The Spirit of Pier1 Lives On!

 Welcome to Retail on the Thames' second Halloween post! Now it wouldn't be Halloween for a retail enthusiast without checking out a Spirit Halloween, so let's do that! Today, we're going to be checking out a recurring Spirit Halloween that's located in the ghost of a former Pier1 Imports.

This Pier1 was built in 2001 as a part of the first of two sections of the Lisbon Landing Shopping center. When Lisbon Landing was built, it was the first kind of major retail the small town of Lisbon had received outside of a few other places such as McDonald's and Better Valu. The center became a retail mecca for the general area, due to it being anchored by Home Depot, Kohl's, and most notably, a Wal-Mart Supercenter. This location was even more significant since the next closest Wal-Mart in Norwich was a smaller location built in the 90's that still remains today. The shopping center became even bigger when extension was added across Route 12 in 2010 that included Target, Lowe's, Aldi, and other smaller tenants. The center remains thriving, outside of the Pier1, which has been seasonally used by infamous chain Spirit Halloween.

As for Pier1 itself, it closed by 2015, and has been used by Spirit Halloween for at least the past two years. While Pier1 has been struggling for a while, it's somewhat odd to see a Pier1 that was abandoned before their current bankruptcy and liquidation, which has led to Pier1 locations closing left and right. 

I've been pretty lucky to be able to document this location a couple of times. Once on June 7th, 2020, when it was vacant, and once on October 12th, 2020, when the space was being used as Spirit Halloween. Let's look at the pictures I've took to see how the building has fared in different conditions.

Starting with the shots of it when it was vacant, the building felt out of place. It wasn't really the building itself that was weird, since it was attached to a basic 2000's looking mini-plaza. What felt off to me was the circumstances of the building. Lisbon Landing is one of the busiest shopping centers I've ever been to. There's always plenty of people and cars, and every store is busy (well, at least the anchors). The fact that there's a vacant space here feels bizarre, despite it looking pretty boring,

The interior felt a little off too. I think this is because I went here last year when it was a Spirit, but I never went into the building when it was a Pier1. I remember there being paths made of hardwood floor, and all of the tones were different. It's possible that this was all stuff Spirit added. but it still didn't feel right. It's also possible that Spirit used a different space in the plaza last year, but I'm fairly confident that they used the former Pier1 space.

Ah yes, that's the Spirit!

I don't have much to say about this part of the set, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves for the most part.

You just have to love Spirit Halloween's trademark "professional signage."

I did want to get some interior shots from the window, but the plethora of Spirit Halloween branding prevented me from doing that, and since I didn't want to go in the building, I just left with the shots I had gotten.

That's it for this one! The next time I'll see you all is on November 11th, where I'll be releasing an extremely special post that's been over three months in the making. This is the most work I've ever put into one post, and it's going to pay off immensely. Although there are some who know what this post will be about, it's going to be kept secret on my blog. So until then, I'll see you all next time!

-Simpsonfan311