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Another mall staple is feeling the continuing economic impacts of the pandemic. Wicked Local media partner WBC-TV reports this week that the Disney Company is closing at least 60 stores in North America.
While Disney did not release a list of stores that will close, its local outlets include the Burlington Mall, Wrentham Outlets, and New Hampshire’s Merrimack Premium Outlets.
Disney currently has about 300 locations worldwide. It had nearly 800 locations globally at its peak in 1999. While consumer behavior has shifted toward online shopping, the global pandemic has changed what consumers expect from a retailer, said Stephanie Young, president of Disney s consumer products, games and publishing unit, in a press release.
After returning to the classroom with a hybrid/in-person approach in September, cases of coronavirus began appearing among staff and/or students in all of Burlington’s classrooms. To date, it is not believed that transmission has occurred in classrooms, but was brought into the buildings from another source of transmission. It is the practice of the Burlington public schools to close a classroom for two weeks and notify close contacts of the infected person.
Customers were getting accustomed to the new way of food shopping – wearing masks and lining up outside the supermarket, separated by 6 feet of social distancing. When a Market Basket employee became infected, readers wrote to the Union to advocate for plexiglass dividers to protect workers, which quickly became the norm.