Martinsburg West Virginia, seen today as a sort of industrial, busy, and sort of torn town. The main shopping strip as it is in modern day features 2 main shopping experiences featuring everything from Target and Best Buy to a Firehouse Subs or Chilis. The second of the latter once featured the now demolished Martinsburg Mall, only a dirt lot remaining to tell its story and almost no evidence a mall ever existed there. Many would call Martinsburg chaotic or a mess. It wasn't always that way.
At one time downtown martinsburg bustled with shopping such as Jcpenny and in 1984 came the Blue Ridge Outlets. The outlets featured 50 some shops and restaurant choices and quickly became a tourist destination of sorts for the area that at the time hadn't been done. The outlets were situated inside of an industrial setting being a closed down textile mill that was renovated into the destination. People from DC flooded in to shop at "The Ridge". During this time a hole was left in downtown Martinsburg as retail had previously flooded into new storefronts at the state of the art Berkelely Plaza that now featured the popular JCPenny that once was downtown as well as a plethora of new stores including a new movie theatre that is still open to this day.
At the Blue Ridge Outlets you could get high end items at discount prices. It was a welcome change and worked great until its closure in April of 2000 after a declining economy and business began to become more competitive when the Hagerstown Outlets opened up under 30 minutes away from the once popular shopping destination in Martinsburg. In a way retail is on its way back to how it was long ago. Indoor shopping is on its way out and outlet centers and open air shopping plazas are coming back.
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