-May 21,2019-
Dress Barn closing
Dressbarn, a discount women’s clothing chain in business for almost 60 years, is closing all 650 of its stores including locations in the Central Valley. Those include Visalia, Tulare Clovis and Fresno. The Ascena Retail Group also owns Ann Taylor. On-line sales will continue.
Visalia’s Plaza Drive will see third hotel
A Bakersfield firm, RAMM Hospitality, headed by Raj Verma is already under construction on a 95-room Marriott Residence Inn at Crowley and Plaza Drive off 198 in Visalia. Now the developer plans to build a 100 unit 4-story Hilton Garden Inn on the SE corner of the same intersection according to a conditional use permit application filed May 15.
The new $9 million 5-story Residence Inn is well under construction at 205 N Plaza Dr and is expected to open in July.
With these two new hotels on the east side of Hwy 198 coming on line this year there will be total of three large hotels on Plaza including the 250 room Wyndham next to the airport on the west side 198.
That’s a total about 450 rooms on the city’s western entrance.
More Mooney Blvd Updates
Across from COS there are plenty of changes to watch. PayLess Shoes will close in weeks as more people are buying cheap shoes online .The company will shut down all of its U.S. and Canada stores by the end of May including their other store at the Visalia Mall.
Meanwhile Visalia United School District will sell a number of their properties around town including the former charter school facility on Mooney at Meadow Lane, right across the street from the Payless shoe store. Assistant Superintendent Robert Groeber says ” VUSD recently purchased and just completed renovations to VCIS West (the former Brandman building by Kmart) which makes the Meadow/Mooney property surplus.”
Also VUSD will also relocate other leased buildings from this end of Mooney including 750 S Mooney, the old Sight & Sound, were the VCIS online is as well as the leased dance studio space on Meadow across from COS says Groeber, when those leases expire.
Next to the old Sight and Sound Visalia developer JR Shannon is moving forward on a a new 6500sf multi-tenant restaurant space across from COS and next to Habit Burger. He bought the former parking lot from COS.