$15 minimum wage.
Taxes and regulations?
Some of these closings wouldn’t also happen to have anything to do with indoor malls and some strip malls becoming havens for gangs of teens, would they?
High minimum wage for shopkeepers. Amazon killing brick and mortar using stock market dollars to subsidize its growth and overhead expenses (they are predatory on pricing). And NJ taxes the crap out of its residents, so they probably can’t afford to shop anyway.
You can’t live and support a family in New Jersey on $15 an hour.