Winrock Shopping Center; Albuquerque, New Mexico
In response to its tremendous growth, Albuquerque decided to jump on the mall-building trend and began planning the state’s first mall in 1960. Due to development patterns favoring the sprawling east side, combined with the pending completion of Interstate 40 across Albuquerque around the same time, a centrally-located site was selected along Interstate 40 at Louisiana Boulevard – about 6 miles east of downtown.
Once the site was selected, Victor Gruen – the Grandfather of malls – was hired to design Winrock Center, which opened in March 1961. It opened with 42 stores, anchored by Safeway, Kresge, Walgreens, Fedway discount mart, Montgomery Ward, and JCPenney. Wards and Penneys flanked the eastern side of the center, and the rest of the anchors were located along the western side with a semi-enclosed mallway in between. The semi-enclosure consisted of a roof with open grillwork to allow the free flow of air into and through the center. In addition, two completely open-air plazas existed on the east and west ends of the center.
Recently I’ve been following coverage of some pretty extensive renovations taking place at Lincoln Mall, a long-beleagured super-regional mall in south suburban Chicagoland. Initially I was excited at the prospect of even a modicum of success here, especially considering I’ve never seen the mall even close to its potential. I first visited Lincoln Mall about a decade ago, after it fell in the toilet but before it drowned. I recently re-visited for the first time after some of the renovations have materialized, and was extremely dismayed – both by the progress of the renovations and also by a personal, not-so-fun experience I had there.
Austin’s Highland Mall has become one of 2009’s most famous dying (though not yet dead) malls due to some high profile craziness and catfights. What’s going on down in the Lone Star State?
Forest Park Mall was a 400,000 square-foot enclosed mall located along Roosevelt Road just west of Harlem Avenue, and about a quarter of a mile south of I-290. Helmed by the same developer who created Ford City Mall on Chicago’s southwest side, Forest Park Mall – just like Ford City – was also a redevelopment project that converted an old factory into a shopping center – albeit on a smaller scale. 
Located 10 miles southwest of downtown Dallas, at the interchange between US 67 and Interstate 20, Southwest Center Mall is both an anachronism and an eyesore. But what an amazing eyesore it is. One needs only to take a look at the photos to understand what a unique specimen this is, in terms of design, decor, and blatant inadequacy. But let’s dig a little deeper and try to figure out what happened.
Tower Square–which was born as the Baystate West Mall–is a prime example of a common attempt 1970s at reviving an urban downtown. The mall linked the city’s two flagship department stores–Steiger’s and Forbes & Wallace–along with a 30 story Marriott hotel while adding two levels of shopping.
Carson Mall is the only enclosed mall serving Carson County, Nevada, home of Carson City, the state capital. Anchored by a soon-to-be-dark Gottschalks and Boot Barn, this tiny mall was almost completely deserted on the Sunday afternoon I visited. I mean, literally, creepily deserted–see these photos? Notice that there’s no one else in most of them? Yeah, I was in there all by myself. There were a *few* other people; an older woman with a Florence Henderson haircut windexing the slot machines in a tiny slot parlor in the middle of the mall, a few oversized men pumping quarters into said machines, and one lone elderly gentleman limping down the center of the mall.
