I don’t get many chances to travel by plane nowadays, so I’m thankful for people like Michael Lisicky, who have contributed a lot of great photos and information to Labelscar. This package of photos and history on the Palm Beach Mall in West Palm Beach, Florida, comes from Mr. Lisicky. I know I drove past this place in 2000 but I wasn’t able to stop (I had to catch a flight!) so I’m glad that some of the pieces have been put together–it seems it’s a fascinating case of a large, once-dominant mall losing its grip on the market in this South Florida city:

“When the Palm Beach Mall opened in 1967, it was billed as the largest enclosed mall in the Southeast. Located in West Palm Beach, FL, the mall helped serve a community who didn’t necessarily need the opulence of Palm Beach’s Worth Avenue shopping area. It opened amidst spectacular gardens and fountains and was anchored by the Miami-based Jordan Marsh, JCPenney and the number three of the three Miami stores, Richards. Palm Beach Mall thrived in the 1970s and beyond. So much so that the other Miami store, Burdines, left its downtown West Palm Beach location to join the Palm Beach Mall in 1980.

“But 1980 also meant more change to the mall. Richards, a unit of the troubled holding company City Stores, was forced to close all 8 Florida stores. This included not only the flagship in downtown Miami
but also the Palm Beach Mall location. Richards helped serve the more moderate end of the department store field in South Florida and therefore it found itself in less desirable shopping centers. However it was located in a couple of malls like Cutler Ridge and Palm Beach Mall where mall owners were threatening the company with eviction do to the lower quality of their merchandise. After Richards left, their anchor spot was quickly snatched up by Sears.

“The 1980s saw the infiltration of outside stores heading to Florida. Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, and Lord & Taylor joined Saks and Bonwit Teller to make the shopping environment more competitive. Burdines quickly defined itself as “The Florida Store” and solidified its place as the destination for loyal local and visiting shoppers. Jordan Marsh, which started Florida operations in 1956, was once the store for higher fashion. With newcomers heading into the state, the store lost focus and decided to downgrade in order to compete. It was a devastating decision for the company.

Lord & Taylor chose to come into the flourishing Palm Beach Mall during its massive invation into South Florida in the 1980s. Both Lord & Taylor and Jordan Marsh enjoyed high visibility from drivers on I-95. (Palm Beach Mall is actually the only mall visible from I-95 in all of South Florida.) But then things began to change. Jordan Marsh, floundering in bankruptcy, closed its stores in 1991. Lord & Taylor would end up retrenching years down the road eventually leaving Florida altogether. As the mall’s demographics changed the wonderful interior would be blandified over the years.

“In the late 90s one of the biggest changes to happen to Palm Beach Mall was the razing of the Jordan Marsh store in order for Dillard’s to try to make its stand in South Florida. Shut out by Burdines and sister stores, Dillard’s had limited choices on where to locate. This dramatically changed the center court. Though the high ceiling remains to this day, gone is the exotic drama of its former interior self. And with a vacant and visible Lord & Taylor building, the mall decided to raze the store and leave the site ready for future development, development that has never materialized.

“Burdines also suffered as the Macy influence gradually gained control. The store, even to this day, has a dramatic open feeling to its interior. This “Florida feeling” helped define to the public what
Burdines was all about. But in 2005 the store became a Macy’s. Up to the changeover, 2 of the 4 exterior entrances were sealed off. The parking garage leading into the upper floor of the store has even been closed off. Large portion of the store are walled off. Though the store has that great turquoise seashore feel, its merchandise no longer reflects the South Florida lifestyle. It has a true feeling of doom.

“Palm Beach Mall received a blow in 1999 when a young manager of the Chick-Fil-A store was murdered. Though it was deemed an inside job, few malls really can survive a high profile murder incident. (May I cite the Cloverleaf Mall in Richmond, VA?) More and more national merchants began to leave the mall in droves. The mall still is somewhat active but most stores seem to be on short term leases. Its current owner, Simon, seems to be in the mode to just fill the spaces, with anything. There is talk about the mall being ‘de-malled’. It’s fair to say its future is uncertain. There is too much competition in the immediate area to support this center. Time will tell.

“The pictures below were taken in late July, 2007. The interior store shots at the end are of the inside of the former Burdines, now Macy’s. The picture of the vacant lot next to the mall is where the Lord & Taylor was razed.”

The Burdine’s shots here are obviously not from 2007, they are 3 years older–from 2004. And the shot with the Jordan Marsh was from July of 1991; I know that it certainly takes me back, since Jordan Marsh’s New England stores (many of which are now being demolished, as they were abandoned by Macy’s) looked just like this. Michael also notes that the below Richards ad was from 1980, and was the last advertisement they ever ran in the Miami Herald. It also lists locations of their other stores at the time:

About a year ago, Labelscar friend CCMoore alerted us to a time capsule of a mall located in Dover, Delaware, called the Blue Hen Mall. We almost completely forgot about this on our recent trip to the area. By the time we remembered, we already found ourselves toodling around Dover, and by then it was hard to do much research (plus I mistakenly thought the place was downtown, for some reason). I assumed it had just been completely converted to offices anyway and would be shut on the Sunday we were in town, and this may have even been true.

CCMoore was kind enough to send along some pictures to fill in the blanks and give us some history on this strange little relic. He also was responsible for our pretty fantastic feature on the Salisbury Mall last fall, too, so if you’re itching for more malls of the Delmarva, check it out.

“The Blue Hen Mall opened in 1969, I believe. It sits just north of the Dover Air Force Base. It opened with JCPenney, Woolco, Woolworth’s and Braunstein’s as the main draws and was probably the first mall south of the canal (not counting the Salisbury Mall in Maryland 2 hrs south). I know the newer Dover Mall opened in the early 80s with Sears, Leggett’s (Belk) and Boscov’s. Penney’s left in the early 90s and after that the mall basically died. It’s never been the most exciting mall in the world but it’s a serious time warp in some spots.

“Because this is an office complex of sorts, the grounds are pristinely maintained. The plants in the planters in the mall are still there and are maintained by some botony/garden association and they exactly like they did when I was kid.”

CCMoore offers us some commentary along with each of the pictures. In case you are wondering about the above photo, he says that it’s of “the left side off center court. This always seemed like the busier side. At one point Woolworths(the brick store w/ huge windows), Danneman’s (fabric, crafts, bullshit), GNC, Braunstein’s, Buster Brown, some wig shop, Hess Apparel and Waldenbooks were all on this end, with a HUGE Penney’s store connecting to it. When I was a kid in the mid-80s this was the best place to go because you could wander around and just look at everything and it was SO big, even though it’s not really big at all now.”

“The wig shop which looks like it might have been a Parklane Hosery store, this was on the left (north) end toward Penney’s, the small store to the right was part of Danneman’s that wrapped around the wig shop. The main store front was to the left further down.”

“The old Woolworth’s restaurant. This is at center court, toward the back parking lot.”

“The old movie theater. I saw a shitty concert here in the mid-90s and the theater itself is pretty cool, the lobby is intact too.”

“To the right (south) of center court. The two arched doors on the
right with the display windows was a beautiful women’s clothing store
called Benjamin’s. At one point, DELDOT (Dept. of Trans.) had offices
upstairs while the main DelDOT campus was being enlarged in the early
90s. I have no clue what is there now, or what was there when the mall
was thriving. At the end of this wing was Woolco and then Roses.”

The year was 1976 and the retail boom of building enclosed malls was near its peak.  Cleveland was no exception; even during a period of economic despair they joined the rest of America’s retail building boom, and embarked upon building behemoth retail centers across the metropolitan area.  The largest of these ever to be built, even as of 2007, was the Randall Park Mall in the tiny southeast suburban village of North Randall. 

Randall Park Mall’s location in the village was strategically planned.  The mall is located on Route 8/Northfield Rd but also adjacent to the intersection of two interstates: I-271 and I-471, which together make a rough southern belt around the city of Cleveland.  Its location is also one of the most centrally located malls in northeast Ohio, between Cleveland, Youngstown, and Akron.

When it opened, Randall Park Mall’s anchors included  Sears, JC Penney, May Company, Higbee’s of Cleveland, and Horne’s from Pittsburgh.  Another Cleveland-based department store chain called Halle’s had an option to build at the mall but went broke before they got a chance to exercise it in the early 1980s.  No matter, though, because Randall Park Mall’s fortunes fell flat during the same time period.  In 1978, only two years after Randall Park opened, an upscale mall called Beachwood Place opened nearby which stole many upscale shoppers from Randall Park.  Beachwood Place is successful even today.  Also, a few high profile crimes in the late 1970s and early 1980s including a murder and a well-publicized race riot kept shoppers away.  The mall continued to spiral downward and by the late 1980s most of the original top-tier retailers had egressed the mall for warmer economic climes in nearby centers.  Higbee’s became Kaufmann’s (Now Macy’s as of 2006) and Horne’s closed up shop.

By the late 1990s, Randall Park Mall was in perilous decline.  JCPenney’s 200,000 square-foot mammoth of a store converted to a JCPenney Outlet, and closed just three years later in 2001.  Dillard’s also closed, and many of the mall’s in-line stores changed from national chains to mom-and-pop stores, or worse yet became completely vacant.  The north end of the mall, where JCPenney and Dillards once sat, became especially vacant, and looks and sounds more like a cave than a shopping center.  The Horne’s location eventually became a Burlington Coat Factory on the upper level and a local furniture store flavor-of-the-year on the bottom level.  Also, a Magic Johnson theatres opened in the mall. Other nonstandard mall tenants such as a Church and a Jeepers entertainment-based restaurant for children opened in vacant store slots as well. 

But why did Randall Park, Cleveland’s largest mall, fail?  It is strategically located in northeast Ohio at the intersection of two major interstates, and has five anchor spaces as well as spots for many national retailers.  The answers are most likely in the changing demographics of the area immediately surrounding the mall, and also in the normal evolutionary cycle of retail.  As urban sprawl extended away from the core of Cleveland, it brought new retail with it farther and farther out.  Because metro Cleveland’s population on the whole is relatively stagnant, the inner-core retail like Randall Park and Euclid Square Malls suffer while newer retail lifestyle centers like Legacy Village and Crocker Park. 

So what’s next for Randall Park Mall?  I predict a slow, protracted continuation of its demise, followed by an attempt at mixed-use, and then either complete renovation and repurposing or blight.  It’s rather sad to see it fallen from its glory and in such a state as it is today, but such is the nature of retail.  In 2007 the Ohio Technical College announced plans to tenant the entirety of the 200,000 square-foot vacant former Penney’s space.

The pictures here were taken in June 2005.  Bonus points to anyone who can tell me what the largely abandoned huge building is near the entrance to the mall; it’s really scary.   

With a name like the “Tri-State Mall,” you might expect a major, regional mall out of this Claymont, Delaware center. Of course, you’d also be completely wrong.

The tiny Tri-State Mall on Naaman’s Road in Claymont, Delaware, located right along the Pennsylvania state line, is easily one of the bleakest and most unappealing malls that we’ve visited. While we at Labelscar love the idea of the enclosed mall and find that it’s a rare occasion that we don’t enjoy one of these centers, Tri-State Mall is one of those rare cases where the place feels so forbidding that we’re in a bit of a rush to leave. These pictures, all taken in early August 2007 of the forty-year-old mall, should illustrate why.

Set between some middle class suburban areas to the west and an expanse of oil fields and other industrial areas to the east, the Tri-State Mall is organized in a relatively simple “+” pattern, with one hallway leading straight from the parking lot to a comedy club in the mall’s rear, and a cross hallway leading between Kmart and Value City, the mall’s two anchors. There is also a rather sad little strip mall in the parking lot that’s built into the lot’s grade.

Apart from the mall’s downright hilarious website–which includes a bunch of small photos that were very obviously NOT taken here–we can’t find very much about the Tri-State Mall on the web. Did the mall ever do any better? What were the original anchors–was something here before Value City?

EDIT 8/13/07: Ask and you shall receive. Michael Lisicky always comes through for us–he had this 1987 photo of the Wilmington Dry Goods store, which occupied the Value City space. He also says the mall was a much bigger draw at that time than it is today. Value City took over the space in 1990. Also, Lisicky says he’s pretty sure that the Kmart was a Grant City store originally.

Tucked away on the west side of Columbus on the corner of Broad Street/U.S. 40 and the I-270 belt, Westland Mall has without a doubt seen better days.  Opened in 1969 as an outdoor mall, Westland was enclosed in 1982 and has not been renovated since.  As such, it has fallen victim to the flight of many-a-store in recent years, especially considering the tight retail competition in the Columbus market.

When it opened, Westland was anchored by Sears, Columbus-based Lazarus, and JCPenney.  Only Sears has held its ground; JCPenney closed in 1997 for new digs several miles up the road at The Mall at Tuttle Crossing and Lazarus, which became Macy’s recently, closed earlier this year citing underperforming sales.  Other national chain stores have departed in recent years as well, such as The Limited and Express.  In addition, the Woolworth’s mini-anchor which closed in 1997 with the rest of the chain was replaced by a Staples which denied mall access.  Whoops.  Since 2000, many more stores have departed, and on a Columbus Dispatch reporter’s recent visit to the mall the Dollar store was the busiest retailer in the whole place.  Whoops again. 

So what really happened at Westland?  Several sources suggest that tight competition was a major factor in Westland’s demise.  Between 1997 and 2001, Columbus saw more large retail destinations open than in any other market, with the opening of two large enclosed malls, The Mall at Tuttle Crossing and Polaris Fashion Place, and one large outdoor center, Easton Town Center.  Malls like Westland, and others which have recently failed like Columbus City Center and Northland Mall, all fell victim to this shiny new competition at an alarming rate. 

The opening of all three of these new centers also signified a greater shift geographically in the economic prosperity of Columbus, pressing greater emphasis on the large sprawling swath of suburbia north of downtown and leaving the other parts of town struggling.  Just by looking at a map of Columbus, it’s easy to see the recent growth has pressed northward at a rate two to three times the rate of other directions.  This is where much of the money is in Columbus, and also has much to do with the location of OSU in this direction.

Today, Westland Mall is a ghost town, a retail relic and a living history museum to the ‘dead mall’ phenomenon visible across the entire country.  The Broad Street retail strip around it is dated and functional, but the mall has definitely outlived its original stay as the anchor for this side of the trade area.  A massive renovation and repurposing will have to take place before it is viable again.  The mall’s website indicates they are courting ‘value’ tenants to make Westland into a ‘value-oriented’ mall, and while this may solve the immediate vacancy issue it is really only a stopgap solution as the center continues to age rather ungracefully. 

But for now, enjoy the photos and if you’re in the area take a visit to one of the area’s best-preserved dead mall museums while it lasts.  It won’t be long before they give up the ghost and try again.  The pictures here were taken in March 2004.