Clueless Kelly should visit Englewood real soon

A week ago, in a column on the front page of The Record, burned-out Staff Writer Mike Kelly compared downtown Hackensack unfavorably to Englewood and other towns, which reportedly "bustled with new businesses." But the reality is far different, as these empty storefronts on Englewood's Palisade Avenue show, above and below. 

This empty retail space is on the ground floor of a luxury apartment building.

All of the empty storefronts are on Palisade Avenue or on a side street, and all are within one block of each other. And there are others on both side of the railroad tracks that divide Englewood economically and racially.

In recent years, The Record has virtually ignored downtown Hackensack, Englewood and Teaneck, in favor of stories about Ridgewood, Tenafly and other wealthier towns. And the newspaper has never explored the impact it had on Hackensack's Main Street when it abandoned the city where it had prospered for 110 years. Kelly, of course, never mentioned The Record's departure in his Hackensack column.

In  today's Memorial Day Parade, the Englewood Police Department Honor Guard marched past a Palisade Avenue storefront that remains empty more than a year after Victoria's Secret closed (not shown).