WEST LEBANON — The PowerHouse Mall is a signature stop on Joanne DeLora’s holiday shopping route. The sentimentality of the season is even sweeter shopping at the place where she worked for 20 years.
But with higher prices raising her economic anxiety, DeLora’s Christmas gift list has become, as she put it, “more intentional” this year.
“I’m retired so I don’t have to just walk into a store and buy things randomly,” said DeLora, a former vendor at Artifactory which closed in 2020 but had been one of the original tenants of the mall since opening in 1987. “I can just really look at prices very carefully, which I do now because the prices are so high.”
While she’s noticed that prices are lower online, shopping in-store and supporting local is invaluable to her.
Consumer sentiment is down this holiday season, according to nationwide surveys. At PowerHouse Mall, which suffered a major flood at the end of last year and has seen some longtime tenants depart, store owners reported steady if not spectacular sales and consumers said they were making a point of patronizing locally owned stores.
Tina Gleich, a Grantham resident, said she splits her purchases between online and in-store about 60/40, respectively.
“My grandson is very particular on his Star Wars Legos and you can’t find them all the time (so) you might have to go to Amazon, unfortunately,” she lamented. “I try to do local, especially family-run businesses.”
She’s kept her Christmas shopping budget on par with previous years.
On the other side of the register, Eileen Griffenburg, who opened the high-end clothing boutique Griff and Company in the PowerHouse seven years ago, has noticed customers buying less this year.
“They want to buy better,” Griffenburg said.
She finds that people coming to her store are more careful about how they spend.
Still, sales are steady, Griffenburg said. And tariffs have not yet impacted her prices. What she has in stock was purchased at pre-tariff prices.
“I buy far in advance,” she said.
“What happened, though, is the majority of my vendors did not buy (new) stock because they weren’t going to invest in something that was ridiculously expensive,” she said.
She expects by next year, once stock needs to be reordered, prices will have gone up.
“When you see something,” she tells everybody coming into the store, “buy it because there’s very little stock out there in the fashion industry.”
At the Lemon Tree, a popular PowerHouse shop offering everything from French ceramics to Alpaca socks since 2018 when it expanded from Hanover, owner Melissa Haas has offered more sales on merchandise to alleviate customer concerns this holiday season.
“I think it really helps,” Haas said. “Even people who don’t necessarily need the deals, they appreciate it.”
Upper Valley shoppers are more cautious this holiday season, she said. But loyalty to locality keeps them coming back even in the ups and downs of inflation and tariffs leading up to Christmas.
Customers also remained loyal following the recovery from a flood that severely damaged the Lemon Tree and PowerHouse lobby just before New Year’s last year. It took four months for the Lemon Tree to reopen and the entire floor of the lobby had to be replaced.
“I have to say we are just thrilled that our customers are coming back,” she said.
This holiday season, where the former floor once buckled sits a tall Christmas tree strewn in red ribbons and flanked by mannequin reindeer. In place of the sounds of construction from earlier this year, play Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run” and Upper Valley footsteps headed for favorite holiday spots.
Most shops are still there to welcome them back. Eastern Mountain Sports just renewed its lease. Others sit empty after closing this past year, such as Country Kids Clothing and Bonkers toy store.
There are, however, plans in the works to fill the first-floor space formerly occupied by Country Kids, which closed at the end of June, with a new “food offering,” as PowerHouse manager Heather Doran described it, beginning in January.
In the space on the second floor formerly occupied by Bonkers, which closed January 2025, Doran is returning a lost and longed-for feature of the PowerHouse experience: an interactive model train set, built in partnership with the Upper Valley Chapter of the Connecticut Valley Model Railroad Club.
“Since I was little, I remember that there was a train at the mall,” Doran said. “Unfortunately, it died like end of summer.”
With the model train set — now being built to last the lifetime of the mall — and events ranging from the farmers market to the annual Santa’s visit, Doran said she’s been consistently working with the community to bring in more shoppers and celebrate the holidays.
“People in the community at large, even those who come from from far away to visit, really go to the mall and want to have the holiday experience there,” she said.
While sales numbers won’t be available until next month, Doran said she didn’t think the economic climate is the predominant issue this season.
“I don’t want to sugarcoat everything, but that hasn’t really been a part of any conversations I’ve had with tenants,” she said. “Although, I do think it would be unfair to say that it’s not on people’s minds.”