached into the low-50s, despite breezy conditions.
Some outlet merchants offered discounts of up to 70 percent on goods.
The mall’s parking lots were packed by 2:30 p.m., and outlet-hired traffic police had their hands full at some entrances from Evergreen Road. That compared to a sparse Saturday, outlet store managers said, which was filled with rain and clouds but far fewer buyers.
Discounts at a couple of stores in the Limerick center ranged as high as 75 percent on selected merchandise. A few more offered 70-percent off, but the majority touted price cuts of 50- to 60-percent.
Merchants nationwide were hoping for a bigger shopper turnout than what they seem to have gotten, The Associated Press observed. A retail analyst told it “nothing was amazingly stellar” in the holiday season so far. “This is not going to go down as a Christmas for most people to really remember,” the NPD Group‘s Marshal Cohen said.
Not all buyers, apparently including this yawner, were impressed.
Across the country, as they did in Limerick, stores pushed to attract buyers by slashing prices and advertising big sales. For retailers who didn’t fare as well as they wished in the run-up to Christmas, this is a big week. Sales during the same period last year accounted for nearly 15 percent of all holiday retail business, according to The AP. The outlets’ sales promotion continues through next Sunday (Jan. 3, 2010).
Shoppers, who were accustomed last year to getting everything they wanted at occasionally larger discounts were disappointed too. Merchants more closely managed their inventories, The AP noted, because they guessed shoppers would “likely spend less this year because of high unemployment and economic uncertainty.”
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The traffic was horrible. I left, as did many, and went to King of Prussia.
How ridiculous is it that Limerick does not insist developers create a second entrance to this area. Lightcap is too narrow, coming off of airport road, and there are holes all over. Possum Hollow is like a scene out of a horror movie.
Now, with all of this the Supervisors are letting the developer quadruple the size of the marketplace without creating another entrance. This is a tragedy waiting to happen.
O’neill’s web site shows buildings, theaters, parking area, and a major retaining basin along Evergreen that extends to the creek. So, the creek will be flooded with overspill from the parking lots and this creek runs into a pond near Cutillos.
Is this what we want?
Where is the sewer?
Limerick Supervisors need to know this approach is unacceptable.