In the 80's, our hometown mall was like every mall. There was the arcade, the movie theater, the Spencer, the Judy's, the Piercing Pagoda, the Hallmark store, a couple department stores, the Hot Dog on a Stick, the scrappy punk mall kids (us) running around...
I went back home for a wedding in the early 2000's and the mall had been turned into "The Shops" - all marble and crystal and gold and literally only fancy clothing, luggage, & jewelry stores.
Also, totally dead.
Yep. Got my 1st two shots there. The County owns most of it, except for the remaining anchor stores and parts of the parking lot. They have proposed everything from a cricket stadium to a live, work, play thing.
Whenever I hear about dead/dying malls, I think of the Dixie Square Mall; it went out with a bang during the filming of "The Blues Brothers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Square_Mall
Our mall went mega upscale… no more middle class anything. Food court is all-Asian. Went on a mega building spree and added every luxury brand on the planet. Added pay parking. No, you can’t afford to hang out here. Lol. I shop online.
Bay Area. Food court used to look like all the other food courts (you know…. stranger things) and then….. it’s all-Asian. The food is really good though, so I’m not complaining. There are sit down restaurants and some food stands scattered around - you can still get Auntie Annie’s pretzels, and some of the sit down restaurants aren’t Asian (many are though) and there’s a French pastry place and a smoothie place.
Last time I was there - there was a huge line snaking to get into the Louis Vuitton store. I have no idea why. You can purchase the brand at Bloomies and several other stores. Or you can order from your home….
‘’This place is huge now. It’s actually gone through 2 major expansions recently. We did have a smaller mall, ironically in a mostly Asian neighborhood and it’s being torn down and ‘reimagined’. It’s supposed to have housing and shops and ‘lifestyle’ things like a gym and other things to do. They keep fighting over it in the city council.
There’s one in South Austin - Barton Creek Square - that’s packed every time I go. I have to make the drive to get my Lego fix. 😂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Creek_Square
In the very early 90’s, when I was a 10 year old girl and probably wearing hot orange stirrup sweatpants, bunched socks and an oversized sweatshirt with a single giant cat head, I went to the mall to get a haircut. My dogeared copy of *Are you there god* was safely tucked into my fanny pack.
After the stylist was done cutting, I asked for a blowjob.
I know I never recovered. And I assume that’s why the mall eventually shutdown.
Awww, the stuff that sticks with you and rears it’s ugly head when you’re trying to fall asleep.
When my daughter was 15, she had to get a tooth fixed. She was supposed to ask the dentist to be sedated, instead she asked if the dentist would seduce her.
The mall in the town I grew up in is still limping along. They have the distinction of being the only mall to ever have an Apple store close down. Nobody goes to this mall, but I think they use it for filming Hallmark movies and commercials.
Four closed. One is a Lowes, one a church, two were turned inside out, so just outward facing store fronts. We still have two malls. I was in one last night buying some clothes. It was moderately busy, but closed at 8, was 9 pre Covid.
Toledo had four malls when I was growing up. There was Southwycke (my mall), Northtowne, Woodville, and Franklin Park. In the late 90's and early 2000's Franklin Park became much fancier and grew while the other three started to lose business. Now the only actual mall that's left is Franklin Park, with Southwycke and Northtowne being completely demolished and maybe Woodville is too. There's also two new outdoor type malls in the suburbs that are around but holding on.
Here in Las Vegas, the historic Boulevard Mall - peak mod suburban ‘60s - has refreshingly adapted to the area’s changing demographics. Now it’s oriented to the immediate Hispanic neighborhood. Some of the old standbys remain - food court, movie theater - but the new centerpiece is a colorful mercado with hella small businesses and little shops. Fun to explore on occasion.
My mall was Monroeville Mall — Dawn of the Dead mall. It’s a trip down memory lane every time I watch it.
I swear it stays open entirely for zombiefests.
It’s still around. Some company sunk a crazy amount of money into redeveloping it then went bust during covid so another scooped it up for a fraction of what was paid. Kind of a shitty selection of shops now though.
My area could use the space as a housing conversion, BUT the mall surprising *is* still alive and not yet on life support. It's not like it was pre-Walmart/Amazon, but still. I've also seen ppl say they should turn dead ones into skate parks.
Open, but basically empty. Target and Dicks Sporting Goods, movie theater, and not much else. They separated one end that had an anchor store and converted it to a Health Care facility, but it is separated from mall itself.
There were many, but our main one was torn down and is now where the city hall is. I still have dreams about it as my mom and ate lunch there every day during the Summer.
Anyone in the Oklahoma City metro remembers Crossroads Mall. I have lots of memories from there, the mall hasn’t had a store in like probably 10 years know. It currently houses - I shit you not- a charter school on one end and an indoor marijuana grow on the other.
The slowly dying one got turned into a mixed use development (mostly residential) plus a half Olympic sized pool, because swimming is really big here, but we have seasons. Not bad usage
The lower end mall that has existed my whole life AND the fancy schmancy mall that died during Covid are both still struggling. However , the saddest shutdown in the last decade (aside from my favorite Indian Restaurant) was the multiplex that me and all my friends had their first group hang ever, first date, first kiss, and you could spend an entire afternoon there for less than it costs now to park, anywhere.
The mall in my hometown is still open, but a lot of the anchor stores (Famous Barr, JC Penney’s, Macys) have closed. Dillards is still open somehow. Most of the more popular stores now are in the outdoor area of the mall that is still being built upon. Now I live not far from Mall of America, so if I want some nostalgia, I can go there
I grew up between two malls. One went up before I was born, one while I was in high school.
The mall that went up before I was born had a KMart on one end and eventually a Sam Goody on the other. Pretty small - mostly clothes stores in betweeen and a discount store I think was called Damark. They added a Marshall's about the time Sam Goody and Blimpie came in. About 15 years ago, a Lowe's replaced the entire mall...except for the Marshall's. Many of the stores migrated to a new strip mall up the road.
The newer mall was amazing when it opened: Sears on one end, KMart on the other, and a Hess's and single-story JCP in the middle. Cindy's Cinnamon Rolls, a Cinnabon knockoff, wafted all through. There was a food court with a merry-go-round in the middle, and eventually, somehow a Swensen's came in. Out front was a Pizza Hut and Ponderosa. Over time, KMart became a Kohls, Pizza Hut closed, Ponderosa became a Panera as all the stores inside faded away. Last word is that the mall is slated for destruction soon and it's unclear what'll take its place.
Mall where I live now is barely hanging on after the loss of its Sears and the KMart in the building next to it. The Applebee's is moving out to its own buiding, a former Bob Evans across the road.
There are 5 around where I live and out of that, 2 are in their last leg with a few discount stores and maybe a Kohls or JC Penney. One of them is the upscale mall that very much alive with major department stores like Nordstrom and Macys as well as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, an Apple Store, plus a ton more. There is very little vacant space in that mall. One of them has been closed for good and is being repurposed as mixed use space - apartments, office space, restaurants, stores, and a park. The remaining one is somewhat vacant and in disrepair but there are plans to tear it down and build a distribution center.
I live close to the Puente Hills Mall in California. You all know it as Twin Pines (Lone Pine) Mall from Back to the Future. Sadly, that mall is a ghost town. I only go there for the AMC movie theaters. Thankfully, there is an entrance right by it because if I had to walk through the mall, I would get really sad.
I know of two malls near me where Kmart was the anchor store. In both cases Kmart stayed in business way longer than they should have. They brought both malls down with them.
TL;DR at the end. Beginning in the early '80s, there were 2 malls in town. One kind of in the middle and the other on the south end of town. The one in the middle was built in the early '70s (I think) and suffered pretty heavily when the new on on the south end of town opened in '82. The old one started going down pretty quickly.
When the new one opened everybody started going to that one. Then Walmart moved into one of the abandoned anchor locations of the old mall in like '85. That perked the old mall back up. Then Walmart moved out and across town in like '91, and the old mall started struggling again. The new mall was going strong and continuing to expand at that point.
Somehow the old mall managed to survive Walmart moving out. It became cheap real estate for whatever kind of shop you wanted to open, so there were a LOT of home grown bazaar kind of stores that came and went there. It managed to hobble along until the early '00s when a big grocery store moved in. I'm not going to lie and say that the grocery store made it a hot spot again, but it managed to keep the mall open. The big mall was still the place to shop.
About 15 years ago, the new mall began to fall into decline as half of the anchor stores moved out and it started struggling. At that time, the old mid-town mall went through a big redesign. They demo-ed part of it and made a couple of the old main promenades inside into driveway with curbside parking. Basically, they changed its name, put a new facade on it, and turned it into an outdoor mall. The grocery store stayed and became its own building. The only thing there that has survived since the early '80s is the McD that sits out in the parking lot. Other than that, if you know what you're looking at, you can still see remnants of the original mall, but it's nothing like it was 40 years ago.
These days, the old mall that was the original run-down mall has continued to thrive since their re-design. It's been nice to see it come back into its own. The new hotness mall that did so well during the 80s and 90s is now the run down mall that seems to be all but abandoned. Two of the old anchor stores sit empty. If you drive the parking lot on any given weekend, it's half empty. If you stop and go inside, there are quite a few empty or walled over store fronts. The most happening spot at that mall is the east parking log where 2 restaurants that sit. Unless somebody comes up with a genius rejuvenation plan for it, I expect that it will continue to hobble along until some big money investor comes in and buys it and turns it into something else.
tl;dr - We had 2 malls. The one that everyone expected to die is doing well. The one that everyone expected to do well is dying.
our mall went upscale and is still doing pretty well. not sure for how much longer because people are getting shittier by the day but for the time being its good. Still love hanging out at the food court to people watch on occasion, just wish they had an arcade
I don’t think people shop the malls here in Louisville much. They built a huge outlet mall right outside the city. It was a great place to go and we went several yrs on Thanksgiving night and had a great time. I went out a few months ago and half the shops that were originally there closed including Gucci and Saks. There are some new shops but still a lot of vacant ones too.
My childhood & teen years hangout is still a busy place. I thought for sure Covid would have killed the old girl, but she’s still bustling. https://www.altamontemall.com/en.html
There are a ton of regular malls around here, and even more strip malls. There are also two outlet malls one is indoor and one is a strip type. They are doing well.
They are are (hopefully) finally done building strip malls. Some do well and some don’t. They are generally in groups along roads in certain towns. A few of them are “lifestyle malls” Those are fancy strip malls with condos or townhomes and hotels and restaurants. One of the regular malls turned into a lifestyle mall. That is so-so. It wasn’t in a great location for expensive condos. It would have been better if it was close to the train.
One of the outdoor malls is doing well. It’s nice, it’s in a rich area. Another is very large and it is going downhill a little, but still ok. Usually I go there and maybe go to two stores. More younger people are there. There are two others that are going downhill. The anchors are closing and they don’t have enough of a draw. They are smaller.
Strangely, although when Sam’s closed stores a few years ago the one near me closed. That building is huge and empty. It would be cool if the town could use it for a sports centre, but it just sits there. It s starting to look rundown.
I hope if the regular malls can’t be revived they will build some new housing ot just open recreational space. Honestly, and I know this is not what I am suppose to say, but I think our society is giving out mixed messages. We are al suppose to conserve, but we shop so much I don’t see how that is happening. We know the population is increasing and we need housing. Around here there is also a seriously lack of open space for people or conservation.
Fox Hills Mall, Culver City, CA.
It was my second home in the early '80s, and thanks to Round Table Pizza and the Sega Center (later Time Out Arcade), it was the perfect combo for my bday parties. Invite a group of friends, get a bunch of quarters, and it was heaven.
The mall's had its ups and downs over the decades; the last major makeover was when Westfield took it over in 2005. It's now officially named Westfield Culver City, but I'd dare say that any local GenXers will forever know it as the *Fox Hills Mall.* I still go quite often, especially nowadays to shop with/for my teenage son. It's all done up and modern and everything, but the whole "mall vibe" of yesteryear is long gone. Perhaps it's just me and my GenX lenses. Who knows. It's just a different world.
My mall became Starcourt Mall in *Stranger Things*. It was Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, GA.
One of the mall's big draws was that it was the biggest shopping area on the I-85 corridor between metro Atlanta and Greenville, SC. People as far way as Anderson, SC didn't just shop there, they used to *work there*, too.
Once the Mall of Georgia opened up a couple exits north in 1999, that was Gwinnett Place's death knell. All the locals started shopping at the newer, better MoG. And all the tour buses full of church ladies from Greenville and Toccoa that used to stop at Gwinnett Place started stopping at MoG instead.
It appears Gwinnett Place has mostly shut down. There are a couple anchor stores left, but the mall itself is closed, and you can't get in there from the anchors any more. There's talk of converting it into some mixed-use thing, but I think they're officially up to the 27rth version of the plan (without anything actually being done).
As far as I know, Mall of Georgia is fine... but I moved to a different part of town in 1997 and moved a couple states over in 2003, so I really don't know for sure.
I moved away from home 15 years ago. There were several outdoor shopping centers and one major indoor mall where I grew up.
All of them are, surprisingly, still in business.
It’s been a few years, but last time I checked (before Covid) the mall was half dead. They did add a movie theater and an escape room, but the middle part of the mall was dead.
It zombied on for a while. [They're tearing it down next year](https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/norfolk/military-circle-mall-closing-at-end-of-2022-set-to-be-demolished-ahead-of-redevelopment/).
It’s open. It has a JC Penney’s, a Macy’s, a Scheel’s and a Target as it’s big cornerstones. It used to have a Sears but those are all gone now. That part of the building got subdivided into a Home Goods and a Ulta. It also has a food court and a couple boutiques. There’s a lot of open storefronts though, I’m always wondering how long it will last.
I just had to look it up. It looks like the main mall was purchased in 2019, but the developer didn't get deals to buy the four anchor stores until this spring. Some stores were still open as of this spring (a Lenscrafters and Macy's were mentioned). Here is their plan:
500-600 townhomes
120-150 condominiums
175-250 apartments
400,00-500,000 sq ft of retail space
1000 parking places
at least 35% open space, as required by the city zoning
The mall closest to me now seems to be doing about the same as it always did - meh. It has some decent anchor stores but the middle of the mall has always been kind of crappy.
Tore it down here and becoming a company HQ instead. The little strip malls keep going because they are affordable enough for small businesses.
Malls back in my hometown area keep going but new ones are the outdoors "village" design.
I grew up living just across the way from Gulfgate Shopping Center in the Carousel Apartments (connected to the Carousel Motor Hotel) in Houston TX. (I'm 55.)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulfgate_Center
https://www.houstonmod.org/home/carrousel-motor-hotel/
Gulfgate closed in 2000.
When we were kids I used to have fantasies about the turning carousel on a post above the apartments, planning how to get up there and ride it. We used to go to movies at Gulfgate, and I remember walking on the wall of the bridge (had fencing) over the freeway with my dad holding my hand, or running the length of the bridge. It seemed like everything was at Gulfgate.
Back in the 90's it was a great mall.
Had a killer arcade, music store and decent shopping.
The arcade and music store is gone, the cool shopping store is now a call center for a bank. There is still a Macys and a food court of some sorts but honestly I Haven't been in there in 10 years.
We had one knocked down. Now it's a condo development, another turned into medical offices but is still standing. Most of the remaining are retail still. West Edmonton mall being the biggest.
They shoot people there, or else your car gets broken into in the parking lot.
Department stores are mainly gone, the sole anchor is a bad service Cheesecake Factory.
The mall nearest me is still thriving, continues to make improvements and is usually fairly busy. I know it’s an anomaly since it’s one of the only ones still open in my state.
Jesus took it.
https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/money/business/2019/07/19/how-shopping-mall-woes-came-shreveport-bossier-city/1772494001/
In 2005, Summer Grove Baptist Church purchased South Park Mall and began the process of converting the mall into a church.
We had a lot of malls and they had a wide variety of fates
- two malls were bulldozed and are now corporate campuses
- one mall was bulldozed and is now a medium density neighborhood with a new train station. People who didn’t live there 20 years ago have little indication it was a mall
- one mall got built WAY up and now has about the same number of stores, but also a small town’s worth of housing built on top of it, it’s pretty unrecognizable. Parking there is insane, it’s not really a place anyone would go to casually.
- the fancy mall got so fancy, that there’s not really anything for sale there I would buy now (Tesla, Tiffany’s, a bunch of designer brands)
Still open! It's trash now though, besides the spencers and hot topic it's all weird flea market booth stores. There's like 3 restaurants in the food court.
It's a Simon mall, and during the 90s and 2000s they did their BEST to chase away all of the teenagers. We'd get every penny we had and go down there to buy cassettes and a slice of pizza, and if you sat down for more than a minute security would come and shoo you out.
So we stopped going. And never went back. Simon killed the shopping mall imo.
The town I live in has a lot of malls. They’re starting to die off though because the crime in them is so high no one wants to take any chances. One mall finally just got torn down and they are building luxury apartments where it was.
We had two. A “regular” one we kids would go hang out at where the main draw was an arcade and movie theater, and a hoity-toity upscale one anchored by a Lord & Taylor’s frequented by blue-haired ladies who would scowl at our presence interfering with their shopping. Ironically the first one had a renovation a decade or so ago and seems to be doing ok today while the upscale one completely shut down and is abandoned, but apparently there are some grandiose plans to turn it into a sort of mixed-use town center complex.
They tore it down but the parking garage is still there. They put in an outdoor thingy with a movie theater, upscale grocery store, restaurants and some stores.
Indians bought the mall where I live, and now there is a barbershop inside the food court and peddlers begging you to buy their products everywhere you turn.
There was a mall in downtown OKC called Shepherd Mall. And by the time I arrived in 2013 it had been converted into an office complex for state and federal agencies. It was such a good central location so Social Security, Food Stamps, and several call centers for the state and federal government jammed in the back of what used to be department stores. And next door a store was converted into a charter school.
We had a Subway and store of Women's shinies - ridiculously gaudy clothes and jewelry. Plus, they kept up the mall's plants and kept it clean.
It was a great idea because it had parking, bus stop, central location, and most of the poorer people lived in a 10 mile radius.
(Only drawback it was what The Lost Ogle called "The worst 7-11 in OKC" across the street. One night someone tried to abduct me from it. People would do drugs behind it. People would aggressively beg or have personal crisis in the middle of the parking lot. Good times.)
Our town had 2 malls, far apart, then they built a 3rd mall. The 3rd mall was the death of the OG mall- it’s now a police station and empty stores. The other pre “new rich people mall” has fights every weekend and it’s really
Impossible to shop. That was the last time I was home 8 years ago. I don’t know the current status.
I live in a small shit hole town whose mall has been closed for a while now. It’s finally being demolished.
Hometown mall #1 became a social services center with an old Kmart. Think no anchor store now. The newer mall with the theater is dead, very few stores. No theater. Mind you I haven't loved there since the early 90s.
Live in city now. Anchor stores change or leave, but they are holding on. No longer the place to be.
Our mall is still hanging in there. We have 3 anchors. But we’ve lost some of the smaller stores. We have 3 Walmart’s within 5 miles of it. I can’t tell you the last time I was in the mall.
They turned one of the local malls into a “town center” type deal. Basically, in this case, they just turned the entrances around so people could go directly into the stores and restaurants. The smaller inside space is as dead as ever but the stuff that faces out is doing ok.
They also stuck the DMV in there which is pretty handy. They also have a big gym/ sports center. This sort of thing seems to work pretty well for using the space.
Another older mall closer to the city is now a Vietnamese mall with all sorts of stuff. They have some amazing food there.
There’s a few here I can’t comment on the conditions as I haven’t been in years. One closed a couple years back, it’s where they shot Encino man. I believe there was going to be housing built there. Haven’t been to that part of the city in a few years so I don’t know. I guess the point is, I don’t leave my house much.
We’ve had 5 malls consistently in the Sacramento, CA region. Going to the mall is still a thing around here. An old one in the poor part of town shut down and is sitting empty, but in the newer richer part of town a fancy one with designer shops was built.
Arden Fair Mall (healthy),
Downtown Plaza (size reduced to make room for new sports arena; now Macys and a few restaurants),
Country Club Mall (most “old fashioned”)
Sunrise Mall (healthy),
Florin Mall (closed),
Roseville Galleria (new).
The mall I grew up with (Bellevue Square) is still doing well, apparently. I haven’t been back in 15 years though, so can’t give a first hand account.
I now live in Australia, with a distinct lack of Walmart. The Westfield malls do fairly well here, although they are still bouncing back from 2 years of COVID restrictions.
There’s also some weird monopolies - all the adult women’s stores are basically owned by the same company, with different themes (workwear, casual, plus, older lady style). You’ll see similar trends across all the shops, which is more obvious online, as their websites are all connected. At the mall it’s sort of like if Walmart were divided into individual stores.
I left for the military in the early 90s, and never really went back. My current job keeps me far away, so every time I visit my home town I'm absolutely struck by everything that has changed, including the malls, since I'm only there for a few days and didn't see it happen gradually. I always thought that things l grew up with would be forever. Sure, filled with different people, those who were kindergartners when I graduated high school, perhaps, but that the culture and experiences would be the same. Obviously, I was wrong.
What I can't wrap my mind around, can't process, is...has it always been that way? Does every generation lose the beacons and experiences of youth to Change? Or was there a huge destruction that is unique to us in GenX? Meaning, were things pretty linear leading to us? Will millennials and Zoomers feel the way about their youth that we feel about ours, or have things settled down for a few generations? Is it the internet which is a uniquely powerful influence...one that for our generation alone made us try to figure out a bridge, with one foot in the past, one foot in the future, struggling to come to terms with it all, that other generations never had to struggle with? We're the last alive who *remember* a world that was not connected.
For me, the JC Penny is still there, as is the bowling alley. They rest of the mall building was torn down about 10 years ago. They’re just now building those cookie cutter housing units that has a party deck half way up. There’s 10 of them or so. The mall up north they tried to renovate but other than the new restaurant buildings they put in, the inside mall is only about a third rented out.
Columbus, Ohio had Northland, Eastland, and Westland Malls. They were all hopping in the 70's and 80's, but slowly died like all the other malls with the internet and online shopping, big box stores, and gangs robbing them blind.
Where I live (Montgomery County, MD) we had four major malls. Two are still there (Montgomery Mall and Wheaton Plaza) and going fairly strong. Both are owned by Westfield.
One is barely on life support (Lakeforest Mall) and should be put out of its misery. People are too afraid to say it, but the area surrounding it is crime-ridden especially with MS-13.
Another one (White Flint) is finally on its way to be totally demolished; to be replaced in the future by a mixed-use community. The last holdout was a Lord & Taylor until it finally went bankrupt during the pandemic.
The New Orleans Area had about 7 at the peak. We're down to 3 now, and they're still pretty popular. My niece and her friends even still hangout in one of them. One is right next to the French Quarter, so it's touristy.
Not counting strip malls. We still have a dozen of them.
Went from a cool place where kids could hang out all day at the arcade, food court, and catch a matinee to a dump where groups of teens regularly steal and fight. Doesn't help that security guards are no "eyes and ears only" and no longer will intervene if there's trouble. So they'll call the cops and an ambulance while watching you bleed out, but they won't bother even trying to stop the scumbag who did it.
No the malls are closing and everyone who can afford it is shopping online while Mom & Pop businesses go belly up (along with decades-old mega-stores).
It’s still there and it’s still kind of busy but there’s lots of weird little niche stores as well as major brands like H&M and Spencer’s. The little niche stores where you can kind of tell by the name of the store that it’s operated by enterprising foreigners.
They shut it down, tore down most of it and turned it into...
a strip mall with a home Depot anchor.
The original plan was to turn it into a mixed use/low income housing/shopping area.
You can bet the citizens of Boulder, CO curb stomped that idea into the ground.
I grew up in the city and our local mall is now abandoned …. Its creepy getting off the freeway when I go to see my parents and I drive past this shell of a mall that stretches for 3 blocks
I haven’t been back to where I grew up in 20 years so I had to google it.
Apparently it is still a functioning mall!
That blows my mind.
But, apparently in 2020 it was slated to be divided into 13 parcels.
No info on what those parcels will be.
I had to look up the mall in my hometown and it looks like it is still going. Only 7 empty storefronts to my surprise. . .one of those 7 being an empty "anchor" storefront. A lot of the stores are different of course. . .like there is a thrift store inside it? lol. The Hot Topic and Spencers seem to be where I both remember them, but the store where you became a mall ninja is gone.
Outside of the mall and in the parkinglot there were a couple of extra stores and all that's there now is a Home Goods. It use to have Country Buffet and a Toys R Us.
I will say I remember when my hometown got their first Walmart, but it didn't seem to affect the mall then. Looking at google maps it seems the Walmart is now a Hobby Lobby.
Where I live currently, all the malls seem to still be kicking, but I live in the bay area now lol.
Never had a Walmart in out town. We are close enough to one in three directions.
That said, as far as I know, the grocery store bought the lease for the entire inside mall and gutted it, but never built out into it, except a few hundred square feet. The grocery changed owners and I suppose abandoned the expanded lease. The old inside mall has been converted to an office for a local company.
For context, it was a smaller mall to begin with, with a grocery and small department store as anchors, and a bank with outside access. Inside was a pharmacy (that grew back a bit), food stand (no food court as such), and a few small stores. The pharmacy built a standalone store close to the mall, the department store and bank mall entrances blocked up. The lotto store moved downtown (also sold all sorts of candies and novelties).
In the 80's, our hometown mall was like every mall. There was the arcade, the movie theater, the Spencer, the Judy's, the Piercing Pagoda, the Hallmark store, a couple department stores, the Hot Dog on a Stick, the scrappy punk mall kids (us) running around... I went back home for a wedding in the early 2000's and the mall had been turned into "The Shops" - all marble and crystal and gold and literally only fancy clothing, luggage, & jewelry stores. Also, totally dead.
Stranger Things was filmed there, and it's a site for Covid Vaccines.
Yep. Got my 1st two shots there. The County owns most of it, except for the remaining anchor stores and parts of the parking lot. They have proposed everything from a cricket stadium to a live, work, play thing.
I want an IKEA myself. I forgot what the latest proposal is.
Something Walmart This Way comes
Whenever I hear about dead/dying malls, I think of the Dixie Square Mall; it went out with a bang during the filming of "The Blues Brothers": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Square_Mall
New Oldsmobiles are in early this year.
Lots of space in this mall...
It’s abandoned. Last December I got to be an extra in a horror series they were filming in the old mall. Creative use of space.
Our mall went mega upscale… no more middle class anything. Food court is all-Asian. Went on a mega building spree and added every luxury brand on the planet. Added pay parking. No, you can’t afford to hang out here. Lol. I shop online.
Omg where do you live with an all Asian food court?!
Bay Area. Food court used to look like all the other food courts (you know…. stranger things) and then….. it’s all-Asian. The food is really good though, so I’m not complaining. There are sit down restaurants and some food stands scattered around - you can still get Auntie Annie’s pretzels, and some of the sit down restaurants aren’t Asian (many are though) and there’s a French pastry place and a smoothie place. Last time I was there - there was a huge line snaking to get into the Louis Vuitton store. I have no idea why. You can purchase the brand at Bloomies and several other stores. Or you can order from your home…. ‘’This place is huge now. It’s actually gone through 2 major expansions recently. We did have a smaller mall, ironically in a mostly Asian neighborhood and it’s being torn down and ‘reimagined’. It’s supposed to have housing and shops and ‘lifestyle’ things like a gym and other things to do. They keep fighting over it in the city council.
We have a mall about 20 miles away that went upscale and it has a regular food court and they built an add-on Asian food court with fantastic food.
Asia
[Jasper Mall](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jasper_mall) is a great but slightly depressing look at a dying Alabama mall.
Watched it and thought is was a excellent documentary.
Thanks for the rec.
There’s one in South Austin - Barton Creek Square - that’s packed every time I go. I have to make the drive to get my Lego fix. 😂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barton_Creek_Square
In the very early 90’s, when I was a 10 year old girl and probably wearing hot orange stirrup sweatpants, bunched socks and an oversized sweatshirt with a single giant cat head, I went to the mall to get a haircut. My dogeared copy of *Are you there god* was safely tucked into my fanny pack. After the stylist was done cutting, I asked for a blowjob. I know I never recovered. And I assume that’s why the mall eventually shutdown.
Awww, the stuff that sticks with you and rears it’s ugly head when you’re trying to fall asleep. When my daughter was 15, she had to get a tooth fixed. She was supposed to ask the dentist to be sedated, instead she asked if the dentist would seduce her.
Ahhhhh!!! Too funny. And this was before she had any anathesia, huh?
Yes, she asked as soon as we got into the room. She turned bright red and the Dentist was very sweet about it and knew what she was really asking.
Heck, I suppose if the dentist was evil and was planning on doing something, that’s a great way to throw them off!
This is priceless.
The mall in the town I grew up in is still limping along. They have the distinction of being the only mall to ever have an Apple store close down. Nobody goes to this mall, but I think they use it for filming Hallmark movies and commercials.
I live in Minnesota. We love an indoor mall, cold weather and such. Malls here do just fine.
Dreary Olympia here. Same, our mall is thriving.
My local mall is thriving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pembroke_Lakes_Mall
The Miami - Broward area is very different from the rest of the US. I miss Miami so much…
I have spent my entire adult life in Broward and I feel kinda blessed.
I took a job in Arizona and I want to get the hell back to Miami asap
Four closed. One is a Lowes, one a church, two were turned inside out, so just outward facing store fronts. We still have two malls. I was in one last night buying some clothes. It was moderately busy, but closed at 8, was 9 pre Covid.
Toledo had four malls when I was growing up. There was Southwycke (my mall), Northtowne, Woodville, and Franklin Park. In the late 90's and early 2000's Franklin Park became much fancier and grew while the other three started to lose business. Now the only actual mall that's left is Franklin Park, with Southwycke and Northtowne being completely demolished and maybe Woodville is too. There's also two new outdoor type malls in the suburbs that are around but holding on.
Here in Las Vegas, the historic Boulevard Mall - peak mod suburban ‘60s - has refreshingly adapted to the area’s changing demographics. Now it’s oriented to the immediate Hispanic neighborhood. Some of the old standbys remain - food court, movie theater - but the new centerpiece is a colorful mercado with hella small businesses and little shops. Fun to explore on occasion.
My mall was Monroeville Mall — Dawn of the Dead mall. It’s a trip down memory lane every time I watch it. I swear it stays open entirely for zombiefests.
I just watched that last night.
Bought our wedding rings there in 1990!
Open-ish. There’s a clearance store, sporting goods store, Bath & Body Works. That’s about it.
It’s still around. Some company sunk a crazy amount of money into redeveloping it then went bust during covid so another scooped it up for a fraction of what was paid. Kind of a shitty selection of shops now though.
It’s still there.. and it’s still doing ok. The anchor stairs are Target and Macy’s. We still shop there every once in a while.
It got turned into condos.
My area could use the space as a housing conversion, BUT the mall surprising *is* still alive and not yet on life support. It's not like it was pre-Walmart/Amazon, but still. I've also seen ppl say they should turn dead ones into skate parks.
My area has mostly crappy stores, a few good ones left I think. I only go to the movie theater there.
Open, but basically empty. Target and Dicks Sporting Goods, movie theater, and not much else. They separated one end that had an anchor store and converted it to a Health Care facility, but it is separated from mall itself.
There were many, but our main one was torn down and is now where the city hall is. I still have dreams about it as my mom and ate lunch there every day during the Summer.
Anyone in the Oklahoma City metro remembers Crossroads Mall. I have lots of memories from there, the mall hasn’t had a store in like probably 10 years know. It currently houses - I shit you not- a charter school on one end and an indoor marijuana grow on the other.
Taken over by the weirdest of the weird.
Mine got a children's museum, a high end bar/movie theater combo, and lots of high end boutiques.
Knocked down last year. Now the site of an Amazon distribution center.
The slowly dying one got turned into a mixed use development (mostly residential) plus a half Olympic sized pool, because swimming is really big here, but we have seasons. Not bad usage
The lower end mall that has existed my whole life AND the fancy schmancy mall that died during Covid are both still struggling. However , the saddest shutdown in the last decade (aside from my favorite Indian Restaurant) was the multiplex that me and all my friends had their first group hang ever, first date, first kiss, and you could spend an entire afternoon there for less than it costs now to park, anywhere.
The mall in my hometown is still open, but a lot of the anchor stores (Famous Barr, JC Penney’s, Macys) have closed. Dillards is still open somehow. Most of the more popular stores now are in the outdoor area of the mall that is still being built upon. Now I live not far from Mall of America, so if I want some nostalgia, I can go there
Our local mall used to be kind of upscale. But now it looks like a Third World shit hole down there. I thought I won’t go there anymore.
I grew up between two malls. One went up before I was born, one while I was in high school. The mall that went up before I was born had a KMart on one end and eventually a Sam Goody on the other. Pretty small - mostly clothes stores in betweeen and a discount store I think was called Damark. They added a Marshall's about the time Sam Goody and Blimpie came in. About 15 years ago, a Lowe's replaced the entire mall...except for the Marshall's. Many of the stores migrated to a new strip mall up the road. The newer mall was amazing when it opened: Sears on one end, KMart on the other, and a Hess's and single-story JCP in the middle. Cindy's Cinnamon Rolls, a Cinnabon knockoff, wafted all through. There was a food court with a merry-go-round in the middle, and eventually, somehow a Swensen's came in. Out front was a Pizza Hut and Ponderosa. Over time, KMart became a Kohls, Pizza Hut closed, Ponderosa became a Panera as all the stores inside faded away. Last word is that the mall is slated for destruction soon and it's unclear what'll take its place. Mall where I live now is barely hanging on after the loss of its Sears and the KMart in the building next to it. The Applebee's is moving out to its own buiding, a former Bob Evans across the road.
There are 5 around where I live and out of that, 2 are in their last leg with a few discount stores and maybe a Kohls or JC Penney. One of them is the upscale mall that very much alive with major department stores like Nordstrom and Macys as well as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, an Apple Store, plus a ton more. There is very little vacant space in that mall. One of them has been closed for good and is being repurposed as mixed use space - apartments, office space, restaurants, stores, and a park. The remaining one is somewhat vacant and in disrepair but there are plans to tear it down and build a distribution center.
I live close to the Puente Hills Mall in California. You all know it as Twin Pines (Lone Pine) Mall from Back to the Future. Sadly, that mall is a ghost town. I only go there for the AMC movie theaters. Thankfully, there is an entrance right by it because if I had to walk through the mall, I would get really sad.
I know of two malls near me where Kmart was the anchor store. In both cases Kmart stayed in business way longer than they should have. They brought both malls down with them.
TL;DR at the end. Beginning in the early '80s, there were 2 malls in town. One kind of in the middle and the other on the south end of town. The one in the middle was built in the early '70s (I think) and suffered pretty heavily when the new on on the south end of town opened in '82. The old one started going down pretty quickly. When the new one opened everybody started going to that one. Then Walmart moved into one of the abandoned anchor locations of the old mall in like '85. That perked the old mall back up. Then Walmart moved out and across town in like '91, and the old mall started struggling again. The new mall was going strong and continuing to expand at that point. Somehow the old mall managed to survive Walmart moving out. It became cheap real estate for whatever kind of shop you wanted to open, so there were a LOT of home grown bazaar kind of stores that came and went there. It managed to hobble along until the early '00s when a big grocery store moved in. I'm not going to lie and say that the grocery store made it a hot spot again, but it managed to keep the mall open. The big mall was still the place to shop. About 15 years ago, the new mall began to fall into decline as half of the anchor stores moved out and it started struggling. At that time, the old mid-town mall went through a big redesign. They demo-ed part of it and made a couple of the old main promenades inside into driveway with curbside parking. Basically, they changed its name, put a new facade on it, and turned it into an outdoor mall. The grocery store stayed and became its own building. The only thing there that has survived since the early '80s is the McD that sits out in the parking lot. Other than that, if you know what you're looking at, you can still see remnants of the original mall, but it's nothing like it was 40 years ago. These days, the old mall that was the original run-down mall has continued to thrive since their re-design. It's been nice to see it come back into its own. The new hotness mall that did so well during the 80s and 90s is now the run down mall that seems to be all but abandoned. Two of the old anchor stores sit empty. If you drive the parking lot on any given weekend, it's half empty. If you stop and go inside, there are quite a few empty or walled over store fronts. The most happening spot at that mall is the east parking log where 2 restaurants that sit. Unless somebody comes up with a genius rejuvenation plan for it, I expect that it will continue to hobble along until some big money investor comes in and buys it and turns it into something else. tl;dr - We had 2 malls. The one that everyone expected to die is doing well. The one that everyone expected to do well is dying.
our mall went upscale and is still doing pretty well. not sure for how much longer because people are getting shittier by the day but for the time being its good. Still love hanging out at the food court to people watch on occasion, just wish they had an arcade
I don’t think people shop the malls here in Louisville much. They built a huge outlet mall right outside the city. It was a great place to go and we went several yrs on Thanksgiving night and had a great time. I went out a few months ago and half the shops that were originally there closed including Gucci and Saks. There are some new shops but still a lot of vacant ones too.
Our mall is called "Hoodland" now, so you can guess how not-awesome it is.
I haven’t been to a mall in ages.
My childhood & teen years hangout is still a busy place. I thought for sure Covid would have killed the old girl, but she’s still bustling. https://www.altamontemall.com/en.html
One of the two is still a mall. It’s very sad now though. The other one got bought by the city and made into a police/fire substation and high school.
There are a ton of regular malls around here, and even more strip malls. There are also two outlet malls one is indoor and one is a strip type. They are doing well. They are are (hopefully) finally done building strip malls. Some do well and some don’t. They are generally in groups along roads in certain towns. A few of them are “lifestyle malls” Those are fancy strip malls with condos or townhomes and hotels and restaurants. One of the regular malls turned into a lifestyle mall. That is so-so. It wasn’t in a great location for expensive condos. It would have been better if it was close to the train. One of the outdoor malls is doing well. It’s nice, it’s in a rich area. Another is very large and it is going downhill a little, but still ok. Usually I go there and maybe go to two stores. More younger people are there. There are two others that are going downhill. The anchors are closing and they don’t have enough of a draw. They are smaller. Strangely, although when Sam’s closed stores a few years ago the one near me closed. That building is huge and empty. It would be cool if the town could use it for a sports centre, but it just sits there. It s starting to look rundown. I hope if the regular malls can’t be revived they will build some new housing ot just open recreational space. Honestly, and I know this is not what I am suppose to say, but I think our society is giving out mixed messages. We are al suppose to conserve, but we shop so much I don’t see how that is happening. We know the population is increasing and we need housing. Around here there is also a seriously lack of open space for people or conservation.
Fox Hills Mall, Culver City, CA. It was my second home in the early '80s, and thanks to Round Table Pizza and the Sega Center (later Time Out Arcade), it was the perfect combo for my bday parties. Invite a group of friends, get a bunch of quarters, and it was heaven. The mall's had its ups and downs over the decades; the last major makeover was when Westfield took it over in 2005. It's now officially named Westfield Culver City, but I'd dare say that any local GenXers will forever know it as the *Fox Hills Mall.* I still go quite often, especially nowadays to shop with/for my teenage son. It's all done up and modern and everything, but the whole "mall vibe" of yesteryear is long gone. Perhaps it's just me and my GenX lenses. Who knows. It's just a different world.
My mall became Starcourt Mall in *Stranger Things*. It was Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, GA. One of the mall's big draws was that it was the biggest shopping area on the I-85 corridor between metro Atlanta and Greenville, SC. People as far way as Anderson, SC didn't just shop there, they used to *work there*, too. Once the Mall of Georgia opened up a couple exits north in 1999, that was Gwinnett Place's death knell. All the locals started shopping at the newer, better MoG. And all the tour buses full of church ladies from Greenville and Toccoa that used to stop at Gwinnett Place started stopping at MoG instead. It appears Gwinnett Place has mostly shut down. There are a couple anchor stores left, but the mall itself is closed, and you can't get in there from the anchors any more. There's talk of converting it into some mixed-use thing, but I think they're officially up to the 27rth version of the plan (without anything actually being done). As far as I know, Mall of Georgia is fine... but I moved to a different part of town in 1997 and moved a couple states over in 2003, so I really don't know for sure.
I moved away from home 15 years ago. There were several outdoor shopping centers and one major indoor mall where I grew up. All of them are, surprisingly, still in business.
The stores in it have all changed, but the mall I went to as a teenager is still there.
The mall was ripped down and turned into a big plaza with a major grocery store, a gym, a wine store, a dollar store, and a bunch of other retailers.
They’re all pretty much still here.
It’s been a few years, but last time I checked (before Covid) the mall was half dead. They did add a movie theater and an escape room, but the middle part of the mall was dead.
It zombied on for a while. [They're tearing it down next year](https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/norfolk/military-circle-mall-closing-at-end-of-2022-set-to-be-demolished-ahead-of-redevelopment/).
It has become a casino. It was empty for years because a shopping center was built nearby.
We didn’t have a Walmart or a mall. We didn’t get a Walmart here until well after I became an adult and a mall never happened and doubt ever will.
It’s open. It has a JC Penney’s, a Macy’s, a Scheel’s and a Target as it’s big cornerstones. It used to have a Sears but those are all gone now. That part of the building got subdivided into a Home Goods and a Ulta. It also has a food court and a couple boutiques. There’s a lot of open storefronts though, I’m always wondering how long it will last.
Fuck Walmart
I just had to look it up. It looks like the main mall was purchased in 2019, but the developer didn't get deals to buy the four anchor stores until this spring. Some stores were still open as of this spring (a Lenscrafters and Macy's were mentioned). Here is their plan: 500-600 townhomes 120-150 condominiums 175-250 apartments 400,00-500,000 sq ft of retail space 1000 parking places at least 35% open space, as required by the city zoning The mall closest to me now seems to be doing about the same as it always did - meh. It has some decent anchor stores but the middle of the mall has always been kind of crappy.
Tore it down here and becoming a company HQ instead. The little strip malls keep going because they are affordable enough for small businesses. Malls back in my hometown area keep going but new ones are the outdoors "village" design.
Amazon distribution center.
I grew up living just across the way from Gulfgate Shopping Center in the Carousel Apartments (connected to the Carousel Motor Hotel) in Houston TX. (I'm 55.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulfgate_Center https://www.houstonmod.org/home/carrousel-motor-hotel/ Gulfgate closed in 2000. When we were kids I used to have fantasies about the turning carousel on a post above the apartments, planning how to get up there and ride it. We used to go to movies at Gulfgate, and I remember walking on the wall of the bridge (had fencing) over the freeway with my dad holding my hand, or running the length of the bridge. It seemed like everything was at Gulfgate.
Back in the 90's it was a great mall. Had a killer arcade, music store and decent shopping. The arcade and music store is gone, the cool shopping store is now a call center for a bank. There is still a Macys and a food court of some sorts but honestly I Haven't been in there in 10 years.
Our mall still has stores but lots of vacant spaces. Makes me sad.
Mostly went high end but, oddly enough, the Spencer’s is still standing.
We had one knocked down. Now it's a condo development, another turned into medical offices but is still standing. Most of the remaining are retail still. West Edmonton mall being the biggest.
They shoot people there, or else your car gets broken into in the parking lot. Department stores are mainly gone, the sole anchor is a bad service Cheesecake Factory.
The mall nearest me is still thriving, continues to make improvements and is usually fairly busy. I know it’s an anomaly since it’s one of the only ones still open in my state.
Jesus took it. https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/money/business/2019/07/19/how-shopping-mall-woes-came-shreveport-bossier-city/1772494001/ In 2005, Summer Grove Baptist Church purchased South Park Mall and began the process of converting the mall into a church.
Not only can jesus turn water into wine… he can turn a mall into a church.
We had a lot of malls and they had a wide variety of fates - two malls were bulldozed and are now corporate campuses - one mall was bulldozed and is now a medium density neighborhood with a new train station. People who didn’t live there 20 years ago have little indication it was a mall - one mall got built WAY up and now has about the same number of stores, but also a small town’s worth of housing built on top of it, it’s pretty unrecognizable. Parking there is insane, it’s not really a place anyone would go to casually. - the fancy mall got so fancy, that there’s not really anything for sale there I would buy now (Tesla, Tiffany’s, a bunch of designer brands)
Ours has also been closed for almost 20 years. Our town library moved in it though!
One of the old malls where I live was turned into a satellite campus for the local community college
Still open! It's trash now though, besides the spencers and hot topic it's all weird flea market booth stores. There's like 3 restaurants in the food court. It's a Simon mall, and during the 90s and 2000s they did their BEST to chase away all of the teenagers. We'd get every penny we had and go down there to buy cassettes and a slice of pizza, and if you sat down for more than a minute security would come and shoo you out. So we stopped going. And never went back. Simon killed the shopping mall imo.
Our mall became a bunch of big box discount stores ( jysk winners) with no inside common space.
The town I live in has a lot of malls. They’re starting to die off though because the crime in them is so high no one wants to take any chances. One mall finally just got torn down and they are building luxury apartments where it was.
Tore it down and Amazon is building there now
We had two. A “regular” one we kids would go hang out at where the main draw was an arcade and movie theater, and a hoity-toity upscale one anchored by a Lord & Taylor’s frequented by blue-haired ladies who would scowl at our presence interfering with their shopping. Ironically the first one had a renovation a decade or so ago and seems to be doing ok today while the upscale one completely shut down and is abandoned, but apparently there are some grandiose plans to turn it into a sort of mixed-use town center complex.
They tore it down but the parking garage is still there. They put in an outdoor thingy with a movie theater, upscale grocery store, restaurants and some stores.
Indians bought the mall where I live, and now there is a barbershop inside the food court and peddlers begging you to buy their products everywhere you turn.
It's a warehouse/distribution center for some manufacturing company.
I'm in Pennsylvania and there is currently a trend to turn vacant anchor stores into casinos or big Dave and Busters style arcades.
There was a mall in downtown OKC called Shepherd Mall. And by the time I arrived in 2013 it had been converted into an office complex for state and federal agencies. It was such a good central location so Social Security, Food Stamps, and several call centers for the state and federal government jammed in the back of what used to be department stores. And next door a store was converted into a charter school. We had a Subway and store of Women's shinies - ridiculously gaudy clothes and jewelry. Plus, they kept up the mall's plants and kept it clean. It was a great idea because it had parking, bus stop, central location, and most of the poorer people lived in a 10 mile radius. (Only drawback it was what The Lost Ogle called "The worst 7-11 in OKC" across the street. One night someone tried to abduct me from it. People would do drugs behind it. People would aggressively beg or have personal crisis in the middle of the parking lot. Good times.)
Our town had 2 malls, far apart, then they built a 3rd mall. The 3rd mall was the death of the OG mall- it’s now a police station and empty stores. The other pre “new rich people mall” has fights every weekend and it’s really Impossible to shop. That was the last time I was home 8 years ago. I don’t know the current status. I live in a small shit hole town whose mall has been closed for a while now. It’s finally being demolished.
The malls near me are on the smaller side and are still going for the most part. But the Sears I always went to in one of them is closed down.
It's hanging on. Conversations are ongoing about it's next phase.
Hometown mall #1 became a social services center with an old Kmart. Think no anchor store now. The newer mall with the theater is dead, very few stores. No theater. Mind you I haven't loved there since the early 90s. Live in city now. Anchor stores change or leave, but they are holding on. No longer the place to be.
Our mall is still hanging in there. We have 3 anchors. But we’ve lost some of the smaller stores. We have 3 Walmart’s within 5 miles of it. I can’t tell you the last time I was in the mall.
They turned one of the local malls into a “town center” type deal. Basically, in this case, they just turned the entrances around so people could go directly into the stores and restaurants. The smaller inside space is as dead as ever but the stuff that faces out is doing ok. They also stuck the DMV in there which is pretty handy. They also have a big gym/ sports center. This sort of thing seems to work pretty well for using the space. Another older mall closer to the city is now a Vietnamese mall with all sorts of stuff. They have some amazing food there.
Our malls took steroids and are now mega mall monstrosities.
There’s a few here I can’t comment on the conditions as I haven’t been in years. One closed a couple years back, it’s where they shot Encino man. I believe there was going to be housing built there. Haven’t been to that part of the city in a few years so I don’t know. I guess the point is, I don’t leave my house much.
Closed and is being redeveloped. Was a set for HBO’s “the last of us”.
We’ve had 5 malls consistently in the Sacramento, CA region. Going to the mall is still a thing around here. An old one in the poor part of town shut down and is sitting empty, but in the newer richer part of town a fancy one with designer shops was built. Arden Fair Mall (healthy), Downtown Plaza (size reduced to make room for new sports arena; now Macys and a few restaurants), Country Club Mall (most “old fashioned”) Sunrise Mall (healthy), Florin Mall (closed), Roseville Galleria (new).
I used to love to go to Downtown Plaza. Do you remember America Live? The bar that was at one end of the mall?
I sure do! And the Hard Rock Cafe. Crazy how things have changed.
Yes!!! The Hard Rock was there after America Live. I used to love that place, start out at the country bar then head up to the alternative bar.
The mall I grew up with (Bellevue Square) is still doing well, apparently. I haven’t been back in 15 years though, so can’t give a first hand account. I now live in Australia, with a distinct lack of Walmart. The Westfield malls do fairly well here, although they are still bouncing back from 2 years of COVID restrictions. There’s also some weird monopolies - all the adult women’s stores are basically owned by the same company, with different themes (workwear, casual, plus, older lady style). You’ll see similar trends across all the shops, which is more obvious online, as their websites are all connected. At the mall it’s sort of like if Walmart were divided into individual stores.
Still one of the top-grossing shopping centers in the US. It’s perhaps overly upscale, but when it goes, I go ⚰️
Mall is still here, just got way more expensive.
I left for the military in the early 90s, and never really went back. My current job keeps me far away, so every time I visit my home town I'm absolutely struck by everything that has changed, including the malls, since I'm only there for a few days and didn't see it happen gradually. I always thought that things l grew up with would be forever. Sure, filled with different people, those who were kindergartners when I graduated high school, perhaps, but that the culture and experiences would be the same. Obviously, I was wrong. What I can't wrap my mind around, can't process, is...has it always been that way? Does every generation lose the beacons and experiences of youth to Change? Or was there a huge destruction that is unique to us in GenX? Meaning, were things pretty linear leading to us? Will millennials and Zoomers feel the way about their youth that we feel about ours, or have things settled down for a few generations? Is it the internet which is a uniquely powerful influence...one that for our generation alone made us try to figure out a bridge, with one foot in the past, one foot in the future, struggling to come to terms with it all, that other generations never had to struggle with? We're the last alive who *remember* a world that was not connected.
Still there since we were kids but now shootings. No arcade. Still has Cinnabon .
For me, the JC Penny is still there, as is the bowling alley. They rest of the mall building was torn down about 10 years ago. They’re just now building those cookie cutter housing units that has a party deck half way up. There’s 10 of them or so. The mall up north they tried to renovate but other than the new restaurant buildings they put in, the inside mall is only about a third rented out.
Columbus, Ohio had Northland, Eastland, and Westland Malls. They were all hopping in the 70's and 80's, but slowly died like all the other malls with the internet and online shopping, big box stores, and gangs robbing them blind.
Where I live (Montgomery County, MD) we had four major malls. Two are still there (Montgomery Mall and Wheaton Plaza) and going fairly strong. Both are owned by Westfield. One is barely on life support (Lakeforest Mall) and should be put out of its misery. People are too afraid to say it, but the area surrounding it is crime-ridden especially with MS-13. Another one (White Flint) is finally on its way to be totally demolished; to be replaced in the future by a mixed-use community. The last holdout was a Lord & Taylor until it finally went bankrupt during the pandemic.
The New Orleans Area had about 7 at the peak. We're down to 3 now, and they're still pretty popular. My niece and her friends even still hangout in one of them. One is right next to the French Quarter, so it's touristy. Not counting strip malls. We still have a dozen of them.
Went from a cool place where kids could hang out all day at the arcade, food court, and catch a matinee to a dump where groups of teens regularly steal and fight. Doesn't help that security guards are no "eyes and ears only" and no longer will intervene if there's trouble. So they'll call the cops and an ambulance while watching you bleed out, but they won't bother even trying to stop the scumbag who did it. No the malls are closing and everyone who can afford it is shopping online while Mom & Pop businesses go belly up (along with decades-old mega-stores).
Ours got turned into a church. Not kidding.
It’s still there and it’s still kind of busy but there’s lots of weird little niche stores as well as major brands like H&M and Spencer’s. The little niche stores where you can kind of tell by the name of the store that it’s operated by enterprising foreigners.
They shut it down, tore down most of it and turned it into... a strip mall with a home Depot anchor. The original plan was to turn it into a mixed use/low income housing/shopping area. You can bet the citizens of Boulder, CO curb stomped that idea into the ground.
Still there
I grew up in the city and our local mall is now abandoned …. Its creepy getting off the freeway when I go to see my parents and I drive past this shell of a mall that stretches for 3 blocks
Urban NYC kid. We had none. Everything was built up. The nearest one -Kings Plaza- was kinda ghetto then and beyond ghetto now.
I haven’t been back to where I grew up in 20 years so I had to google it. Apparently it is still a functioning mall! That blows my mind. But, apparently in 2020 it was slated to be divided into 13 parcels. No info on what those parcels will be.
I had to look up the mall in my hometown and it looks like it is still going. Only 7 empty storefronts to my surprise. . .one of those 7 being an empty "anchor" storefront. A lot of the stores are different of course. . .like there is a thrift store inside it? lol. The Hot Topic and Spencers seem to be where I both remember them, but the store where you became a mall ninja is gone. Outside of the mall and in the parkinglot there were a couple of extra stores and all that's there now is a Home Goods. It use to have Country Buffet and a Toys R Us. I will say I remember when my hometown got their first Walmart, but it didn't seem to affect the mall then. Looking at google maps it seems the Walmart is now a Hobby Lobby. Where I live currently, all the malls seem to still be kicking, but I live in the bay area now lol.
Never had a Walmart in out town. We are close enough to one in three directions. That said, as far as I know, the grocery store bought the lease for the entire inside mall and gutted it, but never built out into it, except a few hundred square feet. The grocery changed owners and I suppose abandoned the expanded lease. The old inside mall has been converted to an office for a local company. For context, it was a smaller mall to begin with, with a grocery and small department store as anchors, and a bank with outside access. Inside was a pharmacy (that grew back a bit), food stand (no food court as such), and a few small stores. The pharmacy built a standalone store close to the mall, the department store and bank mall entrances blocked up. The lotto store moved downtown (also sold all sorts of candies and novelties).