To the Editor:

Has anyone else noticed the closure of several excellent stores in downtown Princeton this January? It is an absolute shame that Kate Spade, Lily Pulitzer, Aerosole, and The Army and Navy Store have closed down. Our town benefited enormously from having beautiful and cheerful stores like these and I think it is enormously short-sighted to keep jacking up rents.

If we don’t have these stores then what else could be as good to fill their place? What better place than a smart University town to have this type of store? We surely do not need yet another coffee shop or restaurant.

Having made it through the recession of 2008, the town in fact looks worse today with it’s papered over shops. We will certainly all miss these traders for the products and jobs they supplied.

It is a pity the current landlords could not look at the bigger picture and decide to keep tradesmen like these instead of allowing yet another one to fail once the rents came up for renewal.

Louise Wellemeyer

Rosedale Road