ORLANDO, Fla. — Vendors at Artegon Marketplace have one more day to pack up and leave.
Store owners who call the mall a second home are saying goodbye just two weeks after they were told they had to leave.
Shop owner Ana Jones, who has run a business at the mall since it opened, said she’s upset about how the sudden closure was handled.
Read: Artegon Marketplace to close at end of January
“They said we had until the 26th of January to basically shut our stores down, to either find somewhere else to go or just move out,” she said.
Jones has been cleaning up her shop, Stars Bars & Baskets, for the past 11 days. She said she still can't believe that this is it.
“Everybody was up in arms about Artegon closing,” Jones said. “Nobody thought about the little guys. There are a ton of small businesses in there, and we are not corporations. We are people who put everything we have into our stores.”
The mall announced on Jan. 12 that it would close its doors.
Lightstone Group, the company that owns Artegon Marketplace, put the mall up for sale in August, saying it was taking the property in a “new direction.”
“While it was a difficult decision to discontinue operations, we are thankful to our team in Orlando, and to our tenants, for their hard work and dedication over the past several years,” the company said in a statement earlier this month.
As the mall’s final day inches closer, Jones is working hard to clear out her shop.
“I wouldn't do business with Artegon again or [its] subsidiaries,” she said.
Vendors were given until Thursday to empty their shops.
Artegon Marketplace replaced the failed Festival Bay Mall.
The company that owns the mall didn’t immediately respond to Channel 9’s questions about the property’s future.
Cox Media Group
