My new business: Food at Local Restaurant

My hometown has one big indoor shopping mall. Actually, it has zero since the mall was built outside city limits. This loss of tax revenue has been a sore spot with some in the community for decades, and methinks it's part of the reason the city relented a few years back and let the likes of Wal-Mart and Lowes build stores in town after years of resisting that type of development. They've also allowed some lovely strip malls -- the kind anchored by a Barnes & Noble with a Chili's on a pad in the middle of the parking lot -- to appear.

It's progress, I guess, and makes life a tad more convenient for folks, but it's sad to see that my town is becoming indistinguishable from your garden-variety suburb.

Anyway, the Pyramid Mall -- so named because the name of the parent company was Pyramid, and not because it was some Vegas-type theme shopping center -- was sold a few years back, so it's no surprise new management has finally gotten around to changing the name of the place.

From The Ithaca Journal (Here's the full story, in which the reporter writing about retail does not know how to spell J.C. Penney. And, yes, of course I blame the writer and not his editors.):

New signs going up in coming weeks will read “Shops at Ithaca Mall” as the management team at the mall attempts to build a stronger attitude of community.

It could be worse, I suppose. They could have gone with "Shoppes at Ithaca Mall." Come to think of it, that would be better, as it would read more like the name of a shopping center and less like a Jeopardy! clue: ANSWER: What a bored Ithaca teenager does on a Saturday afternoon. QUESTION: What is "Shops at Ithaca Mall?"