Padang (ANTARA) - The society of Padang City are decreasingly visiting the Damar Plaza shopping center located on Damar Padang street, West Sumatra for the past few years and this condition has been exacerbated since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lastri, one of the store employees in the Damar Plaza area, said that visitors have started to disappear one by one in recent years, because the presence of Damar Plaza has begun to be replaced by several new shopping centers in Padang City.
"So, Damar Plaza has been quiet for a long time, usually the customers buy. However, since the corona pandemic, customers have also started to disappear one by one," Lastri said, an employee of the Women's Clothing Store at Damar Plaza, Monday (2/8).
The shop owners were forced to stay in Damar Plaza because most of the shops were not rented, but privately owned.
"The shop has its own, it's been open since 1987, so it's really difficult to sell it and move places," Lastri said.
On the other hand, Ardi, a parking attendant since 2010 in the Damar Plaza area, said that the pandemic had a major impact on the decline in the number of visitors.
"Visitors have been dropping since ten years ago and since the Pandemic the visitors have been quieter," Ardi said, a parking attendant at Damar Plaza.
Ardi hopes that Damar Plaza, which used to be the center of the trend for young people in the city of Padang and is now abandoned by customers, can return to being as busy as when it was originally opened.
Damar Plaza is Getting Left Behind since the Pandemic
