As happened in hundreds of other cities across the country, Covington’s downtown business district took a hard punch to the jaw in the mid-1970s when shoppers decided that enclosed malls with plenty of free parking were irresistible places to spend their time and their money.
Within a few years of the 1976 opening of the Florence Mall, the core of Northern Kentucky retailing had moved 10 miles south to what had been Boone County farmland. Many Covington merchants either moved out or closed up shop. The downtown casualty list included national retailers Sears, J.C. Penney and Woolworth’s as well as family-owned businesses such as Coppin’s department store and Parisian, whose roots were generations deep.
Reversing that suburbs-or-bust trend has proven to be a monumental challenge.
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