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Well I used to work up at the mall for a store(which has since closed), and I know all the inside ""dirt"" as to why nobody wants to bring any new business, industry, or stores here.  I can't get into the specific details(that's an entirely different topic), but I can tell you that the entire mall has been a money loser for several years now.  Cambridge Shopping Centers has placed it up for sale time and time again.  Nobody wants it, and I don't blame them.  If Sears ever decides to pull out of there, they might as shut the entire place down and bulldoze it, because the land is worth more than the mall itself.  Everything is going Northside anyway.  Downtown Chatham has been a cesspool ever since the recession of the 90's, and it never fully recovered.  And the Capitol Theatre? Give me a break.  They might as well give up on that too.  It's been what? Over ten years now, and after all the time and money that was pissed away on that thing, we stil aren't any closer to it being finished, or having a final completion date.  As far as Chatham as a city goes, I have never seen so many unsavoury, shady people in my life.  Not everyone is like that, I agree, but yes it would seem as though Chatham does qualify as the welfare capitol on Ontario.  Drugs, unwed mothers, crackheads, dropouts, second and third generation ""welfare families"", a plethora of health problems, and well you get the pitcure.  Is it any wonder why the younger crowd is leaving in droves? I can't say that I blame them.  The grass IS greener on the other side.  Chatham's prime was over a long time ago.   It's London and points East that you want to be..."