The Shoppes in Chino Hills is one of the many places that students can walk to after school and hang out with friends with countless things to do. Although it is an outdoor shopping mall with many stores and restaurants, there have been unfortunate closures of countless businesses. However, this is not an uncommon thing.

“I freaked out when Johnny Rockets left and was replaced with Bruxie,” said Nicholas Compani (10).

The Shoppes is experiencing a lot of stores closing down during this school year, such as Lost Levels, a store centered around retro gaming that closed down in the third quarter of 2024. There has also been a large surge of stores closing opening this year, with some stores barely lasting months. Students are hoping some promising businesses will open in replacement of the closed ones.

“A convenience store would be nice,” said Compani. “And more places that we don’t have–retailers that don’t just sell clothes.”

With 2025 just beginning, a new wave of stores are shutting down, such as Forever 21 (which filed for bankruptcy in March), Active, and Windsor, which is already gone. Many stores, especially clothing stores, are leaving and are instantly replaced with others. Students are starting to the ponder reasons why this might be the case.

“I think they just have the bad type of clothing shopping,” said Diego Murcia (12). “With hose stores, I think they should improve it or get better ones at least.”

It is pretty well known that the majority of the stores in The Shoppes are especially tailored to clothing and fashion. Although it may be beneficial for the people who are trying to find a great outfit to buy, there are more consumers out there who aren’t interested in just clothing. Some students advocate to diversify The Shoppes to include a variety of more products for shoppers.

“I don’t think The Shoppes really needs any more clothes shops. We just need something that more people can consume,” said Anthony Esparza (11). “Like a GameStop would be cool–somewhere where people can buy games.”

It is not just clothing stores that shut down, but also restaurants. There have been some notable food spots that closed their doors and have been replaced with entirely new food chains. Most famously was Hottie’s, a fried chicken store, which was replaced with Gusto Italian Bistro. However, before the bistro came around, there was a Sonic the Hedgehog Speed Cafe, which was a controversial hit.

The Speed Cafe was a pop-up, lasting for approximately three months before getting replaced. Centered around Sonic, it served to bring Sega’s famous mascot into The Shoppes. There have been some questionable marketing moves that even the students have picked up on which may have led to its early leave.

“Personally I wouldn’t sell 17 dollar microwaved hotdogs,” said Compani. “[Especially] less than a mile from Costco with 1.50 dollar hotdogs.”

Poor sales and lack of interest from the public, some of these stores don’t have the market to run for a long time. However, some students assume other reasons.

“[I think it’s] because of not enough revenue gain and that they had to move out when rent was too high,” said Murcia.

Anyhow, these closures open up a lot of room for more stores to open up in the future. We may never know when, but students here at Ayala hope to await new stores to shop at in the future.