Lengthy line forms as Ross reopens in Moses Lake
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald The line at outside Ross Dress For Less on Stratford Road in Moses Lake Wednesday morning. The discount retailer closed all of its stores nationwide on March 20, and reopened a select number of them of Wednesday.
MOSES LAKE — The line stretched all the way around the corner of the building.
“We’re trying to get the deals,” said Eduardo Vasquez, of Moses Lake. “We’ve got some money to spend to get some clothes, what I need for work, and maybe get some shoes.”
The deals were at the Ross Dress for Less on Stratford Road in Moses Lake, which opened its doors at 10 a.m. on Wednesday. The Dublin, Calif.-based discount retailer had closed all of its roughly 1,400 outlets in the U.S. as part of the nationwide effort to limit the spread of COVID-19.
“We’ve been waiting almost an hour. We started back there,” Vasquez said as he turned and pointed to the side of the building behind him. “It’s been hard, especially since we didn’t get anything to drink.”
While the company did not respond to requests from the Columbia Basin Herald prior to press time, information on the Ross Stores website shows that the Moses Lake location is one of the few in Central Washington to reopen this week, with a number of other company outlets in Wenatchee, the Tri-Cities, and the Yakima area listed as still “temporarily closed.”
And that was enough to bring some excited shoppers into town to get, as Vasquez said, “the deals.”
“I’ve been looking online to see what their hours are, and they always said they were temporarily closed,” said Warden resident Alejandra Loera, who was standing at the end of the line with her three kids at around 10:45.
When she saw they were opening, she decided to come down “before the lines get crazy.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].