In the early 1970s, the city tried to revive its downtown by closing off the two blocks of Main Street west of the store to create Main Mall, a pedestrian mall that would offer shoppers a comparable experience to the suburban malls. Since it was necessary to raze some other adjacent stores and buildings to create parking lots, the plan actually exacerbated the neighborhood's decline. Seven years after the mall was created, in 1981, Luckey Platt closed both its main store and the Dutchess Mall branch.
