July 27, 2010 | Dead Malls, Nebraska | Posted by Prange Way

Located in the middle of the country and home to agricultural giant Conagra as well as financial super-hero Warren Buffett, metro Omaha has suffered its fair share of troubled malls.  East of downtown Omaha, Council Bluffs’ Mall of the Bluffs is suffering from a rising vacancy rate and has a large wing that is almost entirely empty.  South of downtown, in suburban Bellevue, Southroads Mall failed over a decade ago and lost all its retail anchors, having since been repurposed into an office center.  Crossroads Mall, located in the middle of the city, was the first regional center in Omaha.  Today, it is a failed mall with many vacancies, ripe for redevelopment.

One of the earliest enclosed regional malls in the country, Crossroads Mall opened in September 1960, a vision of Omaha’s Brandeis department store chain, which purchased the land and organized the mall’s construction.  When it opened, Crossroads consisted of two main anchors:  a three-level, 110,000 square-foot Brandeis, flanking the eastern end of the mall, and a three-level, 113,000 square-foot Sears on the west end.  In between the anchors was an enclosed, climate-controlled hallway called the Arcade Level, featuring about 24 stores and services.  According to Mall-Hall-of-Fame, early stores included Walgreens, Goldstein-Chapman apparel, Haney’s Shoes, The Spot Snack Bar, and Woolworths.  Here’s a vintage view of Crossroads, looking northeast toward Brandeis, courtesy Malls of America:

In 1966, the Brandeis chain, determined by their success in developing a regional mall at Crossroads, did the same thing on the south side of Omaha, in suburban Bellevue, and constructed Southroads Mall in the same vein.  However, due to their locations on opposite sides of town, Southroads and Crossroads weren’t really ever in direct competition.  More serious competition was, however, on the horizon.

In 1968, just eight years after Crossroads Mall opened, major competition arrived just 5 minutes down the street with the opening of Westroads Mall.  Anchored by another Brandeis store, Montgomery Ward, and J.C. Penney, the much larger Westroads was closer to the new sprawl of residential construction and growth in Omaha, and thus was poised to instantly be crowned the best mall in the region.  Even so, the two malls were mostly complementary until the early 2000s, when a number of factors, mostly competition, dealt a death knell to Crossroads.

Despite Westroads’ dominance, both Crossroads and Westroads thrived throughout the 1970s and 1980s, even with the arrival of competitor Mall of the Bluffs in 1986, located east of downtown Omaha in Council Bluffs, Iowa.  The period between 1986-1988 also marked the period of greatest change for Crossroads Mall, culminating in the rebranding of one of the two original anchor stores as well as a major mall expansion.  This addition doubled the size of the mall, giving it the fuel it needed to survive in a fiercely competitive retail climate, which was about to get even more crowded in the 1990s and 2000s with the addition of one large enclosed mall and two outdoor ones.

The expansion of Crossroads, which began in 1986, created a brand-new two level addition between center court and a new north anchor, a 2-level, 216,500 square-foot Dillard’s.  It also expanded the mall south from center court, where a new one-level addition reached south into the parking lot, culminating in a new main entrance.  The result was a mall shaped like a cross, with three-quarters of the corridors having one level and one-quarter bearing two levels.  In addition, a 6-level parking structure was built on the northeast side of the complex, and a new food court was constructed on the second level, above center court.  Above the food court and center court are a massive Teflon-coated tent-like roof that can seen for miles around on Omaha’s flat, rolling landscape.  Also, the mall’s original 56-foot-wide corridor was narrowed, providing extra retail space for new stores.

While the mall was renovated and expanded, an anchor change took place as Brandeis was sold to Des Moines-based Younkers, giving both Crossroads and Westroads malls new anchors.  By 1988, all of these changes were complete, giving Crossroads Mall 735,000 square-feet of retail space, with three anchors and room for 70 retailers.

In 1991, more competition for Crossroads arrived in far west Omaha with the opening of Oak View Mall, a modern, large two-level mall featuring more than 100 stores and four anchors: Dillard’s, Sears, Younkers, and J.C. Penney.  This new mall, combined with renovations and expansions at Westroads, shifted the retail dominance in Omaha, from being shared between Westroads and Crossroads to between Westroads and Oak View.  The relatively wealthy residents of sprawling West Omaha no longer needed to travel to Crossroads to visit Sears or Dillard’s, or for any other reason.

Even so, Crossroads continued to soldier on as a successful ancillary fill-in mall, serving the areas of the city it was closest to.  Banking on the center’s location and convenience, in the middle of the Dodge Street retail strip and in the middle of the city, Crossroads was still the closest mall for many Omaha residents and thrived for many more years as a regional convenience mall.  It even attracted and retained many national stores like Gap, Aeropostale, Suncoast, and Old Navy, which stayed with the mall until the mid- to late-2000s.

In 1994, Crossroads was bought by Melvin Simon, who gave the mall a minor facelift renovation in 1998.  The facelift brought a new “compass” logo and new signage to the mall, a large, lighted food court sign at center court, and an updated neutral color scheme.

By the turn of the millenium, Crossroads was still thriving, mostly due to its convenience and solid roster of stores.  When I visited in 2002, the vacancy rate was relatively low, the food court was full and thriving, and the mall was busy with shoppers.  Unfortunately, though, the bottom dropped out at Crossroads rather quickly, and during the rest of the decade the mall all but cleared out due, at least in part, to competition from two new outdoor malls Village Pointe, which opened 8 miles west of Crossroads in 2004, and Shadow Lake Towne Center, which opened in south suburban Papillion in 2007.

The first anchor to depart Crossroads was Younkers, which closed in January 2005.  Younkers had moved into a new, larger space at nearby Westroads Mall in October 2003 and saw the duplicate store at Crossroads, just five minutes away, as unnecessary.  Originally, this didn’t seem to be a major problem, because popular retailer Target moved into the space in July 2006 after demolishing the former Brandeis/Younkers and building their own smaller, 90,000 square-foot structure.

In January 2008, more trouble came as Dillard’s decided to convert its Crossroads store into a clearance center, and then closed the store permanently later that August.  Unlike the departure of Younkers, the absence of Dillard’s had a greater effect on a large part of the mall.  By 2009, the entire second level of the Dillard’s wing, including the food court, was completely vacant, and the mall was in big trouble.  Other popular tenants like Gap, Old Navy, and two national jewelry stores also left in droves.

In early 2010, Simon, unable to seek a buyer for the flagging mall, decided to stop paying its mortgage and let the mall fall into foreclosure.  During the March 2010 foreclosure sale, Simon’s former lender purchased it for over $40 million.  Then, in June 2010, Crossroads was sold again to Century Development, an Omaha-based firm who seems committed to the redevelopment of the site.

What does the future hold for Crossroads Mall?  It’s anyone’s guess, but proposals dating back as far as 2004 envision the conversion of the mall to some sort of mixed-use development, combining retail with entertainment, dining, housing, medical, offices, and more.  Students at nearby UNO, as well as others, envision the mall becoming a miniature version of Kansas City’s Power and Light District, a popular urban mixed-use destination featuring dining, nightlife, hospitality, shopping and more.  Some problems were indicated with this proposal, though, namely that Crossroads is along a suburban, low-density strip, located several miles from downtown, and that some of the existing buildings at Crossroads are not owned by the mall, like Target and Sears.  The location of the Crossroads site is one of the best in the entire city, centrally located and well positioned for redevelopment, so it shouldn’t be too long once plans are laid.  But, until then, the mall is open and living on borrowed time.

I visited Crossroads in April 2002 and October 2008 and took the pictures featured here.  As always, feel free to leave your own reactions and anecdotes in the comments on this page.

April 2002:

October 2008:

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July 24, 2010 | California | Posted by Caldor

Hayward, California is a large blue collar suburb of 151,000 people in the central East Bay region of California, located about 15 miles south of downtown Oakland. Like much of the Bay Area (and the East Bay in particular), it’s a culturally/racially and economically diverse city, with recent immigrants and long-time residents alike. Historically an industrial suburb–fruit canning factories dominated the job base for much of the 20th century–Hayward today still has one of the larger industrial job bases in the Bay Area. On a retail-related front, Hayward was also the home base of Mervyn’s department stores until their bankruptcy and closure in 2008.

Hayward is in many ways typical of a post-war suburb, with a large stock of housing built in the 50s-70s, and it exists more or less as the southern terminus of Oakland’s street grid. As a result, it’s little surprise that the Taubman Companies constructed the Southland Mall in the middle of Hayward’s development boom, in 1964. Southland was one of several malls being developed at the time in the rapidly developing region, part of Alfred Taubman’s plan to move business from his native Michigan to growing sun belt cities. Interestingly, Taubman’s own autobiography claims that Southland was the first mall in America to include a food court, a claim I haven’t been able to corroborate anyplace else (and an odd revelation, since Taubman malls rarely ever included food courts, and the architecture of Southland Mall is quite atypical of Taubman malls of this period).

Southland actually began its life in 1961 as a somewhat more modest outdoor shopping center named Palma Ceia, featuring a Lucky’s Supermarket, Thrifty Drug Store, and Sears as anchor stores on the sprawling lot off Hesperian Boulevard. Three years later, the first large enclosed portion of the mall was added, with Woolworth and JCPenney added as anchor stores. The original enclosed incarnation of the mall included the aforementioned “World’s Faire” food court in the space currently occupied by Ross Dress For Less, and the mall also sported a large aviary (popular at the time), indoor water features, and a large arcade and bumper car attraction called La Mans Speedway, located in the mall’s basement. Another large expansion was added in 1972, adding a Liberty House department store at the end of a whole new wing that also included an ice rink. This expansion may have also involved moving the food court to the basement space underneath JCPenney, where it resides today, but I may be wrong about this.

Over the years, the mall saw many changes, though most of these didn’t change the basic structure of the center. In 1983, Liberty House shuttered, and was replaced by an Emporium-Capwell. A large flagship Mervyn’s store opened in the mall in 1995, and Old Navy replaced Woolworth’s the same year. The ice skating rink was at some point replaced by a Good Guys electronics store, which itself was later replaced by Steve & Barry’s. Lucky’s, Steve & Barry’s, Mervyn’s, and Old Navy all closed in the late 2000s, but the Mervyn’s space was quickly replaced by a large new Kohl’s store.

In the meantime, development shifts caused more development to move further into the suburbs, causing other malls to supplant the dominance of Southland. Ironically, it was the Taubman-developed Stoneridge Shopping Center–over the hills seven miles away in affluent Pleasanton–that probably was the biggest factor in kicking Southland down to “B” mall status. (also, it was Southland that probably played some role in dinging the nearby Bayfair and Eastmont Malls down a notch–the ecosystem goes on…) Today, the mall is still mostly leased and seems to do relatively well, but it has a fairly anemic tenant mix. The aging 100-store, mostly single-level mall is owned by General Growth Properties, and sports Sears, JCPenney, Macy’s, and Kohl’s as primary anchors, and also contains Ross Dress For Less, Planet Fitness, and even Sears Outlet (on an outlot pad adjacent to the main store) as secondary anchors. The old gal is showing her age–as you can tell from these photos–but it still retains some of that “old mall charm” (high ceilings, wide open corridors, the cavernous center court and basement food court) that has been renovated out of so many malls of this era. General Growth had been planning a full update and refresh of the mall prior to their recent economic troubles; it’s a relatively safe bet that a renovation will come for the still-relatively-successful Southland (and Newark’s nearby Newpark Mall) in the next few years.

More on Southland over at BigMallRat.

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July 22, 2010 | North Dakota | Posted by Prange Way

Bismarck is a city of 55,000 people and also the state capital of North Dakota.  Located almost 200 miles from the state’s largest city, Fargo, and over 400 miles from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Bismarck is rather isolated from other cities and is therefore an important regional hub for commerce.  As such, a plethora of retail options exist in the city, including two enclosed malls, the large, super-regional Kirkwood Mall and the smaller, semi-troubled Gateway Mall.

Eight years after Bismarck’s largest mall, Kirkwood Mall, opened, developers decided the city could use another, smaller mall and built Gateway Mall on Bismarck’s north side.  Opened in September 1979, Gateway Mall debuted a year before Kirkwood Mall’s 1980 expansion, and anchors the State Street/U.S. 83 North retail corridor in the city.  It was developed by the local Kavaney family for the low, low price of $8 million.  Listed at 334,000 square feet, Gateway Mall is one level and opened with three anchors: Sears, Bismarck-based A.W. Lucas department store, and Jamestown, N.D.-based White Mart, a discounter.  In addition to these anchors, Gateway Mall also had the Midco Theater, a three-screen multiplex which was later expanded to eight screens.

Only half the size of Kirkwood Mall across town, Gateway Mall has been plagued with periods of vacancy, beginning almost right away with the closure of anchor A.W. Lucas not long after the mall opened.  Minnesota-based Herberger’s department store, which already operated a small store at Kirkwood Mall, decided to take the former Lucas lease and have two stores in Bismarck.  This strategy worked until 1994, when the Herberger’s at Kirkwood Mall expanded to 92,000 square feet, reducing the need for two stores in the market.  As a result, Herberger’s closed their Gateway Mall store, and the space sat either underused or vacant for the next ten years.  For a period until 1997 it was operated as deep-discounter Jacobs Trading Company and World’s Greatest Deals, but from 1997-2004 was totally vacant before Billings, Montana-based Conlin’s Furniture moved in.  Unfortunately, though, the space vacated again in 2009, as Conlin’s moved to a new, freestanding location; however, in 2010 deep-discounter Famous Labels moved in.

Tenancy problems have also plagued the food court and another Gateway Mall anchor.  White Mart, which opened with the mall in 1979, was closed in 1986 after parent company Thrifty White chose to focus on its drug store locations rather than discount department stores.  It was replaced by Menards, which has since relocated after building a new, freestanding store north of the mall in 1999.  Shortly after the departure of Menards, the space was subdivided into a “Medical Mall” for PrimeCare and a Hancock Fabrics.  Curiously, competitor Jo-Ann Fabrics also operates in the mall.  That’s a lot of fabric.

Gateway Mall’s food court, which at one time featured Orange Julius, Papa D’s Pizza, and Taco Tina’s, is now down to only a Subway featuring limited hours, probably to feed the lunch crowd at the Medical Mall.  Other dining options within the mall include longtime tenant Rock’n 50′s Cafe, Mocha Momma’s coffee shop, and Chinatown Buffet.

From 2003 to 2006, Gateway Mall was sold three times, and current owner Raymond Arjmand promised to infuse life into the center.  Under his direction, the mall was renamed Gateway Fashion Mall and a new coat of bright, multicolored paint was slapped onto some of the mall’s facades.  More retailers such as current off-price discounter Famous Labels could help in establishing Gateway ‘Fashion’ Mall as a destination for discount shopping, like the Foothills Mall in Tucson, for example.

Other recent problems with Gateway Mall include the departure of inline stores CVS (formerly Osco Drug until 2006), Hansen’s Menswear and Joy’s Hallmark, all in 2009.  Joy’s is a contentious departure, as the owner filed a suit against Gateway Mall’s current owner, Raymond Arjmand, alleging insurance fraud, racketeering and bilking tenants inappropriately.  Arjmand is also under suit for malls he owns in Woodland and Lancaster, California, under the exact same allegations.

Currently, Sears, an original anchor at Gateway Mall since 1979, and a handful of stores exist within the mall.  Vacancy is currently at one of the highest levels since the mall opened, though the arrival of Famous Labels in 2010 helped somewhat to ameliorate the problem.  Even so, the stores which have left recently represent long-time tenants, and their allegations of fraud on the part of the mall’s current owner definitely casts a pall upon the mall.  Hopefully, the situation will work out for the best, and Gateway Mall will continue to provide an climate-controlled shopping environment as an ancillary alternative to the larger Kirkwood Mall.

Elsewhere on the ‘net: Mall-Hall-of-Fame’s write-up of Gateway Mall, a local Bismarck resident’s history of the mall, and his Flickr page of additional photos.

We visited Gateway Mall in July 2009 and took the pictures featured here.  Familiar with Gateway Mall or the retail scene in North Dakota?  Feel free to leave some comments.

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July 22, 2010 | North Dakota | Posted by Prange Way

Bismarck is a city of 55,000 people and also the state capital of North Dakota.  Located almost 200 miles from the state’s largest city, Fargo, and over 400 miles from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Bismarck is rather isolated from other cities and is therefore an important regional hub for commerce.  As such, a plethora of retail options exist in the city, including two enclosed malls, Kirkwood Mall and Gateway Mall.

The largest mall in Bismarck, Kirkwood Mall, opened in 1971.  Original anchors were Montgomery Ward, Minnesota-based Herberger’s, and a massive 130,000 square-foot Woolworth’s.  Some have stated this location was Woolco, but a photo provided by the blog Mall Hall of Fame, from the State Historical Society of North Dakota Archives, illustrates that it was Woolworth.  Did it become Woolco at some point before the Woolco chain died?  What is the source of the confusion?

In 1980, Kirkwood Mall expanded, adding a large section south of the original mall and removing a section of Arbor Avenue in the process.  Herberger’s expanded their store for the second time, and a three screen cinema was added.  In addition, JCPenney and Target stores were added as anchors to the new expansion, along with several new stores of in-line space.  The new addition gave the mall over 800,000 square feet of retail space, making it the second largest mall in the state after Fargo’s West Acres.

In 1983, Woolworth closed, and sat vacant for two years before Minneapolis-based Dayton’s took over the space in 1985.  Perhaps this is the source of the Woolco v. Woolworth confusion, because Woolworth died about the same time Woolco disbanded.  Was this a coincidence and the store was actually Woolworth, or was it really a Woolco by this point?  Someone has to know for sure.  I was a zygote in Wisconsin at this point, so I sure as heck don’t know.

Numerous other anchor changes and swaps took place after this.  In 1984, Scheels All Sports opened a 29,000 square-foot store at Kirkwood Mall, in between Target and JCPenney in the newer wing of the mall.  Herberger’s then expanded their store a third time in 1994, which brought them to 92,000 square-feet.   In 2001, Montgomery Ward went broke and closed all their stores, and their location at Kirkwood Mall sat vacant for about 2 years before becoming Minot-based I. Keating Furniture World.  That same year, Dayton’s was rebranded as Chicago-based Marshall Fields in a marketing decision by their owner, Target Corporation, in order to unify their department store brands under one banner.

Marshall Field’s lasted about four years in Bismarck, before closing in 2005 due to the sale of Marshall Field’s by Target to May Company, and ultimately to Federated/Macy’s in 2005.  Federated converted most of the Field’s locations to Macy’s the next year, but apparently didn’t want a presence in Bismarck and shuttered the store here in 2005.  Ironically, Target, who owned Marshall Field’s until 2004, saw the closure as an opportunity to replace its 26-year-old location at Kirkwood Mall, so they moved into the former Field’s store and opened in Fall 2006.  The older Target at the other end of the mall was taken by Scheel’s for a larger location of their store in 2007, and the older Scheel’s is currently vacant as of mid-2010.

The decor of Kirkwood Mall is mostly seamless between the two sections of the mall.  However, the decor is also appreciably unique, as the main mall corridor has a unique shape at the northern end.  It curves to create a triangular-shaped court of open space with high ceilings, flanked by wooden-facaded support beams that erupt into a honeycomb pattern on the ceiling.  Natural light comes into the side of this huge court through slotted windows.  In addition, the entire mall is also carpeted with an extremely ugly dark blue color and pattern, which I think is a horrible mistake, making the mall appear smaller than it is.

There’s also no food court at Kirkwood Mall, which is unique for a mall of its size and dominance, though several fast food restaurants exist, like Arby’s and Auntie Anne’s, and sit down restaurant Grizzly’s Grill ‘n Saloon.

Elsewhere on the net: Check out Mall-Hall-of-Fame’s write-up of the mall, and a Flickr set by a local Bismarck resident.

We visited Kirkwood Mall in July 2009 and took the following pictures.  Familiar with Kirkwood Mall or the retail scene in North Dakota?  Feel free to leave some comments.

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July 20, 2010 | Dead Malls, West Virginia | Posted by Prange Way

Attention, dead mall fans:  this one’s for you.  The following gem of a mall is almost completely dead, totally unrenovated and as dated as they come.  It’s just as interesting as other deadmall icons like Southwyck, Machesney Park, Summit Place, Rolling Acres, Randall Park, or any of those, but hasn’t received nearly as much fan press.  And, as of July 2010 it is still open for regular business with no imminent plans for closure.

In fact, this is one of the last ones left of its kind.  Most dead malls, like all the aforementioned, got gobbled up by the redevelopment machine, or at the very least closed their doors permanently and sit waiting for the wrecking ball, so getting inside for a tour isn’t within reach.  Nope, friends, this one is open for business, 10-9 weekdays and Saturdays, and Sundays noon to 5.  Not only this, it’s only a few hours from the Mid-Atlantic states and a day’s drive from nearly anywhere east of the Mississippi.

I’m talking about Mountaineer Mall.  Located in Morgantown, West Virginia, Mountaineer Mall is the kind of mall dead mall fans dream about, with all sorts of retail antiquities and dated accoutrements.  We’re talking about wooden railings with tarnished, aging brass fixtures, brick facades, tile- and wood panel-laden planter fixtures, intact dead store facades from 20+ years ago, and more.

Mountaineer Mall was once the dominant – and only – mall in the Morgantown region.  Located 70 miles south of Pittsburgh, Morgantown is home to West Virginia University and has the healthiest economy in the state.  It has a population of around 30,000 residents, which nearly doubles when the University is in session, and a metropolitan area of 115,000 to boot.  Morgantown has a quirky, progressive college town feel, and with its low unemployment and unique culture feels mightily juxtaposed to the rest of the state, or anywhere for that matter.  One example of this is the fact that the small city has its own rail-based mass transit, a people mover called the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system, which connects downtown Morgantown to the WVU satellite campus located a few miles away.

Mountaineer Mall originally opened in 1975 on a bluff, high above the Monongahela River, on the south side of Morgantown.  It had a goal of capturing local shoppers who were forced to drive either to Pittsburgh, where the closest major malls, South Hills Village and Century III Mall, were 60 miles away, or down to Fairmont, where the tiny Middletown Mall sat.  Anchored by JCPenney, Montgomery Ward, and Murphy’s Mart, Mountaineer Mall had a simple dumbbell shape when it opened.  Murphy’s Mart was the western anchor closest to the river, JCPenney sat adjacent to center court, and Montgomery Ward flanked the eastern end of the mall; an enclosed corridor with stores on both sides connected all three anchors.

Even though Mountaineer Mall was small, it became immensely popular and gained a loyal following in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  Too soon, though, Mountaineer Mall’s owners realized the mall was too small to serve the area, and embarked on an expansion in 1987, adding a fourth anchor, Stone and Thomas, and an additional hallway connecting it to the mall.  This gave the mall a T-shape once the renovation was complete.  Meanwhile, an anchor change took place around 1985, when Murphy’s Mart became Ames.

The new addition, with its late-80s appearance, featured smart looking brass fixtures, fake skylights, and a brighter look than the rest of the 8-year-old mall.  In addition, due to the natural topography of the site, the developer chose to build the addition on a slight incline, giving the mall corridor a handicapped-accessible carpeted ramp down the middle and stairs flanking either side.  This is definitely, by the way, an amazingly unique design feature, which seemingly gives the mall not only an extra dimension of space but also a disjointed, frankenmall-like weird quality.  The new addition also brought stores with only exterior entrances on one side, which ironically house most of the stores still in operation today.

Unfortunately, Mountaineer Mall’s time in the sun was short-lived.  Three years after the addition, in September of 1990, Mountaineer Mall’s luck ran out when competition came calling from the brand-new, $70-million Morgantown Mall, which opened across the river, just two miles as the crow flies from Mountaineer Mall, but farther via roads.  The new 557,954 square-foot mall was anchored by Sears, JCPenney, Elder-Beerman, and K-mart.  JCPenney chose to immediately bolt to the new mall when it opened in 1990, but Elder Beerman kept a location at both malls until 1998.  Not only was Morgantown Mall larger and newer than Mountaineer Mall, it was better located along Interstate 79 to serve customers from outside the area, such as Washington County, Pennsylvania.

After the loss of JCPenney, Mountaineer Mall soldiered on, eventually replacing the former JCPenney space with U.S. Factory Outlets in 1993; however, anchor changes occurred until the end of the 1990s.  In January 1994, Ames, who had another location in Morgantown, was replaced with a 126,000 square-foot Wal-Mart, the first in the area.  The popularity of Wal-Mart routinely filled the parking lot to capacity, and the mall soldiered on against its newer cousin across the river.  U.S. Factory Outlets eventually closed and was replaced by Gabriel Brothers, a regional off-price chain based in Morgantown.  Then, in 1998, Stone and Thomas went broke and was forced to sell out to Elder Beerman.  Somewhat surprisingly, Elder Beerman chose to continue operating in Mountaineer Mall after the acquisition, despite already having a duplicate store two miles away at Morgantown Mall.

The first decade of the new millenium was extremely unkind to Mountaineer Mall, as the mall lost all four of its anchors, three of them in short spacing.  In 2000, Montgomery Ward announced it was going out of business nationwide and closed the last remaining original anchor at Mountaineer Mall.  The next anchor to depart was Wal-Mart, which abandoned the mall due to a non-compete agreement with grocery store Giant Eagle that barred it from opening a Supercenter with grocery on the site; it closed in October 2006, the same day two new Supercenters opened elsewhere in Morgantown.

About the same time Wal-Mart jumped ship, anchor Gabriel Brothers, which is headquartered in Morgantown, opened a brand new store across town, and began to offer fewer items at their Mountaineer Mall location.  After over a year of progressively emptier shelves, it became apparent that Gabriel Brothers was slowly abandoning the Mountaineer Mall store, and it finally closed in 2008.

Elder Beerman, which surprisingly stayed at the mall for ten years despite having a redundant store in Morgantown Mall across the river, also closed in 2008.  In a span of less than two years, Morgantown Mall went from having three anchors to having zero anchors.  At the same time, many in-line stores cleared out as well.  A listing of stores from 2001 can be found here via the wayback machine – sadly, many of these are now gone.

As of 2010, the only stores remaining in the mall are listed here.  Of these, many are either in outlots, like Giant Eagle, Georgia Carpet Outlet and Dunham’s Sports, or have exterior entrances, like CATO and Goodwill.  A hair salon, Subway, nail salon, and some non-profit service organizations operate within the mall, as well as a pizza parlor and Chinese buffet.  A local country and craft store, The Barn Yard, also operates in the mall, but unfortunately is closing tomorrow (7/21/10); however, they are relocating and will reopen in August.  Mountaineer Mall’s website also indicates a transition from retail to office space, which began a decade ago with the retenanting of Montgomery Ward with a TeleTech call center and a building supply outlet.

Elsewhere on the net: Visit Mountaineer Mall’s Facebook page, and a great Flickr set by Andrew Turnbull.

We visited Mountaineer Mall in July 2009 and took the pictures featured here.

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