BA Design/Hard Rock Cafe Closing Saturday?

[Daniel82]

Has anyone read that this Saturday the Buenos Aires Design shopping mall including its restaurants (and yes, according to La Nación and the HRC’s Facebook page that does include Hard Rock) is closing for good?

I remember a few months ago a petition on change.org which I signed in hopes of ‘saving’ the shopping center, albeit thinking it wouldn’t happen, or at least that the restaurants wouldn’t shut down.

Apparently there’s a big demonstration tomorrow which HRC has posted on its Facebook inn pueyrreydon and libertador in which the 1500 employees losing their jobs are going to be marching.

This is awful as HRC was always one of my ‘go to’ places when I craved something reliably familiar, good quality, and American (TGI Friday’s sucks)

 

[Bajo_cero2]

Right, a click on the internet replace the lack of a contract plus you think this administration cares about people loosing their jobs.

 

[London2Baires]

Confirmed: http://www.ambito.com/939382-por-fin-de-concesion-cierra-buenos-aires-desing

;(

 

[ben]

I thought the story with HRC was over a couple years back.

 

[earlyretirement]

It's about time. Really most of BA Design has been really dead every time I've gone. Many times there were more employees in it vs. people and most of the shops have been dead.

 

[mmoon]

Too bad. It used to be a great place to find cool little things for your house. I still have placemats I bought probably 10 years ago. Quality was generally way better than the typical crap on Cabildo. Yet another End of an Era moment in BsAs.

 

[earlyretirement]

Too bad. It used to be a great place to find cool little things for your house. I still have placemats I bought probably 10 years ago. Quality was generally way better than the typical crap on Cabildo. Yet another End of an Era moment in BsAs.

Yes, many many years ago back in the hey days it was a good place to get stuff for your place. I bought a lot of furniture there and some of the stores have been there for many many years (Simmons Mattresses). But many of the high end places have just been totally dead with no foot traffic. And I went in a few weeks ago to Barugel Azulay to buy a toilet paper holder and there were two employees there and although there was NO ONE in the store, they were totally worthless when I asked for assistance.

Customer service at many of the stores was pretty bad. The one exception is Carlos, the manager at Simmons who has been there when I bought my first mattress almost 18 years ago to today. Hopefully he ends up at another store.

 

[Sockhopper]

I had no idea until reading this just now that I felt emotional over BA’s Design Center. I do. In memory of it, I am replacing today a transparent acrylic, oval, nail brush with clear champagne-sized bubbles embedded throughout it with a brand new duplicate. I bought a few of these each year I visited BA from Canada until 2012 and so collected a good supply of them. I’ve just checked, whew! I still have 5 more of these left stored in their original wrapping from the bathroom shop in that Center. Nobody else anywhere has copied their design.

More memories of that mall flood me - how quiet it was, how ordinary it was to be almost the only people in it. At the larger furniture store, we found a unique coffee table that cleverly had built into it an extra but hidden function. We were all set to retire to BA 4 months from then and had even arranged the move with shippers. Then Boom -Arg passed 2 additional 'dollar clampdown' laws which killed the financial viability of this plan that we'd been forming for 3 years. We’d even told the store when we’d be placing an order for that table. I still have its measurements.

We had no idea back then that within the next 3 months, we'd choose Nice, France as our alternative retirement city. Neither of us had ever expressed any wish to live in France! But life happens. So Nice has been our home for over 6 years now. That table from the Design Center would look great in our living room here too.

It’s very sad that all those workers have lost their jobs. The Center was very special for BA to have. I hope that ‘Industria Argentina’ gets back onto its feet. Portenos are the most creative people I’ve known in terms of visual design, and also lateral thinking as and when needed.