Prange Way, Author at Labelscar: The Retail History Blog

Music City Mall; Odessa, Texas

Music City Mall opened in 1980 as Permian Mall, located on the northeast side of town along Highway 191 and kitty-corner to the University of Texas – Permian Basin. Permian Mall wasn’t Odessa’s first enclosed mall, either. The much smaller Winwood Mall, located a few hundred feet to the west, predated it by several years. Winwood opened in 1973 and was anchored by a movie theatre, Woolco, Montgomery Ward and JCPenney, the latter of which moved to Permian Mall when it opened. An undated photo of an entrance of Winwood Mall is located here. Is this photo the interior of Winwood Mall? (It’s not labeled.) Today, Winwood Mall is called Winwood Town Center, and has been transformed from enclosed mall into a row of both Big Box and smaller stores in typical strip-mall fashion. Major retailers at today’s Winwood Town Center include HEB (grocery), Ross Dress For Less, Michaels, Hastings, and Target. When did the original Winwood close? When was it demolished?

Odessa, Texas, home to nearly 100,000 residents, is located in a flat, dry area of West Texas, known for ranching and oil. Along with its neighbor directly to the east, Midland, Odessa shares a sub-region of West Texas known as the Permian Basin, a mostly flat area of plains, rich in both petroleum deposits and the boom-to-bust-to-boom economy that comes with it.

Today, around 266,000 people live in the Midland-Odessa Metropolitan Area. Isolated from other major cities in Texas, folks in the region must travel between four and five hours to reach either El Paso to the west, or the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to the east. Other, smaller regional hubs are a bit closer: San Angelo, Lubbock, and Abilene, Texas, are all about two hours away.

Two super-regional malls exist in Midland and Odessa today: Odessa’s Music City Mall and Midland’s Midland Park Mall. Much like Midland and Odessa are twin cities, their malls also share similarities. Both malls offer Dillard’s, JCPenney, and Sears, both opened in 1980, and both malls weren’t the first in their respective city.

Music City Mall, located on the northeast side of Odessa, along Highway 191 and kitty-corner to the University of Texas – Permian Basin, opened in 1980 as Permian Mall. Just as Midland’s Midland Park Mall wasn’t the first mall in Midland, Permian Mall wasn’t Odessa’s first enclosed mall. The much smaller Winwood Mall, located a few hundred feet to the west, predated it by several years. Winwood opened in 1973 and was anchored by a movie theatre, Woolco, Montgomery Ward and JCPenney, the latter of which moved to Permian Mall when it opened. An undated photo of an entrance of Winwood Mall is located here. Is this photo the interior of Winwood Mall? (It’s not labeled.) Today, Winwood Mall is called Winwood Town Center, and has been transformed from enclosed mall into a row of both Big Box and smaller stores in typical strip-mall fashion. Major retailers at today’s Winwood Town Center include Texas-based HEB (grocery), Ross Dress For Less, Michaels, Hastings, and Target. When did the original Winwood close? When was it demolished?

At some point, Permian Mall was renamed Music City Mall to capitalize on the fact that it houses three stages for live entertainment, which takes place mostly during weekends. In terms of size and layout, Music City Mall has 750,000 square-feet of retail space on one level, and the layout of the mall is a basic zig-zag with anchors at each turn. Current anchors include JCPenney, Dillards, Burlington Coat Factory, and Sears, as well as an 11-screen movie theater. Burlington Coat Factory is somewhat new to the Music City scene, replacing a Mervyn’s that closed in the 2000s.

Music City Mall, while slightly larger than Midland’s Midland Park Mall, has not enjoyed the same level of success, nor does it have the same caliber of in-line stores. In addition to several notable vacancies, one wing of Music City Mall is flanked by a local television station. The remainer of the 750,000 square-foot mall contains a high number of local stores versus national chains, which is generally undesirable in regional malls today. In contrast, Midland Park Mall has many typical national chains such as Abercrombie and Fitch, Aeropostale, American Eagle, and Buckle. However, Music City Mall does have the corner on live performance venues as well as the only ice rink facility within a 300-mile radius. In addition, Music City Mall also has a food court; yet, much like the rest of the mall, the food court contains many local vendors instead of national chain food outlets.

Also unique to Music City Mall is this somewhat large display of the Bible’s Ten Commandments, seen here in 2009:

An audience of chairs was placed facing the Ten Commandments, inviting mall patrons to sit and relax while viewing the display, which was roped off so people can’t get too close. Is it still there? Is this a permanent fixture of the mall, or was it some sort of temporary exhibition? I’ve never seen anything like it in any other mall, and it was interesting to say the least. It sort of reminds me of the praying hands sculpture at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, in terms of religious public art. I think that’s what they were going for, at least?

I visited Music City Mall in November 2009 and took the pictures featured on this page. Please feel free to leave any comments or observations you have, and help us fill in the retail history of Midland and Odessa.

Pictures from November 2009:

Midland Park Mall; Midland, Texas

Midland Park Mall opened in 1980, on the northwest side of Midland, located at Loop 250 and Midkiff Road. Slightly smaller than Odessa’s Music City Mall, Midland Park Mall has around 650,000 square feet and a more linear layout pattern, with a slight bend in the mall in the Sears wing. Its anchors are Sears, Dillards, JCPenney, and Old Navy, which are very similar to that of Music City Mall, and what it lacks for size comparison with Music City it makes up for in popular national chain stores. Stores such as G by Guess, Abercrombie and Fitch, Aeropostale, American Eagle, and Zumiez flank the halls at Midland Park, and are strikingly absent at Music City. In addition, the food court is flanked with the typical national food court chains such as Chik-Fil-A, and it’s apparent that the quality on offer is better than that at Music City. However, there is no ice skating rink at Midland Park, nor are there several live entertainment venues to entertain shoppers. Nor is there a Ten Commandments display.

Midland, Texas, home to 111,000 residents, is located in a flat, dry region of sparsely populated West Texas known for ranching and oil. Along with its neighbor directly to the west, Odessa, Midland shares a sub-region of West Texas known as the Permian Basin, a mostly flat area of plains, rich in both petroleum deposits and the boom-to-bust-to-boom economy that comes with it.

Two super-regional malls exist in Midland and Odessa today: Odessa’s Music City Mall and Midland’s Midland Park Mall. The two malls are only twenty minutes apart, and are the only regional malls within a two hour radius. Like the twin cities of Midland and Odessa, both malls share similarities. Both malls offer Dillard’s, JCPenney, and Sears, both opened in 1980, and both malls were not the original enclosed malls in either city.

Also, much like Odessa’s Music City Mall, Midland Park Mall was not the first mall in town. The Dellwood Mall, located less than three miles south of Midland Park Mall along Midkiff Road at the corner of Illinois Avenue, was Midland’s first enclosed mall. When did it open? What were its anchors, other than Kresge’s and Dunlap’s? Today, Dellwood Mall has been renamed Kingsway Mall, and still stands despite some modifications to house a Church and Family Dollar. Can you still go in and walk around here?

I visited Midland Park Mall in November 2009 and took the pictures featured on this page. Please feel free to leave any comments or observations you have, and help us fill in the retail history of Midland and Odessa.

Pictures from November 2009:

CenterPoint MarketPlace; Stevens Point, Wisconsin

Anchored by two department stores, JCPenney and Green Bay-based ShopKo, with space for a third anchor, CenterPoint Mall opened with space for 60 smaller stores under one enclosed roof. The 220,000 square foot mall was never very successful, despite ample parking in the middle of downtown and only a few blocks from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, a campus with over 10,000 students. The mall never filled to capacity, nor attracted the quality of stores present in larger regional malls such as Wausau Center, located just 30 minutes north of Stevens Point in Wausau.

Well, hey. Remember me? It’s been a while, I know. But I’m back, with a new story.

Stevens Point, Wisconsin, is a city of 26,000 located in the center of the state. Its major exports are college graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, one of 13 public four-year Universities in the state, and beer from Point Brewery, which I’m partial to. A decent-sized paper mill and a few Insurance companies round out the economy here, among other businesses and services.

And, of course, the Stevens Point area once had a mall. Heck, there were even two in the area. Now they have none. Zero. Zilch. Nada. The big goose egg.

The Stevens Point area’s first mall was located in suburban Plover, a smaller city located just south of Stevens Point, and it opened in 1984. I missed seeing this one, but the interweb seems to indicate it was very small and later became part of Rainbow Falls Water Park, which itself ultimately closed in the early 2000s. The mall was apparently demolished in 2003. It also seemed to have two names: Manufacturers Outlet Mall and Plover Mall. Anyone know anything about it? Any photos? All I could find were some back issues of a local paper with a few advertisements mentioning stores in the mall.

Even before Plover Mall (or whatever it was called) appeared on the scene, a national mall developer (sources indicate Melvin Simon and Associates) had been interested in building a large-scale mall on the edge of Stevens Point, located near the interchange of US 10 and US 51 (later I-39). This proposal, introduced several years earlier in the late 1970s, was continually blocked by locals and ultimately lost steam as the years progressed. A few years later, a different developer came up with a different proposal – to build a regional mall in the middle of downtown Stevens Point. Several blocks of downtown Stevens Point would need to be razed for this development, but the developer marketed this under the careful guise of “urban renewal” because downtown Stevens Point was flagging, as were many cities’ downtowns nationwide. This proposal won the backing of locals because it meant their downtown, which had lost its luster in recent years, would once again be the vibrant, retail-dominant center they had known in the early and mid 20th century. Groundbreaking for this downtown mall, named CenterPoint Mall, took place in September 1984, and the mall’s grand opening took place in October 1985.

Its decor was pretty standard for the mid-80s, with terrazzo-tiled floors, wood and brick layered storefronts, lengthy skylights, and many plants and trees poking out from sidewalk-style grates as well as from blocky wooden planters. At night, the mall really lit up with marquee-style rows of lighting along the skylights, giving its interior a dramatic, lively appearance. I sort of liked it, even though it was more than half dead for most of its existence. The layout of the mall was a simple dumbbell with a somewhat narrow main walkway. Pretty standard stuff for a city this size.

CenterPoint Mall was part of a larger trend and planning convention for urban renewal in cities across the country. The logic for the convention came from the fact that suburban-style malls had been enjoying incredible success in suburbs and the peripheries of cities, at the expense of downtowns, which had been the vibrant focal point of cities since their inception. Stores were rapidly leaving downtowns for these malls nationwide, and downtowns across the country were becoming outmoded derelict ghost towns. Beginning in the 1960s, and through at least the mid-1980s, developers had success convincing cities to tear up their aging, decrepit downtowns to put in typical regional malls. Many of these, especially in smaller cities, even had the same large, free parking lots shoppers enjoyed in the suburbs. Cities were quick to give up space to these developments, unfortunately tearing down many historic landmarks in the process. Ah, the prospect of progress, to make something old new again.

Examples of developments like these took place in Rochester, NY (Midtown Plaza), Salem, OR (Salem Center), White Plains, NY (several malls), Santa Maria, CA (Town Center), Milwaukee, WI (Grand Avenue Mall), Columbus, OH (City Center), and some even closer to Stevens Point in Oshkosh (Park Plaza Mall), Appleton (Avenue Mall), Wisconsin Rapids (Rapids Mall), and Wausau (Wausau Center). The list obviously goes on, and there are many more examples nationwide. The majority of these developments have struggled through the 1990s into the present, and many have been repurposed, are struggling, or have scaled back considerably. Interestingly, Wausau Center is an exception, having enjoyed success and helping to create a more vibrant downtown in the process.

The dire implications of many of these developments result from improper positioning, pitting suburban interests against downtown constraints. The suburban model of retail cannot easily be superimposed on its predecessor (and arguably, its replacement as of late), the downtown. First, by the time many downtowns were repurposed to house traditional enclosed malls, there was already a sort of competition on the periphery of these cities. In Stevens Point’s case, several suburban-style retail clusters had already popped up on the north, east, and south sides of the city. The synergy of collective business, strip malls, and big box stores in these clusters helped them thrive, whereas there was no extra room downtown for these types of stores. While the mall had free parking, the rest of downtown was still constrained by on-street parking, and by tearing up several blocks of downtown to put in the mall there was even less of a reason to shop at the more traditional streetfront downtown stores.

This leads to the next point – ripping up a downtown grid to put in a huge mall is simply poor planning style. Several through-streets were truncated at the mall, creating a loss of flow through downtown. Areas directly north of the mall were suddenly completely cut off from downtown by the several block long development.

As the years went on, Pointers chose to shop at the businesses in the peripheral retail districts, or in nearby Wausau or Appleton rather than their own mall. As such, the mall was never fully occupied. More importantly, it was thus never able to attract the kind of destination stores to get people in the doors. There was never an American Eagle, Victoria’s Secret, Pottery Barn, or the like.

In the late 1990s, a small apparel-oriented department store, Stage, opened as CenterPoint Mall’s third anchor, on the north-facing side in the center. Unfortunately, Stage was short-lived, and closed after only two years, in 2000. In 2003, Dunham’s Sports opened in this space, but they too only lasted a few years, moving to the US 10 strip on the east side for a bigger store.

Not long after, the mall began its long, slow spiral into oblivion. A visit in 2010 yielded a total of five stores open. In May of that year, JCPenney decided to call it quits and close their store, putting 39 folks out of work. That same year, the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum departed as well. You know your mall is dead when a museum leaves…

Meanwhile, the mall had been in foreclosure, and the remaining handful of tenants began to trickle out. In May 2011, the city of Stevens Point declared the mall blighted and condemned it. This outraged Valley Bank of Iowa, who owned the mall in receivership, and they unsuccessfully sued the city to win back the mall. The city then scored a $750,000 federal block grant to redevelop the mall, and in March 2012, the doors to the mall were permanently closed to the public. ShopKo is the only store to remain, as its building is technically owned and operated as a separate entity.

I happened to stop by CenterPoint Mall one hot day in June 2012, and took the second set of photos that day. I was actually unaware the mall was closed to the public, as ShopKo was open and the entrance next to ShopKo was propped open with some activity. A maintenance man was doing something near the entrance, and a couple girls walked into the mall ahead of me, so I thought nothing of the fact that I shouldn’t have been there. This changed, however, when I saw that the many fig trees planted in the mall’s main walkway had lost most of their leaves onto the floor, creating a crunchy carpet of green and brown. I was able to walk the entire length of the mall unquestioned, as the two girls who walked in ahead of me went into a dead store that appeared to be some makeshift community center or charity or something. They hung out in the store talking and giggling, and I walked the length of the mall full of dead trees. It was a strange, eerie moment. I actually only discovered the mall was supposed to be shut when I got to the other end and saw notices on another set of entry doors that said the mall was permanently closed that March. Whoops.

In all, it was a satisfying but bittersweet visit. I got a chance to say goodbye to a mall I’d visited several times, and one I was always perplexed by. Demolition of CenterPoint Marketplace began in August 2012, and today most of the mall is history. Mid-State Technical College will move into a former portion of the mall in 2013, and ShopKo is open for business as usual. Third Street was extended through part of the former mall as it had been before the mall opened, almost exactly 27 years ago. What’s old is now new again, and as downtowns across the nation are experiencing a resurgence, Americans want denser, more urban developments and the organic well-designed community gathering space of a traditional downtown.

Elsewhere on the web:

Photos from March 2001:

Photos from June 2012:

The Galleria; Edina, Minnesota

The Galleria is a 417,000 square-foot, mostly single-level upscale enclosed shopping mall in Edina, Minnesota, an upscale suburb of Minneapolis. Anchored by Gabbert’s furniture, Crate and Barrel, Barnes and Noble, and a Westin Hotel, The Galleria is an upscale complement to a super-regional mall, Southdale Center, which is located across the street.

In 1976, twenty years after Southdale was developed by famous mall-mastermind Victor Gruen, Gabbert’s furniture opened a store across 69th Street from Southdale’s south entrance. That same year, construction began on a row of shops to complement Gabbert’s. Eventually, these shops became the enclosed mall that stands today.

The Galleria is unique, not only because it sits less than 300 feet from one of the country’s first shopping malls, but also because it has a relatively narrow, long corridor and an eclectic mix of upscale shops and restaurants. The Galleria is what I’d call an “upscale mom mall” – it caters to the well-to-do 35-54 female set fairly well, with stores like Pendleton, L’Occitane, J. Jill, Coach, Chico’s, along with upscale salons and stationery stores. There are many Volvos, Range Rovers, and German luxury cars in the parking structure here, which is located beneath the mall’s main level along with a handful of additional stores. This makes sense, considering Edina, Eden Prairie, and environs are some of the more upscale suburbs in the Twin Cities area.

In 2006, The Galleria embarked on a small expansion, adding a Westin Hotel to the east end of the mall and a large Crate & Barrel store to the front of the mall, next to Gabbert’s.

The Galleria continues to be a successful, upscale ancillary to Southdale, even in spite of stark competition from other Minneapolis-area retail centers, such as Eden Prairie Center and the Mall of America. However, The Galleria’s upscale and specialty-store niche will continue to work in its favor, even despite having no traditional anchors.

We’d like to know more about the history of The Galleria. Has it always been enclosed, and was it built in a modular style? We’d also like to see more cohesion between The Galleria and Southdale. It seems they can co-exist, so why not tie them together more? Southdale’s row of restaurants and south entrance line up nicely with the Galleria’s north entrance by Gabbert’s, separated by only 300 feet and across 69th street. It would be really neat if they were skywalked, or at least had a dedicated and obvious pedestrian connection that was well-signed and marketed throughout both centers. I believe both centers would benefit from the complementarity, despite being separately owned.

This Best Buy sign is actually not part of The Galleria. It’s across the street and currently Best Buy’s oldest operating store, but not for long as it’s one of the 50 stores Best Buy is closing due to their recent financial woes. I thought it was neat though, because it’s an earlier pre-pricetag version of Best Buy’s logo.

I took these pictures of The Galleria back in April 2010.

Crestwood Plaza (Crestwood Court); Crestwood, Missouri

Crestwood Court’s latest blow is part of a series of problems for the mall, which opened as a 550,000 square-foot, L-shaped outdoor center in 1957. Back then, Crestwood was on the outskirts of suburban development for St. Louis. The city of St. Louis itself was a booming metropolis with over 800,000 residents, and suburban St. Louis County had half as many residents as today. Things couldn’t have been sunnier for Crestwood Plaza, as it was officially known until the late 1990s, before a series of rebadging efforts due to new ownership changed it to Westfield Shoppingtown Crestwood and, finally, Crestwood Court. For our purposes, we’ll just stick with the name Crestwood.

Another one bites the dust.

A few weeks ago, Crestwood Court, a super-regional enclosed shopping mall located in southwest-suburban St. Louis, kicked most of its tenants out amid speculation of forthcoming redevelopment, which has been on hold for several years due to the sluggish economy.

Since Crestwood opened 55 years ago, times have changed, shopping patterns have changed, and so too have the dynamics of retail in general. When Crestwood opened, it was located on the precipice of newer developments heading westward from the city of St. Louis. In fact, Crestwood was once located directly on the famous and storied Chicago-to-Los-Angeles Route 66 until the section from Chicago to Joplin, Missouri was decommissioned in favor of Interstates 44 and 55 in 1979.

Over time, Crestwood’s location turned from a boon in its favor to an Achilles’ Heel, as it went from having prime Route 66 frontage to being located on a regional secondary side road. And, unlike several other successful St. Louis-area shopping centers like the Galleria, South County Center, Chesterfield Mall, West County Center, St. Clair Square and Mid Rivers Mall, Crestwood did not have direct access from the Interstate system. Despite being a mile from Interstates 44 and 270, the exits to access the mall involve making several awkward turns and going through busy intersections.

Crestwood was also a pioneer, establishing retail history firsts for both the St. Louis region as well as trendsetting innovations for retail site design nationwide. Designed by regional shopping center pioneer Louis Zorensky, Crestwood was the first truly regional mall in the St. Louis area, and also one of the first of such centers with more than one major anchor. Both Sears and St. Louis-based Scruggs-Vandervoort-Barney anchored the mall, opening in 1957 and 1958, respectively. A smaller Woolworth also operated on the south end of the center. It was previously thought in shopping center design school that two anchors in the same mall would hurt, rather than complement, each other. Zorensky’s Crestwood proved that this was not the case, as the mall had instant success with two competing anchors. In addition, Crestwood was the first mall with a split-level parking lot, providing access to both levels of the mall.

Interestingly, Zorensky went on to build a bigger and better shopping center in St. Louis. When it opened in 1963, Northwest Plaza was the largest shopping center in the world. It was finally enclosed in the 1990s, and enjoyed success until around 2000 when it began to slide downhill, eventually closing in 2010.

Crestwood’s first expansion in 1967 brought a third anchor and a new enclosed retail corridor, featuring St. Louis-based Stix Baer & Fuller, on the mall’s eastern end. Then, in 1969, St. Louis-based Famous-Barr purchased Vandervoort’s, bringing its venerable name into the Crestwood mix. Meanwhile, in the 1960s and 1970s, St. Louis-area retail developers were busy at work building many new super-regional malls across the metropolitan area, providing competition to Crestwood. However, Crestwood held its own against these new malls for decades.

Take a look at the massive, hulking Stix structure via the VanishingSTL blog:

dead department store

In 1984, the entirety of Crestwood was fully enclosed due to pressures from competition as well as consumer trends. Competition included three nearby super-regional malls within 15 minutes: West County Center, South County Center, and Chesterfield Mall. A fourth super-regional mall, St. Louis Galleria, opened in 1986 just 5 miles away from Crestwood, in Richmond Heights, expanding to become the best mall in St. Louis by the early 1990s.

During the 1984 enclosure a basement food court and 5-screen cinema were added to Crestwood between Sears and Famous-Barr, and the short Woolworths wing was demolished and replaced by parking. That same year, the Stix chain was purchased by Dillard’s and converted. The food court was a pretty neat design feature at Crestwood. Entrance to the basement food court was accessed via escalators and stairways which went perpendicular from the main mall corridor into the food court area, giving it the vibe of a secret underground space. The food court, which was gigantic, also had a direct exit to the back of the mall, which is at the same grade. It was one of the mall’s best design features, in addition to the fact that the mall seemed to wrap around Sears on three sides. Also, the entire mall is cantilevered over a road which leads to the back of the mall between Sears and the former Dillard’s store. Pretty cool?

Another neat design feature was added in 1992, with the addition of a second cinema behind Dillard’s, (the one in the food court closed soon after and was replaced by an arcade) as well as a short mall corridor expansion which went up and over the top of Dillard’s, resulting in Dillard’s having two separate mall entrances. After all was said and done, the mall felt even bigger than it was due to all of these features.

Here’s what the layout looked like after all was said and done. Macy’s was the most recent anchor on the left, and Dillard’s was on the right. The underground food court, unseen here because it has been permanently closed for a couple years now, is located beneath this level between Sears and the former Macy’s at left:

Crestwood continued to hold its own into the 1990s, even as St. Louis Galleria captured the nuanced glitz and glamor of the St. Louis-area retail scene. Crestwood was purchased in 1998 along with several other St. Louis-area centers by Australian mall magnate Westfield. Crestwood was never marketed as upscale, and was always a mid-level everyday suburban shopping mall. This positioning, which continued during the Westfield-owned years, combined with even more competition and a changing retail marketplace in the 2000s led to Crestwood’s eventual demise. While other nearby centers underwent continuous expansions and renovations, Crestwood did nothing to differentiate itself from its competition and, combined with its less-than-ideal location, proved to be too much to overcome.

In 2000, nearby West County Center embarked on a massive renovation and expansion project, demolishing the entire existing mall except for JCPenney (which was extensively remodeled), adding Nordstrom, Lord and Taylor, a food court, and numerous parking structures. When the practically brand new mall opened in 2002, it was double the size of the original mall and noticeably more upscale, reflecting the high incomes of its neighboring suburbs. Crestwood was an aging 1980s mall by that time, and took a major hit from this new competition.

In addition to that, South County Center, which is the same distance from Crestwood as West County Center but in the other direction, began its own renovation and expansion project in 2000, adding a new two-level southwest wing and a giant Sears store. This repositioning solidified South County’s place on the map. South County is the most convenient mall to south St. Louis city, as well as the corridor of suburbs along I-55 heading south and also to nearby Illinois suburbs across the Mississippi River.

It wasn’t long after the West County and South County renovations before signs of failure began to appear at Crestwood. The aging center was poorly located, hemmed in between better and glitzier malls as well as lacking direct freeway access from I-270 or I-44.

A 2003 crawl on the Wayback Machine indicated a healthy mix of stores at Crestwood, though it wasn’t long before these stores began to slowly disappear.

In 2005, Famous-Barr considered closing their Crestwood location and moving to a newer lifestyle center development called MainStreet at Sunset, located just a few miles away in the suburb of Sunset Hills at Route 30 and I-270. However, this development was cancelled and Famous-Barr remained open, changing to Macy’s in the Fall of 2006.

In October 2007, the aging Dillard’s store threw in the towel and closed its 240,000 square-foot mid-century modern behemoth of a store. Side note: Does anyone remember the frozen-in-time Dillard’s Garden Room restaurant at Crestwood? It was obviously never renovated, and had this really old-school motif. I remember walking past it not too many years before the store closed, and it instantly tunneled me back to a place in the not-so-distant-past when shopping was a more formal affair. I could just see the ladies-who-lunch crowd all done up for a day of serious 1970s shopping. I guess the Garden Room had other locations too, and were a holdover from the Stix era in St. Louis. Are any of them still open?

In March 2008, Westfield realized Crestwood was going downhill fast and dumped it off to Centrum Properties, a Chicago-based retail development group in partnership with investment adviser Angelo, Gordon & Co. of New York. Centrum decided to rebrand the mall as an “arts space”, leasing the increasingly vacant retail stores to community arts groups, dance studios and the like, at insanely cheap below-market rents ($50-$100/month). This was a novel but obviously temporary solution to the mall’s vacancy problem, like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound, as the remaining traditional retailers flowed out of the center even faster than before. Centrum was well aware that the ArtSpace was temporary. It became an innovative solution for finding short-term leases while giving back to the community. Most regular stores wouldn’t accept short-term leases, and Centrum just wanted to fill the space while the economy recovered so it could begin a larger-scale revitalization of the site.

Another brutal blow for Crestwood came in 2009, when Macy’s finally called it quits and closed their store, leaving Sears as the mall’s only anchor. Meanwhile, Centrum’s ArtSpace signed upwards of 70 tenants for their experiment, providing local arts groups the opportunity for a lot of space on the cheap. These groups were told from the beginning that this was a temporary situation while redevelopment was planned; however, the response to the experiment was phenomenal. Crestwood management was quoted as saying if they got a dozen arts tenants, they would have been surprised, but having 70 and leasing out over half the mall was astounding to them.

In December 2011, more bad news came from Crestwood as Sears announced it was closing its store. Sears is having financial difficulties of its own and has announced dozens of store closures nationwide, so it’s not crystal clear whether the Crestwood store would have been closed by a healthy company or not. Either way, Sears’ departure was not anticipated, as redevelopment plans were to be crafted around their store. It’s not clear whether this is a good or bad thing, as perhaps being able to start over completely is a boon to revitalization.

This turn of events seems to have set Centrum into motion, and in February 2012 they announced the ArtSpace tenants would have to move out, and that parts of the center would be closing permanently. A LensCrafters store and the AMC Movie Theater are still open inside the mall, however. This appears to be the final death knell for the current incarnation of Crestwood. Maybe renovation plans are coming to fruition, or perhaps Centrum was losing a lot of money keeping the place open.

Tired shoppers (in this case nobody, because the mall is practically devoid of retail stores) can stop for some art libations at the Art Bar, housed in the facade of shuttered Dillard’s:

Either way, it’s a bittersweet end to a 55-year history and a neat place. When it finally closes, it will be the fourth major mall in St. Louis to close, after River Roads in 1995, St. Louis Centre in 2006, and Northwest Plaza in 2010. It’s not clear when Crestwood will permanently close, as the AMC Theaters and a LensCrafters store are still operating. Are any other stores still open?

We look forward to seeing what’s in store for Crestwood’s redevelopment. Hopefully it will be something inspired, and not just some bland strip mall. I’ve visted Crestwood many times over the past decade and a half, and watched it crumble from a perfectly viable B-tier suburban mall to a mostly empty shell. As always, please share your own stories and reactions in the comments, and let us know when the mall closes for good and what, if any, redevelopments take place on the site.

Elsewhere on the web:

The Google Maps car drove around Crestwood in 2007. If you go to the back, you can see vestiges of the original 1958 center. They also drove under the mall between Sears and Dillard’s, and strangely into the Dillard’s parking structure. Did they get confused?
Post about Crestwood on the VanishingSTL blog (from 2010)
Mall-hall-of-fame article
The mall’s official website
City-data chatter about Crestwood (from 2007)

Photos from January 2002, when the mall was still viable:

Photos from March 2010; not so viable. Interestingly, Gap was one of the last retail stores to stay open, finally closing in August 2011:

Jordan Creek Town Center; West Des Moines, Iowa

Located in West Des Moines, Iowa, Jordan Creek Town Center is the newest super-regional mall in Iowa and, as of early 2012, one of the most recently constructed enclosed malls in the United States. Opened in 2004, its construction was the culmination of over ten years of planning, resulting in not only a mall but an entire retail resort encompassing destinational shopping, dining, entertainment, recreation, and lodging, becoming one of the biggest shopping destinations in the midwest.

It all began in the mid-1990s. The land that became the malls was fertile farm land, and there was little to no development west of I-35. In 1995, West Des Moines businessman Art Wittern proposed a mixed-use development called the “Village at Oakbrook”, located at 74th Avenue (now Jordan Creek Parkway) and E.P. True Parkway. Around the same time, General Growth Properties, a Chicago-based mall developer, was busy at work building a super-regional mall 100 miles east of Des Moines in Iowa City. That center, Coral Ridge Mall, quickly became eastern Iowa’s best shopping destination, and General Growth saw an opportunity for an even bigger undertaking in the state’s largest city, Des Moines.

In 1999, General Growth took the Wittern site, and continued work on the original plans to build retail there. Stemming from the success of its Coral Ridge project, General Growth sought to make a bigger and better Coral Ridge, or as Walt Disney would say, to ‘plus’ the Coral Ridge concept. The Jordan Creek proposal, unveiled in May 2000 and named after a pioneer settler to West Des Moines, sought to combine a large, traditional, super-regional enclosed mall with at least two other concepts.

The first concept, the Shopping District, consists of the mall and anchors the north end of the development. The second concept, the Lake District, sits in the middle of the complex and features a 3.5 -acre lake with walking trails, a boardwalk with waterfront dining, an ampitheater, and hotels. The third concept, the Village District, is a smattering of big-box stores arranged in a semicircle at the south end of the development. At least one retail analyst compared the Jordan Creek development with Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza, only with a traditional enclosed mall added.

Take a look at a satellite photo of the completed Jordan Town Center area here.

While I believe the first two concepts are great and well thought out, and the lake is unique, the third concept should have been more of what it claims to be – a real Village District, with pedestrian walkways and in-line shops, similar to a scaled-down version of perhaps Easton Town Center in Columbus or any of the other well-executed outdoor malls. Instead, it’s really just a smattering of buildings arranged around a sea of parking, much like a strip mall. There’s no charm here, and nothing is at all unique or interesting about this part of the development, and it bums me out a little, especially considering there were ruminations of the development being a similar or slightly-scaled down version of Country Club Plaza in nearby Kansas City.

The extant retail options in the Des Moines market in the late 90s, about the time Jordan Creek was posited, consisted of three super-regional malls: Merle Hay Mall in northwest-suburban Des Moines, Southridge Mall in southeast Des Moines, and Valley West Mall in West Des Moines. All of these malls served a niche in Des Moines’s retail landscape, but Merle Hay and especially Valley West served to lose the most from Jordan Creek’s new competition. Interestingly, that was only the case for a time, and Southridge became the loser, despite being the most distant.

In fact, the owners of both Merle Hay and Valley West Malls sued General Growth over the Jordan Creek project, arguing that it was illegal to use TIF financing in making improvements around the mall. The Iowa Supreme Court struck down the lawsuit in 2002, allowing General Growth to move forward with completing the mall.

Jordan Creek officially opened on August 4, 2004, and attracted over 17 million shoppers its first year. The enclosed mall portion of the development is two levels and anchored by Younkers and Dillards, with the addition of Scheels All Sports as a major junior anchor. The mall’s design is modern, and unlike similar dumbbell designed malls, the mall features a slight arc or curvature throughout its length, giving it the illusion of being larger than it is. The in-line stores here are decidedly destinational, with Iowa’s only Apple Store, and even more unusual – a wine bar inside Younkers.

Jordan Creek became so popular that it accounted for 37% of taxable sales at all of the Des Moines area malls, and became a boon for development in Dallas County, the county located immediately west of Polk County, where Des Moines is. Until Jordan Creek opened, development in Dallas County was limited and the county was agricultural, not suburban. Since Jordan Creek opened, the county has been inundated with not only the commercial retail development spawned by the mall and its environs, but also residential growth as well. In fact, Dallas County grew 62 percent between 2000 and 2010.

As far as the impact on the other Des Moines-area malls, it has been varied. Both Merle Hay and Valley West malls have wisely embarked on renovations and repositioning tactics to keep their centers fresh, and while they are no Jordan Creek, they seem to be holding their own. Valley West, the market leader before Jordan Creek’s arrival, sits just over 4 miles from Jordan Creek, but an extensive renovation and the retention of complementary anchors to Jordan Creek (Sears, JCPenney, and upscale Von Maur) have kept it fresh.

Merle Hay is in a tier slightly below Valley West, but retains a smart niche of anchors as well (Sears, Kohls, Younkers, Target), in addition to partial renovations and the addition of new stores to stay fresh.

Unfortunately, Southridge Mall, which is clear across the metropolitan area from Jordan Creek, has suffered the most since Jordan Creek debuted. However, Jordan Creek’s opening is probably only partially to blame for Southridge’s demise, as for many years it was the least accessible mall to the rest of Des Moines and its immediate vicinity is not growing as quickly. Interestingly, Southridge was owned by General Growth at the time of Jordan Creek’s opening, but General Growth smartly divested the property as it tumbled downhill.

We’ve visited Jordan Creek several times through the years, including the month it opened, and most recently in August 2011 when I shopped at the Express Men store, and had a weird experience. After browsing polo shirts and confirming the sale price with an employee (it was a really good deal), I browsed the rest of the store and ultimately came back to purchase one of the shirts I saw. It was the only one in my size. However, it wasn’t there. Puzzled, as there were no other customers in the store other than me that whole time, I went up to the register. Sure enough, there it was on the desk behind the registers. The employee who helped me had apparently took the shirt aside for himself. As there were no others in my size, I was annoyed, and became incredulous when the employee quickly covered up the shirt with a bunch of other stuff he was folding and got nervous. I ignored his deception and asked for the shirt and bought it. At least he wasn’t going to continue hiding it. But still, who does that?

Please feel free to leave your experiences and discuss Jordan Creek Town Center in the comments section.

Photos from August 2011:

Richmond Mall; Richmond, Kentucky

Richmond Mall opened in September 1988, a relative latecomer to the regional scene, as nearby Lexington’s three regional malls opened in the 1960s and 1970s. Richmond Mall enjoyed success for two decades, despite the eventual dominance of Lexington’s Fayette Mall, the largest and one of the best malls in the state of Kentucky. Local competition eventually did Richmond Mall in, with the opening of nearby Richmond Centre in 2008.

Located 25 miles south of Lexington in south central Kentucky, Richmond is a small city with 31,000 residents. Home to Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond has grown a lot recently. In the past two decades, Richmond has added over 10,000 residents, increasing its population by over 30 percent.

This massive growth spurt has been a boon to the city, and should have also been a boost for Richmond’s only enclosed mall, Richmond Mall. Except it hasn’t worked out that way. Located southeast of downtown Richmond along the Eastern Bypass, Richmond’s only mall can be summed up in one word: sad.

Richmond Mall opened in September 1988, a relative latecomer to the regional scene, as nearby Lexington’s three regional malls opened in the 1960s and 1970s. Set up like a simple dumbbell, Richmond Mall is pretty minimalist and functional in design.

Richmond Mall enjoyed success for two decades, despite the eventual dominance of nearby Lexington’s Fayette Mall, the largest and one of the best malls in the state of Kentucky. Local competition eventually did Richmond Mall in, with the opening of nearby Richmond Centre in 2008.

Richmond Centre is a much larger, open-air center consisting of over 800,000 square feet of restaurants and shopping. Anchored by Belk, JCPenney, and Meijer, Richmond Centre features other popular stores and restaurants such as Panera, Childrens Place, Culver’s, Chik-fil-a, Michaels, TJ Maxx, Petsmart, and Logan’s Roadhouse restaurant. A Home Depot opened in the center but has since closed. Most of Richmond Centre is set up like a typical Power Center, but the central buildings retain a semblance of an open-air mall corridor. A tiny semblance.

Sadly, and predictably, Richmond Centre caused a mass exodus at Richmond Mall. The two shopping centers are only two miles apart, both located along Eastern Bypass south of downtown. In addition to being more than twice as large and brand new, Richmond Centre is located directly along I-75, whereas Richmond Mall is a couple miles away.

Also, when Richmond Centre opened, it poached JCPenney, Goody’s Family Clothing, and Hastings entertainment directly from Richmond Mall. According to a Kentucky.com article published in November 2010, Richmond Mall was 98% leased when Richmond Centre opened in 2008. Just two years later, the mall was less than 50 percent occupied.

In November 2010, Richmond Mall defaulted on its loan and was auctioned. According to the same Kentucky.com article, the foreclosure came as a result of a lien placed on the property, which was owned by Richmond Mall Associates and does business as Bush Realty. The lien, which was sought by U.S. Bank, is valued at $16.4 million. The former owners of the mall wanted to sell the mall because they do not specialize in redevelopment.

Today, Richmond Mall has very few stores open. Most of the operating stores are on the mall’s west side. The food court remains completely empty. Aside from Sears, the eastern half of the mall is almost completely dead.

It’s shocking what a difference a couple years can make. I visited Richmond Mall for the first time in November 2011. I came in the eastern end of the mall, which is the more vacant half of the mall. When I left, I noticed a young man on a bike riding through the mall who exited the same door I did. I’m kind of sad I didn’t see the mall before it died in 2008. Feel free to leave your comments.

November 2011:

Oakland Mall; Troy, Michigan

Oakland Mall opened in 1968, flanking the northwest corner of 14 Mile Rd. and John R. Rd., adjacent to Interstate 75, which was completed just prior to the mall’s construction. The mall was built on the southern edge of the city of Troy, a large northern suburb of Detroit located in Oakland County, the mall’s ostensible namesake. Troy is located 15 miles north of downtown Detroit, and has a population of 80,000 as of 2010. Troy is home to numerous corporations and white collar jobs that have been purged out of the city over the past fifty years or so.

Our latest post takes us to Detroit, a city marked by a history of innovation, a currency of blight, and a future painted with question marks. As one of the country’s most auto-centric large cities, the Detroit area relied heavily upon a model of development favoring shopping malls and suburban sprawl from the very beginning. This isn’t surprising, considering the city invented the modern automobile production process; it seems very fitting the development patterns would favor cars and lower-density development. Even the city itself, as derelict as it is today, is unlike other eastern cities in that it is not at all dense away from its downtown core, owing to the automobile mantra of its development: numerous small single family homes for blue collar auto workers, and a good network of inter-urban freeways connecting them to their jobs via automobile. This all happened even before the suburban explosion changed the way Detroit was forever.

The Detroit metropolitan area became dramatically over-retailed as socioeconomic processes such as White Flight dovetailed with the region’s auto manufacturing success following World War II, establishing booming suburban areas, mostly in Macomb and Oakland counties to the north of the city, and in west suburban Wayne County, the county containing Detroit.

As time went on, Detroit went fallow as investments neglected the city while the suburbs blossomed and flourished. Whites moved up and out of the city to better suburbs, as impoverished blacks had to remain in the city while its infrastructure crumbled. These processes began to act on metro Detroit so early and with such fervor that few large-scale retail developments were ever even constructed in the city itself. There is certainly nothing resembling a traditional mall in Detroit, and the few retail developments that do exist are mostly along Telegraph Road in the far northwest part of the city, or along the southern half of 8 Mile Road, which marks the northern border of the city. Nearly all of the large-scale retail development has occurred in the suburbs.

It’s fascinating to me how segregated the Detroit metropolitan area is, with an economic racial disparity to boot. The two counties representing north suburban Detroit, Oakland and Macomb, are ten percent and three percent black, respectively, while the city of Detroit is 83 percent black. The per capita income in the city of Detroit is $14,000 while the per capita incomes in Oakland and Macomb Counties average $28,000. Hugely similar disparities exist in similar ways for crime, access to education, access to jobs, etc. I realize this is a retail blog, but a socioeconomic history is always visible in the built landscape over time, and it informs the way retail sites behave too.

In keeping with its auto-centric theme, and similar to how many suburbs nationwide were constructed, most of Detroit’s suburbs were built with automobile commuting in mind. However, as growth in the region slowed due to economic factors and competition in the auto industry, so too did the demand for retail in the region. In the past ten years or so, metro Detroit has lost at least four major regional or super-regional shopping malls, in addition to at least as many enclosed neighborhood centers. As a whole, metro Detroit is shrinking, having lost 3.5% of its population since 2000, one of only five of the fifty largest U.S. metropolitan areas to shrink during that time period (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Buffalo, and New Orleans were the others). However, most of these losses occurred in the city of Detroit; all other counties in the Detroit region have reported gains in population.

Whether you happen to mourn the loss of these shopping malls or celebrate their demise in the eyes of progress, I think most people can agree that these places provided a solid foundation for memories and community-building for at least a couple generations of Detroiters. After all, they were/are the de-facto downtowns that most of these suburbs lack. For this post, we’re going to stray from the failures in the market for once and instead focus on a success: Oakland Mall.

Oakland Mall originally opened as a smaller dumbbell shaped mall, anchored by Detroit-based stalwart Hudson’s on the western end, and Sears on the eastern end. A Detroit-based S.S. Kresge store was in there somewhere too. Sears actually pre-dates the mall, having opened in 1965 as a standalone store. Developers must have seen the centralized location and recent opening of I-75 as a no-brainer. In addition, Wrigley Supermarket flanked the north side of the mall in between the two anchors.

One year later, in 1969, a small upscale mall called Somerset Mall opened about 5 miles away, also located in Troy. Anchored by an existing Saks Fifth Avenue store which opened in 1967, the small mall was also anchored by Bonwit Teller. This mall and Oakland Mall have both thrived in Troy ever since, despite massive expansion efforts on the part of both centers.

During the 1970s, little changed at Oakland Mall as other centers were built in and around metro Detroit. Wrigley Supermarket closed and was converted to a JCPenney in the late 1970s, and the mall remained a simple dumbbell. Meanwhile, the massive Lakeside Mall opened in 1976 just 12 miles northeast of Oakland Mall in neighboring Sterling Heights.

In 1980, amid pressure from competition and ample growing demands, Oakland Mall embarked on a massive expansion. The extant JCPenney/former supermarket was demolished for a new northern wing. Unlike the original one-level mall, the expansion was two stories and featured a new JCPenney as well as a movie theater. This made for a rather unique setup, as the two-level expansion wing seems to miraculously sprout from the original one-level mall.

During the 1990s, competition from other centers could have put a strain on Oakland Mall, but didn’t. In 1996, Somerset Mall embarked on a massive expansion project, adding a new three level building across the street from the original mall, more than quadrupling the center’s size. It was renamed Somerset Collection, and became the most upscale mall in the state. This repositioning didn’t hurt Oakland Mall as much as it could have, considering the two malls are only five miles apart, because Oakland Mall is positioned to be more mid-range. Instead, the malls have continued to complement one another.

In 1998, major competition also came with the opening of Great Lakes Crossing, a mostly off-price/outlet mall that opened in Auburn Hills. Fortunately for Oakland Mall, Great Lakes Crossing was both far enough away and not as much of a hit as expected.

Oakland Mall’s more recent history is mostly one of anchor changes and minor updates, as the mall has continued to enjoy success amid fierce competition. In 1987, Kresge closed, and in the late 1990s a food court was added where a former Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza stood.

In 2000, the movie theater closed, and was later converted to Steve and Barry’s, which itself closed in 2009 only to be replaced recently by Michigan’s first Famous Labels, a similar off-price discounter.

In 2001, Hudson’s became Marshall Field’s, as Target Corporation rebranded all of its main line department stores after its most famous Chicago nameplate. That became moot, however, in 2006, when Macy’s acquired Marshall Field’s and rebranded them as Macy’s.

Also interesting to note is that in 2004 Lord and Taylor was interested in adding an anchor store at Oakland Mall, but lost interest pretty quickly in the process. This would have been an interesting addition to the mall, as L&T is significantly higher end than most of the stores here, and also curious because they already had a store at Lakeside Mall. And, at the time, there was also one at Fairlane Town Center, which closed in 2006.

I first visited Oakland Mall in 1992, on a family trip to Michigan. I remember seeing the old massive pylon, before it was toned down to muted modern standards later on, and I remember being fascinated that the third wing of the mall sprouted from one to two levels somewhat spontaneously from the original mall corridor. While the mall has received a few cosmetic updates, it’s been pretty much the same for over thirty years. It’s still successful, and provides a mid-market complement to the massively upscale Somerset Collection located just 5 miles away. It’s also held its own against other developments in Oakland County, and will continue to be a major player on the scene as long as it remains current.

I took the pictures featured here in June 2011.

Southridge Mall; Des Moines, Iowa

Southridge Mall was the second major mall built in metro Des Moines, after Valley West, and both malls opened within weeks of each other in 1975. The two malls also complemented each other geographically, with Valley West serving the west portion of Des Moines and Southridge driving the retail corridor on the south side. Valley West was constructed by a firm from Minneapolis, and Southridge was built by General Growth Properties.

Des Moines is Iowa’s capital and also its largest city. With a population of over 500,000 residents, metro Des Moines has four malls that can be classified as regional or better: Valley West and Jordan Creek Town Center, both located in West Des Moines, Merle HayMall, located in northwest-suburban Clive, and Southridge Mall, located on the southeast side of Des Moines.

Before Southridge opened, the project was named Army Post Plaza, after the adjacent Army Post Road as well as an actual army post; however, the name was changed to Southridge before the mall opened.

When it opened in October 1975, Southridge was anchored by just one store, Younkers, which still sits at center court today. Sears opened as the second anchor on the east side of the mall in 1977, and Montgomery Ward became the third anchor in 1978, located on the west side of the mall. In 1982, Omaha-based Richman Gordman became the mall’s fourth anchor, opening a store on the southwest side of the mall adjacent to Wards.

In 1984, General Growth sold Southridge to Equitable Life, an insurance company, and General Growth continued to manage the mall until 1998. At that time, the mall was acquired by an equitable partnership between Simon and Macerich, who continues to manage the mall today.

It seemed Southridge was primed to add a fifth anchor in 1987, when Arkansas-based Dillards wished to open a store in the Des Moines market and chose Southridge. However, a spat ensued when Younkers sued Southridge management over the Dillards addition, arguing that its lease called for only four anchor slots at the mall. A federal judge finally ruled against Younkers in 1990, but by this time Dillards had lost interest. Dillard’s tried again in vain to open at Valley West Mall in 2000, but that never materialized, However, this outcome wasn’t the end of it, as the judge’s decision to allow a fifth anchor opened the flood gates for other interested parties to build, which led to the addition of Target in 1992.

Dillard’s tried again in vain to open at Valley West Mall in 2000, which never materialized, but they did finally open in Jordan Creek Town Center in 2004.

Meanwhile, Richman Gordman went bankrupt in 1992 and closed their store at Southridge. It was filled in 1994 by JCPenney, which moved from downtown Des Moines.

The 1990s were less than kind to Southridge, as the decline of many regional malls and the nature of overbuilding retail space finally caught up to metro Des Moines. Southridge became the ‘odd man out’ as retail boxes and new construction favored clustering around the major hub on the west side. By the late 1990s, Valley West Mall, which had originally opened in tandem with Southridge on seemingly equal footing, was clearly the dominant winner in the regional market.

The retail hub for the south side, anchored by Southridge, which had visibly taken a toll to the west side’s retail dominance, was also hit by emerging retail corridors in fast-growing Pleasant Hill, Altoona, and Ankeny to the north. The south side wasn’t growing as fast, and furthermore, it didn’t have the transportation access the north and west sides enjoyed, sitting adjacent to or directly on Interstates 35, 80, and 235. A new southerly freeway bypass (US 65/IA 5) of Des Moines opened in 2002 close to Southridge, but it was a bit late to reclaim its status as a successful regional mall.

In 1999, Southridge lost again when Montgomery Ward announced it was leaving Des Moines as part of its first round of bankruptcy closings. The building remained vacant until it became clear it wasn’t going to be retenanted,and was demolished in 2006 as part of a larger renovation of sorts.

Caldor and I visited Southridge around this time, and although it was not the most successful mall in the region, it was a solid performer and seemingly not in danger at the time. One of our best memories from that trip is from Southridge, as while we exited the mall we heard a teenage girl on a payphone (yes, a payphone) very obviously and loudly discussing with her friend about a sexual encounter the friend had. In vivid details. About the most vivid you can imagine, in fact.

The 2000s were a sad, continuous downward spiral at Southridge Mall, culminating in a high vacancy rate of 40 out of 91 possible stores, or a 44 percent occupancy rate, by December 2009.

In 2004, yet another blow rocked the potential viability of Southridge, pushing it faster toward oblivion, as a brand new enclosed mall opened in West Des Moines, Jordan Creek Town Center. Jordan Creek, surrounded by a complementary brand new retail corridor of big box, strip malls, and destination restaurants, was one of the last super-regional enclosed malls to open in the United States. As Jordan Creek is located on the opposite side of the Des Moines area as Southridge, 0ne might expect the two malls on the west side of Des Moines to suffer and for Southridge to flourish; instead, the opposite happened.

Interestingly, because of synergy and proactive management on the part of both Valley West and Merle Hay Malls, these centers have been able to work together with Jordan Creek Town Center to remain viable and successful. Much more viable than Southridge, in fact, which has become a repository of vacancy and an odd collection of many local mom and pop or ethnically-focused shops, with few popular national chain stores and restaurants.

In its management’s defense, though, Southridge isn’t going down without a fight. Much needed renovations commenced in 2006, which involved the demolition of long-vacant former Wards, sprucing up the food court, as well as adding a new children’s play area. Mini-anchor Steve and Barry’s arrived on the scene in 2007 to breathe new life into the center; unfortunately, that store closed the very next year when the entire chain went bankrupt in 2008 due to a crazy overzealous expansion that ironically put the store there in the first place. Nothing lost, nothing gained, I guess.

By 2009, Southridge was identified in an article about the downfall of the enclosed American mall by U.S. News and World Report as one of 84 malls in danger of failure, due to its low sales per square foot and vacancy rate.

In 2011, another direct hit came as JCPenney announced they were bailing on the sinking Southridge ship in June. We last visited Southridge in August 2011 and took the pictures featured with this post. The last few stores leading to the former Wards (now demolished) are boarded up now, and this end of the mall seems to be the most vacant. The bright spots of the mall are near center court, and although the food court was remodeled, it didn’t appear to attract more businesses into it.

There are a few national chain stores (Fashion Bug, Vanity, Radio Shack, GNC, Regis) still breathing life into the mall, but by far the balance of the 40 or so stores still kicking around, other than the anchors, are mom-and-pop local stores. Many of these stores are geared toward a specific ethnic population (Filipino Store) or service a small interest group (Iowa Reptile Rescue). I have no doubt that these stores help serve a niche and I wish them well, but their sole presence unaccompanied by a mix of popular chains is just not enough to get people in the doors and accomplish the synergy necessary for an enclosed regional mall to succeed.

Or maybe, just maybe, this cat at the Animal Rescue League had the right sentiment about this mall. Mouth open, sound asleep, and snoring as loud as can be. He was really tired from shopping at Shag, Spike, and Canton. At least the reptiles next door at Iowa Reptile Rescue didn’t get him. I hope you got adopted, because you were adorable:

The only saving grace for Southridge are the remaining anchors: Sears, Younkers, and Target. Their popularity will probably keep the place afloat for a while, but a 40% vacancy rate in the mall combined with a lack of popular brands does not bode well for sustainability.

So what’s on the horizon for Southridge? As of Fall 2011, a career academy sponsored by Des Moines Area Community College has been proposed for a portion of the recently closed JCPenney space. We’re hopeful that the plan goes through, because Southridge’s days as a retail-only venue are numbered. Creative mixed-use schemes have a better potential to draw people into the mall, helping to retain the stores that are already there while reducing blight.

Pictures from August 2011:

Southtown Mall; Fort Wayne, Indiana

Fort Wayne’s first mall, Glenbrook Square, opened in 1966 on the north side of town. Three years later, Indianapolis-based Simon decided that Fort Wayne’s recent and projected growth indicated it could support a second enclosed regional mall. Located on the south side of town, Southtown Mall opened in July 1969. Southtown’s single-level complex debuted with a 100,000 square-foot Montgomery Ward and a 114,000 square-foot Fort Wayne-based Wolf and Dessauer department store, which was acquired that same year by Indianapolis-based L.S. Ayres. When Southtown opened, it had 567,000 square feet of retail space, including the anchors. In addition, G.C. Murphy operated a 60,000 square-foot junior anchor store, and there was a single-screen cinema, which was twinned in 1972 and expanded to a triplex in 1982.

After a long hiatus spending a good chunk of this Summer in Europe, I’ve returned with a treat. The mall featured here has long been one of my personal favorites, so please enjoy.

My very first visit to Fort Wayne, Indiana yielded this mall in June 2001. Gas was just north of a dollar a gallon, and I was a teen with few cares in the world other than driving around and exploring new areas. I had never been to Fort Wayne despite the unlikely kinship that existed between the city and my hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin. Located about five hours apart, both cities were General Motors factory towns, and growing up I remember many families who set off to Fort Wayne in search of better jobs when the plant opened there in the late 1980s. In the end, the ties between the two cities dissolved, as General Motors ceased production in my hometown, abandoning it, though the more modern Fort Wayne facility continues to operate.

Named for Revolutionary War general “Mad” Anthony Wayne, Fort Wayne was established as a frontier trading post for European settlers. The village was platted in 1823, and grew tremendously following the completion of the Wabash and Erie Canal in 1843, which provided a vital shipping passage between the Great Lakes and Ohio River valley, then leading into the Gulf of Mexico.

Today, Fort Wayne is the second largest city in Indiana after Indianapolis. With a population of over 250,000, Fort Wayne is located in the northeast part of the state, near the borders of Ohio and Michigan, and about 2 hours north of Indianapolis.

Southtown’s single-level complex debuted with a 100,000 square-foot Montgomery Ward and a 114,000 square-foot Fort Wayne-based Wolf and Dessauer department store, which was acquired that same year by Indianapolis-based L.S. Ayres. When Southtown opened, it had 567,000 square feet of retail space, including the anchors. In addition, G.C. Murphy operated a 60,000 square-foot junior anchor store, and there was a single-screen cinema, which was twinned in 1972 and expanded to a triplex in 1982.

How about a high school art mural from 1995:

Hopefully the Wayne High School Advanced Art Class of 1995 finds this page and is amused to find their mural may have been destroyed, but is saved in perpetuity on the internet. I would be. But maybe you’re just in the mood for a case full of plastic oranges at this defunct Orange Julius:

Also in 1982, Simon embarked on a major expansion of Southtown, adding a new southwest wing through recently vacated G.C. Murphy, leading to a new 90,000 square-foot Sears store. Added in addition was a food court called The Patio, and a Service Merchandise. After the expansion was complete, Southtown had 858,000 square-feet of total retail space, giving it the designation of Fort Wayne’s second super-regional mall after Glenbrook Square.

Unfortunately and ironically, the completion of the addition was the beginning of the end for Southtown. The same year the expansion debuted, 1982, was the same year International Harvester dealt a whopping blow to Fort Wayne, eliminating over 10,000 jobs. Most of these jobs were on the south side of the city, in Southtown’s immediate trade area.

In addition, Glenbrook Square expanded in 1976 and 1981. Adding to its retail dominance in Fort Wayne, it became the hub of a massive conglomeration of retail strip on the north side of town, which it still is today. In contrast, the retail offerings to complement Southtown were slim by comparison.

The fallout of Harvester’s Fort Wayne exodus was evident in the departure of Montgomery Ward in 1983. Fortunately, though, Wisconsin-based Kohl’s stepped in to fill most of the vacant store, with apparel chain Spiece taking the remaining balance.

Southtown continued to soldier on with a full set of anchors, a designation it would keep until the 1990s; however, the newer southwest wing to Sears was never fully leased, and the mall was always thought of as a lower-level ancillary to Glenbrook Square.

In 1992, Southtown lost junior anchors Spiece, Richman Brothers, and Old Mill Pottery. L.S. Ayres also announced plans to shut their store that year, but were convinced to ride out their lease, which didn’t expire until 1997. Kohl’s opened a short-lived outlet venture in the shuttered Spiece space, attached to its regular store, but his proved to be a failed venture, closing after only a few years. I’m not sure Kohl’s has ever attempted this anywhere else since.

Then, in 1997, two major anchors departed, doling Southtown two death blows. Keeping their promise to stay out their lease, L.S. Ayres departed in July 1997, along with JCPenney a month earlier in June. Service Merchandise and MCL Cafeteria also closed around that same time, and the mall began bleeding stores faster than it had prior to these major departures.

In 1998, Simon had enough and unloaded Southtown to infamous mall slumlord Heywood Whichard of North Carolina, whose modus operandi is to buy moribund malls and run them into the ground, forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for the redevelopment. And he did just that – within two years he was already over $200,000 behind on taxes.

By 1999, things were looking grim at Southtown, and Kohl’s finally departed in March for a brand new store at Apple Glen Crossing, a new outdoor power center on the west side of Fort Wayne. That same year, Southtown was put on the auction block, but no one offered to make a bid, and the whole process soon became confounded by the discovery of asbestos in the structure as well as underground storage tanks that didn’t meet modern regulation standards.

In 2000, some local developers attempted to buy the mall for redevelopment, and even offered to pay the delinquent taxes, but by then the process was tied up in litigation between the mall’s owner and the city of Fort Wayne. Eventually they lost interest, and it became clear there was no future for redevelopment until the city forced condemnation.

All this time, the mall emptied, and by 2001 only a handful of stores were open, many of them mom-and-pop locals. I remember an article I found online not long after I visited the mall in 2001, which profiled a retailer in the mall. Her name was Su Won, and she operated a beauty supply store in the mall. One of the photos with the article featured Su Won herself, sitting on a bench outside her store in the completely empty mall, staring wistfully into her store. The photo was priceless, and I wish I could find it again.

In January 2002, Sears finally pulled out of the mall, leaving it with zero anchors and few in-line stores. The mall limped along for another year like that, finally shuttering completely in February 2003. The city of Fort Wayne condemned the property that year, so redevelopment could finally move forward on the eyesore behemoth. Unfortunately, this meant that in August 2004 the whole thing would be torn down.

In 2006, the redevelopment debuted and the new Shoppes at Southtown opened, anchored by a 225,000 square foot Menards, and a 217,000 square-foot Wal-Mart SuperCenter. In addition, a small strip center opened as well, featuring T-Mobile, Great Clips for Hair, and Star Financial Bank.

I visited Southtown in the Summer of 2001, and was shocked at the condition and size of the mall. Only a handful of outlets and Sears were open for business, and few people were walking around inside the dated monster mall. Aside from the Sears wing, where a few stores operated, the rest of the mall was completely devoid of activity. Take a look at the pictures I took that day, and leave your own reactions and anecdotes as well. Also, what ever happened to Su Won?

Elsewhere on the web:

Pictures from June 2001: