Maybe, but malls began dying when they started letting urban undesirables in.
Posted on 01/17/2024 8:54:30 AM PST by fwdude
I've visited hundreds of abandoned places in my life—factories to asylums, schools to churches—but suburban malls might be the most surreal and striking. They captivate the imagination in a way few other types of environments can: with an almost imperceptible layer of fog that forms between the first and second floors of an atrium, endless reflections of vacant storefronts, or a chance encounter with a groundhog in the remains of a food court. Stripped of signage and wares, they are nearly perfectly liminal spaces. Malls have become a part of the modern collective unconscious, through both the haze of half-buried memories of any American over the age of 20 and their ubiquity in popular media. They reflect the American consumer’s identity, and to see a suburban mall in ruins warps nostalgia into something nightmarish and forlorn in a way that abandoned factories, hospitals, or even churches don’t quite do.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
If a city tries to convert a mall, or the property it's on, to housing then the NIMBY's come out of the woodwork complaining about increased traffic.
In our area the only reuse allowed is to turn tax-generating property into tax-eating parks.
But I think that fad will soon go away when the homeless turn beautiful parks into horrifying campsites.
Apparently, this racist never went to the Main Street mall in downtown Brffalo.
LOL...BOX, damnit fingers BOX!!!
Can you give us a date range of when this happened?
I can from my experience (living in Montgomery, AL at the time). The first mall was overrun in late 1999. The public called for more of a police presence, but "community leaders" called that racist. Soon, that mall was closed, and the trouble makers moved east to the next indoor mall. That mali fell within a few years...maybe 2004-05.
Death of the American Mall
Amazon and the likes of it (on lines sales)because to many people are just to lazy to have to walk computer buying is a killer of many things.
“I think everyone knows why actual shoppers stopped going to most malls. It was the bus stops.”
Agreed.
Long before Amazon, there were . . .
a third issue of ginormous indoor malls that was minimized by big box stores was the YUGE time and distance one had to walk from one place to another in indoor malls to buy some over-priced tchotchke or tinket ... after all, now many scented candles, scarves, or hairbands does one person need?
Eastland Mall ... and the other close one?
“The problem with malls is that they are hard to convert”
indeed ... basically, they’re just ginormous shells with minimal plumbing and HVAC systems with minimal zones
Maybe, but malls began dying when they started letting urban undesirables in.
Arlington County’s Parkington shopping center at the intersection of Glebe Road and Wilson Blvd was the mall of my youth. It took its name from its multilevel parking structure. Very original.
It was built in 1951 and so must have been one of the earliest American shopping malls. Parkington has been replaced by something new called “Ballston Quarter” so Parkington exists only in memory.
“Ballston” may derive from the small Ball Family cemetery nearby. That’s the family of George Washington’s mother. IIRC the intersection of Glebe and Wilson was once known as Ball’s Crossroads.
Two things. First, Costco served your first point even better than malls did. Second, because they were part of my culture when I was younger one of the reasons I have coffee at malls was to be there to enjoy all the decorations while I was drinking my coffee. I agree with you on that.
It’s also like another person said too in another post regarding the white people malls and the non-white people malls. Though it’s always a pain to get to, when I’m visiting relatives in Seattle I occasionally will go by Bellevue square. It’s a nice place to have a walk and meet for coffee. But the old malls from my younger days (sea-tsc mall and Southcenter) are not pleasant places for me. Not my kind of culture.
-PJ
How many stories is the Coeur d’Alene Resort hotel?
I think 12 or so. It started it all.
“Costco served your first point even better than malls did.”
Technically, yes; Costco is more efficient in many ways. Emotionally, I looked forward to going to a mall. OTOH, I have to psych myself up for a week before stepping in to a Costco store. (Just shoot me! I hate going to Costco.)
The last time I actually shopped at a mall was in Thousand Oaks, CA, and we left CA in 2010. I never noticed a racial component to that mall, so am surprised to see that it’s mentioned in this thread so often.
I’ve been to a mall twice in Knoxville but it’s a half-hour away, and it wasn’t to shop. The place that changes batteries in my cell phones is there.
In the ‘80s I enjoyed going to a mall in Seattle. I think it was called Southcenter. We’d fly down from Anchorage, DH would go to a football game, and I’d go to the mall.
Southcenter is the one I am most familiar with since I grew up in the Kent/Renton area and graduated from high school in 1972. I even worked for a very short time at the Penny’s gas station as graveyard shift janitor.
That was quite fortuitous because I got off at the moment the gas station opened, and it was during the oil embargo. I would park my car at the pump and fill up when I got off work. Two things that I never had to deal with that my generation was plagued by: I never knew anyone that was killed or injured in Vietnam and I never had to wait in a gas line, even though I did a lot of driving.
BTW, Southcenter is now “Westfield Southcenter”.
Also, regarding racial stuff, I became a Costco member in 1988 and the only store around at the time, IIRC, was Tukwilla. I remember they sold the hot dogs outside by a “steet vender”. But here’s the interesting part: I moved to Kentucky in 2011 and go to either one of the Louisville stores or Lexington. They are a LOT less crowded and, though I never noticed this until I visited Costco in Tukwilla a couple of years ago, their clientelle is mostly lilly white.
When I visited the Costco in Tukwilla, it was as if I’d left the US. I mean, I wandered through almost the entire store before I saw another white person. It was weird. That area has really changed.
Oh, and I can’t edit my previous post so I’ll just add this: The parking was so bad that if I was not a member and lived in that area, there is no way I’d become a member. What a zoo.
Yep. I remember that distinctly regarding Southcenter. But I’d forgotten about it until I saw your post.
Malls that people go to in order to buy something, rather than walk around and socialize because it’s on the bus line, still do well.
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