Category: Dead Malls

Dead malls only; this is where you find the worst of the worst, the shopping centers that are failing or have long ago shut.

Crossroads Mall; Omaha, Nebraska

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 2002:

October 2008:

Mountaineer Mall; Morgantown, West Virginia

I’m talking about Mountaineer Mall. Located in Morgantown, West Virginia, Mountaineer Mall is the kind of mall dead mall fans dream about, with all sorts of retail antiquities and dated accoutrements. We’re talking about wooden railings with tarnished, aging brass fixtures, brick facades, tile- and wood panel-laden planter fixtures, intact dead store facades from 20+ years ago, and more. Mountaineer Mall was once the dominant – and only – mall in the Morgantown region. Located 70 miles south of Pittsburgh, Morgantown is home to West Virginia University and has the healthiest economy in the state. It has a population of around 30,000 residents, which nearly doubles when the University is in session, and a metropolitan area of 115,000 to boot. Morgantown has a quirky, progressive college town feel, and with its low unemployment and unique culture feels mightily juxtaposed to the rest of the state, or anywhere for that matter. One example of this is the fact that the small city has its own rail-based mass transit, a people mover called the Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit system, which connects downtown Morgantown to the WVU satellite campus located a few miles away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

El Con Mall; Tucson, Arizona

El Con Mall was Tucson’s first mall, borne of necessity in 1960. Tucson didn’t have a mall yet, and its population grew 368 percent between 1950 and 1960 – from 45,000 residents to well over 200,000. Developer Joseph Kivel decided the best spot for the mall was in midtown Tucson, in the middle of the growth, next to the storied, posh El Conquistador Hotel, a Spanish Revival structure which opened in 1928 (and should never have been torn down). When the mall opened it was initially outdoor, and anchored by a three-level, 60,000 square-foot Levy’s Department Store, which moved from downtown Tucson, as well as a 2-level, 180,000 square-foot Montgomery Ward; Woolworth and Skaggs Drug were mini-anchors.

With 550,000 people in the city and over a million in its metropolitan area, Tucson is an ascending Sun Belt city with lots of recent growth.  Despite its size, however, Tucson is considered small when compared to its huge neighbor Phoenix, located 120 miles to the northwest; and, due to its own particular brand of Sun Belt sprawl, Tucson doesn’t feel as big as similarly-sized cities back east.  Also, in many ways, Tucson behaves as the small city it was in 1950 when it had 45,000 residents – the downtown is lacking in both sheer size and in density, there are relatively few dense, walkable neighborhoods lined with shops, restaurants, and bars designed for browsing on foot, and there are no urban freeways connecting different parts of the city – Interstates 10 and 19 are of little use to many Tucsonans traveling within the city.  Residents on the sprawling east or north sides of Tucson must suck it up and commute on busy surface streets with many lights, sharing their commutes with traffic visiting the commercial strips along the same streets.

All of these ingredients make for an interesting Sun Belt city, where the automobile is king and retail strips dominate the landscape for miles.  Tucson has two dominant strip areas.  The first is along Oracle Road on the north side and is anchored by the Tucson Mall, with the ancillary Foothills Mall located a short distance away.  The other strip is mostly located along Speedway and Broadway Boulevards to the east of downtown and is anchored by the Park Place mall.  There is also another mall along the Broadway corridor, located three miles west of Park Place and three miles east of downtown Tucson, El Con Mall.

El Con Mall was Tucson’s first mall, borne of necessity in 1960.  Tucson didn’t have a mall yet, and its population grew 368 percent between 1950 and 1960 – from 45,000 residents to well over 200,000.  Developer Joseph Kivel decided the best spot for the mall was in midtown Tucson, in the middle of the growth, next to the storied, posh El Conquistador Hotel, a Spanish Revival structure which opened in 1928 (and should never have been torn down).  When the mall opened it was initially outdoor, and anchored by a three-level, 60,000 square-foot Levy’s Department Store, which moved from downtown Tucson, as well as a 2-level, 180,000 square-foot Montgomery Ward; Woolworth and Skaggs Drug were mini-anchors.

The original plan for El Con was to incorporate the hotel into the retail site, which would have been neat, but due – at least in part – to greed and the necessity for more retail amid a growing population, the hotel closed in 1964 and met the fate of the wrecking ball in 1967.  The hotel was replaced with a much larger, two-level Levy’s store, which opened in 1969, and the smaller Levy’s on the other side of the development was taken by Steinfeld’s, another downtown Tucson department store.

The 1970s brought continued success, expansion, and competition for El Con.  In 1971, a fully-enclosed mall structure and a 2-level, 115,900 square-foot JCPenney opened attached to the newer Levy’s, which added another level at the same time, giving it 290,000 square feet.  The original, 1960-era outdoor mall with Wards and Steinfeld’s still existed separate of the newer enclosed mall, and the two operated side by side until 1978, when they were sewn together and a 2-level, 120,000 square-food Phoenix-based Goldwater’s was added.  The older outdoor mall was also enclosed at that time, and for the first time the two separate malls were a seamless 1-million-square-foot L-shaped entity.

In 1975, a new mall, Park Place, which was built by the same Kivel developer, opened 3 miles to the east of El Con along Broadway Boulevard.  Park Place was anchored by L.A.-based The Broadway, Phoenix-based Diamond’s, and Sears. Park Place and El Con co-existed as Tucson’s two malls for two decades because of complementary anchors and Tucson’s continued growth.

By 1980, Tucson had 330,000 people and only these two malls, which anchored both ends of the Broadway retail corridor.  In the early 1980s, Steinfeld’s became the first El Con anchor to fold.  Its space was given to various uses, from a warehouse for the needy to a short-lived indoor bazaar called Pavilion at El Con Mall.

In 1982, a much larger two level mall, Tucson Mall, opened across town on Tucson’s north side.  While Tucson Mall eclipsed both El Con and Park Place in size, the trade area for Tucson Mall was far enough away that all three malls co-existed well into the 1990s.

In 1985, Levy’s, which was owned by Federated Department Stores, folded into Dallas-based Sanger Harris, and in 1987 it folded once again into Houston-based Foley’s.

In 1989, Goldwater’s folded into Dillard’s. 

In 1990, Tucson had over 400,000 residents, and the continued growth kept the retail scene active at all of the malls.  In 1993, Foley’s became L.A.-based Robinsons-May, but throughout the rest of the 1990s the mall entered a downward spiral.  The entire Steinfeld’s wing of the mall, along with the El Con 6 movie theater, was torn down in 1998, making way for a new Home Depot store, which debuted in 2001 sans mall access.  A 20-screen Century movie theater was added to replace the El Con 6 in 1999, and a new food court debuted near the theater’s entrance in 2001-2002.  The food court was an instant failure, never once gaining a tenant, and is still totally vacant today.  Montgomery Ward folded nationally in early 2001, and its store was demolished to make way for a new Target, which opened in 2005, also sans mall access.

Meanwhile, in 2000, Dillard’s gave up at El Con Mall and shut their store, which remained vacant until March 2010 when Burlington Coat Factory snatched it up.  In addition, Foley’s became Macy’s in 2006, the last nameplate the western anchor would see before closing permanently in 2008.  Also in 2008, a Ross store opened in the Macy’s wing, reclaiming some dead store space.

The closing of Macy’s brought an interesting twist to El Con’s history, because it made in-roads for a Wal-Mart Supercenter to open.  Wal-Mart had been actively interested in coming to El Con Mall since 1999, but due to intense community opposition the city of Tucson passed a so-called ‘Big Box Ordinance’ to prevent the store from coming to the mall.  However, Wal-Mart finally found a way around the ordinance by establishing its store within the footprint of the former Levy’s/Macy’s store after demolishing it, and it should be open in mid-2012.

Also in recent years, numerous popular chains have opened on the front outparcels of El Con Mall, in spite of the interior corridor’s apparent failure, and they include Office Depot, Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill, In-N-Out Burger, Claim Jumper, Starbucks, Radio Shack and Chik-Fil-A.  These stores, combined with the success of Ross, Burlington Coat Factory, JCPenney, Home Depot, Target, and soon Wal-Mart Supercenter indicate the site still remains incredibly viable for retail.  It is, after all, located at the geographic center of the city, close to downtown, wealthy neighborhoods, and the huge U of A campus with its 37,000 students.

Unlike the decline of many malls, whose neighborhoods themselves are in decline, this mall is in a decent neighborhood and instead succumbed to a lack of investment, a poorly thought about strategy during decline, and ultimately competition.  While the dominant Tucson Mall and Park Place continually reinvent themselves, perhaps the best lesson for El Con could have been learned from the Foothills Mall, located on the northwest side of town.

Opened in 1989 as a small upscale mall, Foothills Mall soon found little support for this niche and failed, but continued investment in the property transformed it into a relatively successful ancillary/outlet mall.  Anchored by discounters and big box stores, with a nearly-full food court and a popular movie theater, the interior of the mall is always busy and the mall is far from troubled.

Maybe if El Con’s management allowed Wal-Mart into the mall during the first period of decline, when they were initially interested, and provided interior access to the mall from Home Depot and Target, there would be a reason for people to come inside.  As it stands, the only reason to go in is to access JCPenney, which is at the back of the mall.  However, the main entrance of the mall is directly in front ofs JCPenney, which discourages foot traffic to go anywhere else in the mall.  Why did they invest in building a food court around the same time they let two anchors, one of them Target, build stores with no mall access?  Due to El Con’s thriving anchors, outparcels, and neighboring strip malls, it seems like it could have retained a viable interior corridor just like Foothills Mall has if there was a reason to go inside.

As of June 2010, the interior corridor of El Con Mall contains only two stores other than the anchors:  a poster shop and a barber.  Plans are to disenclose the mall and revert it back to open-air, but with the lagging economy no work has been done to this end.  It will be interesting to see if Wal-Mart opens with mall access, if the mall is even still open then. Ross and Burlington maintain mall access for no particular reason.

We visited El Con Mall in March 2009 and June 2010 and took the pictures featured here.  Between 2009 and 2010 the main entrance was modified and the decorative accoutrements were removed.  Feel free to leave your own concerns and anecdotes in the comments section!

March 2009:

June 2010:

Fiesta Mall (Indio Fashion Center); Indio, California

Fiesta Mall is Indio’s enclosed shopping mall, and one of three enclosed malls in the Coachella Valley. It was built in 1974 as Indio Fashion Mall, and aside from minor cosmetic updates has the same layout as it did then. Sears and San Bernardino-based Harris were the original anchors, and a small single-level mallway connected them with only 225,000 square feet of total space. Indio was a much smaller city then, with a population under 20,000, and had a caucasian-majority demographic.

Indio, California is a city of over 80,000 people located on the eastern edge of the Coachella Valley, a sub-region of southern California’s massive Inland Empire.  The Coachella Valley is home to nearly 600,000 residents, and also includes the famous city of Palm Springs, which is located 25 miles away from Indio on the other side of the valley.  Indio is also 125 miles east of Los Angeles.

Indio’s population is over 75 percent Hispanic, and this demographic has grown rapidly in recent years.  Many of Indio’s residents work in either agriculture or support services for the Palm Springs resort areas.  Indio is also the largest city in the Coachella Valley, having passed Palm Springs in the early 1990s, and is projected to have 130,000 residents sometime this decade.  However, the recent economic bust has hurt Indio a lot, pushing the unemployment rate from 5 percent in 2006 to over 20 percent by 2009.  As such, many businesses – including Indio’s mall – have suffered, despite numerous renovation and expansion efforts.

Fiesta Mall is Indio’s enclosed shopping mall, and one of three enclosed malls in the Coachella Valley.  It was built in 1974 as Indio Fashion Mall, and aside from minor cosmetic updates has the same layout as it did then.  Sears and San Bernardino-based Harris were the original anchors, and a small single-level mallway connected them with only 225,000 square feet of total space.  Indio was a much smaller city then, with a population under 20,000, and had a caucasian-majority demographic.

Throughout the 1980s, the demographic shift to Hispanics changed the face of Indio Fashion Mall’s offerings, and more stores catering to Hispanics popped up in the small mall.  In 1988, an anchor change took place as Harris was sold to Gottschalks and became Harris-Gottschalks.  By the time the 1990 census rolled around, Indio and the eastern flank of the Coachella Valley were majority-Hispanic.  The city was also rapidly growing, adding tens of thousands of residents every few years, so the mall’s developer began to initiate a proposal to more than double the size of the mall, adding a food court and another anchor in the process.  Unfortunately, though, the project was stalled during the early 1990s recession and in part to local political pressures (read: NIMBY-ism).  Meanwhile, the most centrally located mall in the Coachella Valley, Westfield Palm Desert, gained foothold as the Valley’s best mall – a designation that still holds true today.

The 2000s were extremely unkind to Indio Fashion Mall.  In 2003, plans emerged once again to expand and renovate the tiny center, but were slowed due to the departure of Sears in 2004 for a much larger store at Westfield Palm Desert.  Then, during the late 2000s recession, Harris-Gottschalks closed in 2009, leaving the mall anchor-less for the first time in 35 years.  More stores began leaving in droves, leaving quite a few vacancies in the mall, as well as more mom-and-pop style stores that mostly cater to a Hispanic clientele.

With the latest stint of decline, management decided to rename the mall from Indio Fashion Mall to Fiesta Mall and give it some cosmetic updates such as a new coat of southwestern-styled paint inside and out.  The renaming was probably a wise decision, because calling this place a ‘fashion center’ is a bit misleading.  A leasing flyer indicates the mall is located at the busiest intersection in the eastern valley, with over 53,000 cars passing daily, and that one of the former anchor tenants – Gottschalks – is going to become a cinema.  The former Sears is up for sub-dividing, and it’s possible the mall’s corridor would continue through the former store if a large enough suitor cannot be found to lease the entire space.

As of June 2010, the only national chain stores in the mall are Anchor Blue, GNC, and Foot Locker.  But their days may also be numbered, as the mall continues sans anchors – like a ship without a sail.  However, an aggressive marketing campaign, combined with the mall’s location and visibility, should help turn things around.  Westfield Palm Desert is 11 miles away along Highway 111, and the 100,000-plus residents in the east valley should be able to support a better mall than this.

We visited Indio’s Fiesta Mall in June 2010 and took the pictures featured here.  Feel free to leave your comments, questions, and anecdotes here.

Peach Tree Mall (Feather River Center); Linda/Marysville, California

The Feather River Center is located just southeast of downtown Marysville, in the unincorporated community of Linda. Originally constructed in 1972 to serve the rural Yuba-Sutter metropolitan area an hour north of Sacramento, the 400,000 square foot center was dubbed simply “The Mall” at the time and is to this day the only major retail center in Yuba County. For 14 years, the center was the largest retail draw in the area, serving the mostly agricultural/military population in this part of the Central Valley. Due to the absence of information about the mall on the internet, I have little sense of what the mall’s anchors were. The southernmost anchor strongly remembles many of the Kmart stores built in the mid-70s, especially the mall-based ones, and I wouldn’t be shocked if either of the other two anchors was a Sears or a Montgomery Ward. Given how long it’s been since this mall was a viable retail center–and given my lack of awareness of the area’s smaller regional retailers–there’s not really much guesswork (or labelscar investigation) to do.

In 1986, the Yuba-Sutter area endured a devastating flood that left many areas around Marysville and Yuba City under water, and it was especially devastating in the Linda and Olivehurst area. The mall was flooded to the ceiling and was effectively destroyed in the floods. As a result, planning began almost immediately to replace the mall on higher ground, with the larger Yuba Sutter Mall in Yuba City. Yuba City–across the river from Marysville and Linda–was where much of the area’s new population growth and development was beginning to occur. Yuba County, which includes the Linda and Olivehurst area, is one of California’s poorest and the impact of the floods worsened this trend considerably. (This UC Davis paper on migration trends in California’s northern Central Valley details many of the larger trends impacting the area in the 80s and 90s).

Despite the devastation of the flood and the flight of retail dollars to the new Yuba Sutter Mall in Sutter County, the mall soldiered on post-flood as the “Peach Tree Mall,” but it appears this wasn’t successful in the long-term, if the dated and worn appearance of the outside of the mall is any indication. The mall more or less failed completely as a retail center at some point and was renamed the “Feather River Center” and used as a home for county and medical offices. It appears that the last of these functions exited the mall in 2006 or 2007, however, leaving it almost completely abandoned today. The only tenant in the center is a FoodMaxx store occupying the anchor at the mall’s southern end.

As of 2007, there was news that the mall may be slated for redevelopment. Several proposals were being circulated–and there were stories in the news–that the site was due to be sold for redevelopment as a cluster of big box stores, likely featuring usual suspects like Home Depot and Target.

Truth be told, it’s not often nowadays that you find a mall that’s as abandoned and as forgotten as the Peach Tree Mall. Dead mall “tourism” means that most of these places were long ago heavily documented on Flickr, but this one strangely hasn’t and there’s almost nothing about it on the internet. It’s a creepy, sad place and I didn’t honestly want to stay anywhere near it for long, hence my sort of crappy photos. Maybe people in the northern Central Valley don’t care, but if you want to buy it, it’s for sale: $10 million even.

More Links:

UPDATE 8/12/2012: We received an email from a man who has been a resident of the area for a long time and worked as a contractor on the mall who was able to fill in some of the mystery. The Peach Tree Mall was constructed in 1972, but not in its entirety; the entire southern half (by Kmart) was an expansion in 1984, not long before the flood. The original northern anchor stores were a Pay-N-Save drugstore in the northwest corner of the building and a Safeway in the northeast corner. Just south of the corridor south of the Safeway on the front side of the mall was a Chuck E. Cheese Pizzatime Theatre. The large tenant space south of the Pay-N-Save Drugs on the west (back) side was a regional sporting goods store which was one of the few tenancies to include a basement.  The two-story largest tenant space on the west at center was a J.C. Penney store open from 1972 to February 1986 (flood).

On the west side of the building, south of the J.C. Penney store, there is a public exit corridor that exactly aligns east-west with a change in the front line of the east side (front) of The Mall, which was the southern end of The Mall, as originally constructed in 1972.

The “K-mart” looking facade fronts a public corridor, part of an expansion completed circa 1984.  The actual K-mart occupied the space presently occupied by the Food Maxx Store, with the glass front entry of the K-mart facing north along the main interior corridor of The Mall.  The large space at the rear west side of The Mall, was a four-screen movie theater, one of the few tenants to return for a while after the 1986 flood.

Contrary to other posters: Sears was never a tenant.  Some time in the late 1950’s Sears was in Marysville, but relocated to Yuba City in its present location approximately 1962.  There has never been a Macy’s store in The Mall.  Montgomery Ward was located in Marysville, near Hwy 20 at I Street until it closed in the late 1990’s. Also, we neglected to mention one other active tenant at the mall today: a Les Schwab Tires in the former J.C. Penney Auto Center at the front of the mall.

Brickyard Mall; Chicago, Illinois

Brickyard Mall, which opened in March 1977 on Chicago’s northwest side, was one of two regional, suburban-style shopping malls constructed in the city – the other was Ford City Mall on Chicago’s south side, which opened in 1965. Three other regional malls are, however, literally within a stone’s throw of the city limits – Lincolnwood Town Center, Harlem-Irving Plaza, and Evergreen Plaza all are located either directly across the street from the city or just blocks from it. Brickyard Mall enjoyed a modicum of success through the 1980s, but in the 1990s its viability met opposition as neighborhood demographics changed and competition from other malls outmoded it.

More than 8 years ago I walked through Chicago’s troubled Brickyard Mall with my first digital camera, taking tons of pictures in anticipation they’d someday be the only surviving documentation of the mall – and then I promptly lost them.  Very recently, though, when consolidating some old photo CDs onto a larger hard drive, I rediscovered these great “vintage” shots of retail history that is now gone forever.  I hope you enjoy seeing them and reading Brickyard’s story as much as I enjoyed finding the pictures and reliving the memories.

Brickyard Mall, which opened in March 1977 on Chicago’s northwest side, was one of two regional, suburban-style shopping malls constructed in the city – the other was Ford City Mall on Chicago’s south side, which opened in 1965. Three other regional malls are, however, literally within a stone’s throw of the city limits – Lincolnwood Town Center, Harlem-Irving Plaza, and Evergreen Plaza all are located either directly across the street from the city or just blocks from it.  Brickyard Mall enjoyed a modicum of success through the 1980s, but in the 1990s its viability met opposition as neighborhood demographics changed and competition from other malls outmoded it.

The late 1970s was the middle of a great enclosed mall building boom across the United States.  The overbuilding of these hulking behemoths was often done without extensive foresight and with little abandon.  Brickyard Mall was built with two major goals in mind, neither of which would ultimately guarantee its permanency.

The first and main goal of Brickyard Mall was to give local residents a regional shopping center.  Belmont-Cragin, the neighborhood which Brickyard Mall anchors, was mostly built out by World War II with a modest housing stock of bungalows, cape cods and two-flats, which were intended to house Polish immigrant factory workers.  Over time, the factories which originally brought these immigrants to the far northwest side of Chicago closed, the original population left, and incomes have dropped.  The Polish influence on the neighborhood is still visible today, but has declined significantly in recent decades, as an influx of Hispanic immigrants has come to the area.  As of 2000, the neighborhood is 65% Hispanic, and this number is almost certainly higher today.

The second goal of Brickyard Mall was both political and fad-oriented.  A plaque used to hang on the wall in Brickyard Mall, indicating that Brickyard was “Chicago’s first in-city regional mall.”  It was signed by then-mayor Richard J. Daley, who put his name on practically every civic project the city invested in.  Malls were popular in the 1970s, so putting one in the city certainly helped promote him politically.  This plaque confuses me a little though, because Ford City Mall is also in the city of Chicago and opened in 1965 – 12 years before Brickyard.  Wouldn’t Ford City have been first?  Either way, Chicago wanted to get on the mall-building bandwagon, and selected a former brickyard at the corner of Diversey and Narragansett for this infill development.  The brickyard was also, for a short time in the early 1970s, the city of Chicago’s first ski hill – anyone who has been to Chicago and seen how flat it is knows how much of a mistake that was.  The site is located in a less-dense suburban area of Chicago, about 10 miles northwest of downtown, and was intended to supplant north and northwest side Chicago residents’ trips to suburban malls such as Woodfield, Randhurst, Golf Mill, and the nearest competitor, Harlem-Irving Plaza.

Brickyard Mall opened in two phases, starting in 1977.  The first phase was anchored by Kmart and Chicago-based grocer Jewel-Osco, and was connected by an enclosed plaza with stores on one side and a wall of windows facing the parking lot on the other.  A two-level Montgomery Ward was also placed behind the enclosed section of the mall, to the south of it, a full level above the rest of the structure.  As such, an escalator ran from the middle of the enclosed portion of the plaza-mall up to Wards’ first level entrance.  The grade separation at the site was a necessity because the site was formerly an artificial ski hill, so it was easy to just build the mall into the hill rather than to dismantle the hill and start over from a flat surface – plus, it gave the mall a very unique design.

Due to the confusing floorplan, I threw together a sketch of the mall by labelling satellite imagery.  You can see in red where the escalator was, connecting the lower Convenience Level of the mall with second and third levels of the main mall through Wards.  The sections labeled in yellow are a full level beneath the sections in blue.  Essentially think of this layout as a bigger mall with two anchors spooning a little plaza mall, also with two anchors and located under it.

A major expansion at Brickyard took place over the next two years, as a huge two-level mall structure was added from Wards southward, ending at a 209,000 square-foot two-level JCPenney, which opened July 1979.  The result was a weirdly-sewn-together frankenmall with a very interesting floorplan.  The original phase of the mall, featuring Kmart and Jewel-Osco and facing Diversey Parkway, was rebranded the Convenience Level, and was connected to the rest of the mall by Wards.  Shoppers using the Convenience Level could access Wards by ascending an escalator, located in the middle of the Convenience Level, which went up to a first level entrance of Wards.  By going through Wards, they could then access the rest of the mall.  This was a rather interesting and fun layout, giving Brickyard three separate levels, one (the Convenience Level) being completely disparate to the other two.  Also, while many malls are split by an anchor, Brickyard was split by both an anchor and an entire level.  Due to the confusing nature of this setup, there was ample signage throughout all parts of the mall advertising how to get between the main mall and the Convenience Level stores.

The brand-new Brickyard roared into the 1980s with success, as shoppers came from not only the surrounding neighborhoods, but from as far away as Edgewater and Lincoln Park via bus.  Brickyard was the closest mall to much of the north half of the city, and also to wealthier suburbs such as Oak Park, River Forest, and Elmwood Park.  However, this influence wasn’t maintained due to changing demographics in Brickyard’s immediate area during the 1990s.

In the 1990s, the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood, a pre-war area of modest, mostly single-family dwellings, lost its economic  foothold as the manufacturing jobs that established the neighborhood floated away.  The workers, mostly Poles who helped establish the neighborhood in the beginning, moved with the jobs, to other parts of the city or the suburbs.  The immigrant group replacing these original settlers were predominantly Hispanics of lower income.  As these demographic changes took place, store turnover at Brickyard replaced national, mid-level stores with discounters and urban-wear stores.  And, with the demographic shift also came a perception of crime.  Whether real or not, as evidenced by these reviews on Deadmalls.com, patrons no longer felt safe here and began driving out to the suburban malls and skipping Brickyard.  Also, at the end of the decade, JCPenney also downgraded their store to an outlet, an ominous predictor of what was to come in the 2000s.

As the 2000s reared, Brickyard was no longer a viable regional mall.  With a reduced selection of stores, a perception of crime, and changed demographics, Brickyard was demoted to a neighborhood center living in the husk of a regional mall.  Bus trips were no longer bringing in throngs of city residents from across town, and Brickyard began bleeding stores.  Over the course of a year, Brickyard lost all of its anchors except for Jewel-Osco.  Kmart was the first to close in Summer 2000, followed by Wards in March 2001, and JCPenney Outlet was the last to leave in mid-2001.  Wards’ closure wasn’t actually Brickyard’s fault, but a case of bad luck, as that entire chain folded; nonetheless, their departure was critical to accelerated demise at Brickyard, because their store bisected the two parts of the mall and connected them.  After Wards closed, it became necessary to walk outside and along the side of the store in order to access the rest of the mall from the Convenience Level.

Like a ship without sails, Brickyard didn’t go very far for very long without anchors – a year and a half passed between the last of the anchors closing at Brickyard in 2001 and the announcement of redevelopment in late 2002.  Not surprisingly, nothing was saved in the redevelopment, which commenced in May 2003 with the mall’s closing and immediate demolition.  Jewel-Osco hung on for a few more months, operating out of its original building, while a new store was constructed a block south, opening in 2004.

Securing fast and easy credit for the redevelopment, including a nice chunk of change from the city of Chicago, owner Goldman Sachs worked quickly to transform the Brickyard site.  Although the mall was a failure as a regional enclosed mall, it was seen as a potential gold mine as a neighborhood power center.  Because the city of Chicago and its near-suburbs are almost completely built out, space for big box power centers and new strip malls is at a scarce premium, and usually results from the redevelopment of former uses like industrial sites.  Knowing they had a captive audience, Goldman Sachs jumped on this opportunity to be able to develop a brand new, large-scale suburban-style power center right in the city.

In late 2004, most of the power center opened.  Anchored by big box stores Target, Marshalls and Lowe’s, The Brickyard, as it has been rebranded, is home to over 40 small stores as well.  In fact, many of the stores that were in the Brickyard Mall at the end have reopened here, including multiple shoe stores, the Super China Buffet, Radio Shack, and Jewel-Osco.  In addition, The Brickyard was home to the first midwestern location of Pollo Campero, a cult-popular Guatemalan chicken chain.

Here are a couple outside photos I snapped while driving by in May 2000.  The first shot is the pylon along Diversey, and the second shot is the Convenience Stores section at the north end of the mall.  Kmart would close a couple months after this was taken:

Some people have criticized the new Brickyard development for lacking verve as well as its rather generic layout.  I found this comment in Labelscar’s archives from user Allan:

“I dunno about you, but coming from briefly shopping at the lifestyle center that replaced Brickyard Mall(of Chicago) earlier today, there’s no doubt in my mind that the former Brickyard Mall was a much denser development, and was many times better than the lifestyle center that was built in its place. Not to mention, it’s unappealing as heck having to drive from store to store, rather than having the much more pleasurable experience of parking your car in one place, and shopping in an environment that you know won’t be too cold or too warm.”

In addition, there’s even a Facebook group decrying the mall’s renovation as not being up to snuff.  Maybe if they would have shopped there when it was viable…

I visited Brickyard Mall several times between 1999 and 2001, and have only been back once since renovation, when I visited Pollo Campero a couple years ago.  Other than that, there’s not much reason to go here unless you live in the area.  Overall, though, I think this repositioning was successful.  Sure, Brickyard is no longer that interesting to me, or anyone, and that’s a little sad; but I think if you look at the bigger picture, Brickyard is fulfilling its role as a neighborhood center.

If I renovated the mall, I wouldn’t have totally removed the two-level enclosed mall; instead, I would have renovated it with modern, bright flooring to replace the dark brick, adding comfy seating and bright colors on the walls.  The natural light from the skylights would flood the center, and it would feel vervey again.  I think people would come to the renovated mall, especially considering the density of the city, and although it would be a neighborhood center rather than a regional mall, it would still thrive.  I would have used Target and Lowe’s to replace JCPenney and Wards, and put Marshalls and other big box stores along the main mallway somewhere.  I probably would have removed the Convenience Center portion of the mall, though, since that portion of the mall was the most outdated of all.

What would you have done with Brickyard Mall?  How do you feel about the renovation?  Leave your own memories and thoughts on our comment page.

Here are the photos I recently found, which I took on November 17, 2001:

Also, here are some photos I dug up on the ol’ Interwebs.  They were taken by an impressive photographer named Chuck Janda, and featured on his site.  Be sure to check it out if you’re interested in sets of other abandoned and older buildings in the Chicago area.  These were taken in Summer 2003, during Brickyard Mall’s demolition:

UPDATE 4/7/10: I went down to Chicago the other day and swung by the “new” Brickyard development, and here it is!

Hickory Ridge Mall; Memphis, Tennessee

Located approximately 20 miles southeast of downtown Memphis, Hickory Ridge Mall opened in 1981 at the corner of Winchester and Hickory Hill Roads. At the time, this was the farthest mall from Memphis’s core, and indicative of a shift in population away from the city and into the suburbs. 1981 was also the same year the larger Mall of Memphis opened, closer to the center of population and near the airport. Over time, both malls failed: Mall of Memphis succumbed due to a perception of crime after some high-profile incidents, and Hickory Ridge Mall faltered due to the wrath of overbuilding and demographic changes before being snuffed out by mother nature.

Located approximately 20 miles southeast of downtown Memphis, Hickory Ridge Mall opened in 1981 at the corner of Winchester and Hickory Hill Roads.  At the time, this was the farthest mall from Memphis’s core, and indicative of a shift in population away from the city and into the suburbs. 1981 was also the same year the larger Mall of Memphis opened, closer to the center of population and near the airport.  Over time, both malls failed: Mall of Memphis succumbed due to a perception of crime after some high-profile incidents, and Hickory Ridge Mall faltered due to the wrath of overbuilding and demographic changes before being snuffed out by mother nature.

When Hickory Ridge and Mall of Memphis debuted, there were already several shopping centers in town. Memphis’s extant mallscape included the small, much older Southland Mall, built near Elvis Presley’s house in 1966, and the Raleigh Springs Mall, located on the north side, built in 1971.

Shortly after Hickory Ridge opened, it became the anchor to a long corridor of retail along Winchester Road, home to several million square feet of retail space in the form of big box stores and strip malls.  This was the hot retail area in Memphis for a hot minute, before changing demographics and other forces banished this corridor’s progress and revenues sank during the 1990s and beyond.

In 1988, Hickory Ridge received a minor blow in the form of a new upscale mall located in southeast Memphis on Poplar Avenue, Oak Court Mall.  While smaller than Hickory Ridge, Oak Court has always been fully tenanted and has been an upscale fixture in Memphis retailing since it opened, drawing wealthy shoppers from all parts of the area.  Oak Court Mall is also the closest mall to wealthy Germantown.  As an offensive move against Oak Court, Hickory Ridge completed an expansion in 1986.

Hickory Ridge’s design after the expansion was modified T-shape, with a slight zig-zag at the middle of the mall, where a two-story carousel sits under a tall glass canopy.  Anchors included Memphis-based Goldsmith’s, Sears, and Dillards.

A demographic change came to the Hickory Hill area in the 1990s, causing the number of whites in the area to drop by 50 percent and the number of blacks to grow 450 percent.  This trend changed the types of stores at the mall, even though the Hickory Hill area remains one of the wealthiest and most educated black-majority neighborhoods in Memphis.

Another change took place when the neighborhood was annexed by the city of Memphis, which doubled commercial as well as residential rents.  This taxation not only directly burdened retailers, but it further encouraged residents to move even farther into the suburbs where taxes are lower.  In addition, the 385 freeway, Nonconnah Parkway, was constructed in the area, allowing residents to bypass Hickory Ridge Mall on their way to the booming sprawl in Collierville.

In February 1997, a new mall opened on I-40 in far northeast Memphis, and quickly became the destinational retail center of choice in the Memphis area.  Wolfchase Galleria has 130 stores, four anchors, and 1.3 million square feet of retail space, and spawned a new retail corridor around it on Germantown Parkway.  Furthermore, Wolfchase is the closest mall to the most wealthy, newest parts of Memphis like Cordova.

As Wolfchase opened, Hickory Ridge issued its counter-offensive in terms of a whole scale renovation of the mall, removing the dated 1980s look completely and attempting to stave off competition as much as possible.  Unfortunately, the renovation of Hickory Ridge, located away from major freeways, was too late to ensure a permanency of success here.

The 2000s were a rough decade at Hickory Ridge Mall.  By 2003, the Winchester Road strip corridor was over 70% vacant, with 700,000 square feet of dead retail space.  The problems were much more serious than simple turnover, too – Memphis had too much physical space devoted to retail.  And, the mall wasn’t immune to the failure of the strip surrounding it.  To compound this, more retail was being constructed at an alarming rate in suburbs farther out, where a brand new mall was even being planned in Collierville.

In May 2003, Carlyle Development took the reigns of Hickory Ridge Mall, having purchased it that year for $13.5 million; and, citing an 20 percent vacancy rate and rapidly changing demographics, they decided to dramatically refocus the mall.  According to Carlyle, marketing the mall toward a middle-to-upper-income set, putting it in direct competition with Oak Court and Wolfchase Galleria, was a mistake.  They changed their focus to target a lower to lower-middle income set of folks, orienting the mall as more discount-focused with apparel at the forefront.  This repositioning was probably a good strategy at the time, all things considered, in an attempt to save the mall without too much wrangling.

Over the next few years, Carlyle implemented their plans and Hickory Ridge slowly lost many national middle to upmarket chains, which were replaced by local stores, discount chains, athletic apparel stores and shoe stores.  Oh, and vacancy.  The vacancy rate at Hickory Ridge creeped up from 20% in 2003 to 40% in 2006, and by 2007 nearly half of the mall was empty.  At the same time this was happening, Macy’s purchased Goldsmith’s, and phased out the name by 2005.

Meanwhile, two brand new malls opened in the Memphis area, one in growing DeSoto County, Mississippi, and another one in Collierville.  The one in Collierville, Avenue Carriage Crossing, stole more of Hickory Ridge’s potential customer base when it opened in 2005.  I say potential customers because they probably weren’t shopping at Hickory Ridge by then, anyway, so it was kind of a moot point.  Avenue Carriage Crossing ended up delivering a major blow to Hickory Ridge by sucking away Dillard’s, who opened a 200,000 square foot store at Avenue Carriage Crossing in early 2006, effectively making the Carriage Crossing store a replacement.

Up until this point, the Hickory Ridge story has been fairly typical.  Changing demographics, continued sprawl, and competition sent this mall into a pretty common downward spiral; however, on February 5, 2008, mother nature decided to change the mall’s slow decline into an immediate one.  An F2 tornado touched down at the mall that day, collapsing a 50-foot wall of Sears, tearing a giant hole in Macy’s and twisting much of the roof off center court.  The mall was also severely flooded.  Sears patched up the damage to their store and opened five days later, on February 10th, but none of the rest of the stores at the mall have been open since (as of March 2010).  The tornado effectively killed the mall.

Click here for a video of the tornado showing damage to the Hickory Ridge Mall.

Click here for a photo gallery of the extensive damage at Hickory Ridge Mall.  Whoops.  It seems the mall posted some photos it wasn’t entitled to post.  The author of the damage photos has denied their use, so the link is dead.  Sorry! 

In the days, weeks, months, and even years that have followed the tornado, residents have sat and waited for their mall to reopen.  Early on, Macy’s decided to give up and not reopen their damaged store, showing their commitment to the site wasn’t that strong.  Also, due to the mall’s beleaguered state before the tornado, owner Carlyle wasn’t in a hurry to patch it up and get it running again either.  For a time, the city even wanted to step in and purchase the mall to put civic offices there.  However, a different buyer was found, and Carlyle sold the site to a church in October 2008 for $1.4 million, about 10 percent of what they paid for it in 2003.  Ouch.

The new buyer, World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church, immediately set forth with grandiose plans for the tornado-ravaged site.  Its first order of business was to repair the twisted center court area, which cost $5 million.  Next, the church laid groundwork for re-tenanting the center, which is to be a mix of commercial retail, social services, and entertainment.  The 3,000 member church, which is located down the street from Hickory Ridge Mall and is known for displaying a striking 72-foot-tall Christian reinterpretation of the Statue of Liberty, holding a cross in one palm and the ten commandments in the other, laid out these plans in five ambitious phases.

Phase I, set to commence in April 2010 with the grand reopening of the mall, will include 32 commercial retailers, 10 community and social service agencies, 8 food court vendors, 2 education and training centers, and entertainment venues including the two-level carousel and a movie theater.

Phase II will consist of 18 various medical offices, including natal care, 15 additional social services agencies, 4 more food court vendors, a child care center, more training and education centers, and an Incredible Pizza franchise.  This phase will take place mostly in the former Macy’s wing of the mall.

Phase III will convert the former Macy’s building itself into a 72,000 square-foot conference center and banquet hall.  It will also have an auditorium, kitchen, and historical museum.

Phase IV will convert the former Dillard’s location to a youth enrichment and entertainment center, including a roller skating rink, recording studios, and computer lab.  In addition, a business center or a hispanic cultural center, to reflect the changing demographics in the area, will open as well.  Phase IV is slated to be complete by 2012.

Taking place away from the mall, Phase V will manage the construction of a 60-80 unit senior living facility on the periphery of the mall, as well as a 1,000 seat outdoor ampitheatre and performing arts complex.

In addition to these phases, Sears will remain at the mall where it has been the entire time, except for the five days it closed after the tornado.

According to the church, Phase I and the mall’s reopening will take place next week, on April 3, 2010.  Check out these photos of the work the church has been doing to repair the mall and prepare it for opening. It’s been a long time coming, but this is a welcome reinvestment in a neighborhood that has had major setbacks as retailers follow the dollars east.  It’s hard to really feel bad for Hickory Ridge Mall and this area, because it was sprawl to begin with, but it’s sad that an entire layer of the city has fallen in this manner.

We’ll keep up to date with developments in this interesting story.  In the mean time, take a look at the pictures I took in January 2004, when the mall still had Goldsmith’s.  Feel free to leave some comments, too.

Eastgate Consumer Mall; Indianapolis, Indiana

What’s a consumer mall without consumers?

Indiana’s first major shopping center debuted with a bang and died so slowly and painfully that its end was little more than a whimper.  Opened in 1958, Eastgate Center was the first large-scale shopping center in Indiana.  It located on the growing east side of Indianapolis, in what was then unincorporated Marion County, at the corner of Shadeland Avenue and Washington Street, which was then the heavily traveled cross-country National Road, US 40.  After many years, and many changes, Eastgate finally bit the dust in 2004 and closed the doors, leaving its husk ripe for redevelopment.

When Eastgate originally opened, the mall was situated very similarly to how it was in later years, on a north-south axis, with an anchor at each end.  A two-level Indy-based H.P. Wasson’s was the north anchor, and a smaller JCPenney dry goods-only store as well as a Standard supermarket anchored the south end.  Eastgate had a weird tilt to it, too – the south end of the mall was flush with the parking lot, but at the north end the mall was significantly higher than the parking lot grade, and many people accessed it there by either ascending a long stairway or going through Wasson’s and using the escalator.  Inside the mall were G.C. Murphy and Woolworth five-and-dime stores, as well as venerable 1950s mall stalwarts Thom McAn, Kinney Shoes, Lerner Shop, a National Shirt Shop, Harry Levinson’s, and Dr. Tavel Optical – who would become the last original tenant at the mall, closing in 2006.

In 1958, another open air mall arrived in Indianapolis when Glendale Center was built on the north side.  However, Glendale provided little competition to Eastgate, as Indianapolis was large enough to support two (or more) centers and Glendale was a good distance away.  Both centers thrived for the good part of two decades, in spite of forcing kids to wait in line for Santa Claus out in the cold.  Brrr! 

Competition did come a-knockin’ in 1974 with the opening of an enclosed, super-regional center just a few minutes away from the small Eastgate Center.  DeBartolo, an Ohio-based mall developer, opened Washington Square Mall just two miles east on US 40.  Sensing a trend, and not wanting to be left out in the cold (rather literally…), Eastgate’s owner quickly enclosed the 370,000 square-foot mall – but it was too little too late.  Penneys moved out, and when the struggling Wasson’s closed in 1980 it became clear that Eastgate was in rapid decline. 

In 1981, Eastgate was sold to Melvin Simon, an Indianapolis-based retail/real estate magnate, who promised to ease the mall’s woes and put it back on the path to success.  And it did just that, for a while anyway.  Burlington Coat Factory was brought in to replace the Wasson’s, and a mix of local and outlet stores were brought in to replace tenants who fled to Washington Square a few years earlier.  Eastgate Center was renamed Eastgate Consumer Mall, and continued on through the 1980s and into the 1990s as a discount-themed mall, which was also appropriate for the changed demographics of its immediate area.  This part of Indianapolis was in decline, as more people moved out to greener pastures in the suburbs, which only further benefited centers like Washington Square and decimated places like Eastgate. 

As Eastgate Consumer Mall soldiered on, even the outlet mall concept became a flop.  By the early 2000s, the mall was in decline again, as the caliber of stores went from okay to laughably nasty.  In April 2001, when I visited, there was a store actually called What Would D$llar Do?  I wanted to answer, “Not shop in this mall?” but it seemed to be a rather moot point since no one was there anyway.  However, I did get yelled at for taking pictures by a rather fiery security guard lady, who seemed to be chatting with her friends in the nearly empty food court at the time of my egregious photo-snapping crime and felt it necessary to shout at me from across the cavernous emptiness and waddle over to give me hell.  Par for the course at this mall, I guess.

Simon finally gave up the ghost and unloaded the mall in 2002 to a series of commercial slumlords, one of whom was Heywood Whichard, a slimy North Carolina ‘businessman’ who is infamous for craftily buying dead or dying retail properties and sitting on them, collecting rent with no reinvestment strategy whatsoever, until the properties are in such disrepair that almost nobody wants them.  At this point the local government usually has to step in and spend taxpayer money to redevelop these blighted eyesores and Whichard runs away laughing, having made a tidy profit.  This strategy has made Whichard the enemy of several cities around the country, including Akron, St. Louis, Niagara Falls, and Ft. Wayne. 

Whichard certainly made the death spiral worse at Eastgate, and the mall began to shake off tenants faster than ever before.  Mini anchor Dunham’s Sports and The Finish Line left first.  Then, Burlington Coat Factory, who had been at Eastgate since 1981, decided to call it quits in March 2004 by moving to Washington Square, seizing the opportunity of a recently-closed JCPenney there.  Burlington’s departure was the death knell for Eastgate, because in early 2004, Whichard gave a harsh and sudden notice, via a letter served by his attorneys, telling the 15 or so tenants operating there that they would need to skedaddle before the end of June or he would lock them out and take their stuff. 

The interior of the mall closed in June 2004, and later that year Whichard did what he does best and sold the mall at a tax sale.  The empty dead mall went through several other owners, including a woman from Michigan City who wanted to turn the mall into a senior-based shopping and entertainment center, and a Texas firm who did nothing.  Not surprisingly, she abandoned her plans too, and the mall sat and sat.  And sat.  Meanwhile, Dr. Tavel, the mall’s lone remaining tenant, who was one of the mall’s original tenants and had an exterior entrance, continued to operate until his lease expired in 2006.  Said Tavel in a 2003 interview in the Indianapolis Star, “One of the keys to our constant viability in that center is the fact that we always maintained an outdoor entrance,” he said. “That back door became our front door when the mall went to hell.”  Well put.

In recent years, ruminations of redevelopment have finally reared their heads, which will give Eastgate new life.  In July 2008, Lifeline Data Centers, an Indianapolis-based data storage outsourcing compan, decided to put a $50 million data center in the former mall.  That same year, a group of U.S. Marines also used the mall to play war games, simulating urban combat for soldier training.  In addition to the Lifeline project redevelopment, portions of the now-excessively-large parking lot will be removed and turned back to nature, with a landscaped park featuring walking trails and ponds.  Although Eastgate Consumer Mall failed as a retail mall, it’s interesting that in the end it won’t be totally demolished and will have a use – as office space.     

I visited Eastgate Consumer Mall in April 2001, just before Haywood Whichard got a hold of it and totally ran it into the ground, and took the pictures featured here.  There was even a bright yellow mustang parked inside to offset any problems the mall might’ve had.  For a more complete set of pictures, be sure to check out this Flickr page of photos of the mall from user penske14 .  Taken in 2006, you can see that the mall quickly and alarmingly fell into disrepair, as evidenced by its condition less than two years after closure.   Also, you can check out a Facebook discussion relating to the mall, or better yet, leave some of your experiences and thoughts on or own comments page here.

College Hills Mall (The Shoppes at College Hills); Normal, Illinois

In the mall-crazy late 1970s, a developer decided that one mall wasn’t enough for little Bloomington-Normal, and made plans to build a second enclosed mall on the same strip. Located just a mile north of Eastland Mall along Veterans Parkway/Old Route 66, the College Hills Mall opened in August 1980 with anchor Carson Pirie Scott and a single-level T-shaped corridor of stores. The second anchor, Montgomery Ward, opened about a month later, also in 1980, and a third anchor, Target, opened in 1982.

Illinois’ twin cities of Bloomington and Normal (which is technically not a city, but a town.  Discuss…) comprise a relatively small metropolitan area in Central Illinois, about 2 hours south of Chicago and 2.5 hours north of St. Louis, Missouri.  Together, the cities have around 125,000 residents, with 50,000 in Normal and 75,000 in Bloomington.    Bloomington and Normal are also immediately adjacent to one another, with no gap in between them, and thus effectively function as one city.  In fact, they are almost always referred to together, as Bloomington-Normal, B-N, or even the Twin Cities.  Home to State Farm Insurance and two educational institutions, Illinois State University and Illinois Wesleyan University, which together have over 22,000 students, Bloomington-Normal has a more white collar, professional persona than many other Central Illinois cities. 

Bloomington-Normal was an important stop along Route 66 during its heyday, and as the famous highway grew in popularity it became congested – especially through cities and towns where local and cross-country traffic mixed.  Even before the interstate system debuted, which would largely supplant Route 66, many bypasses were constructed around the cities and towns Route 66 passed.  One such bypass, known as Beltline Road (later renamed Veterans Parkway), circumnavigated around Bloomington-Normal to the east, and opened in the 1950s, a full decade before Interstates 55 and 74 were built around the cities to the west. 

As Route 66 became obsolete for cross-country trips, supplanted by Interstate 55 and subsequently removed in this area by the late 1970s, it became a mostly local thoroughfare and Bloomington-Normal’s dominant retail strip.  In 1967, the Eastland Mall opened along this strip at the corner of Route 66 and IL 9.  Expanded through the years, Eastland Mall is the biggest and only enclosed mall in Bloomington-Normal, but this wasn’t always the case.   

In the mall-crazy late 1970s, a developer decided that one mall wasn’t enough for little Bloomington-Normal, and made plans to build a second enclosed mall on the same strip.  Located just a mile north of Eastland Mall along Veterans Parkway/Old Route 66, the College Hills Mall opened in August 1980 with anchor Carson Pirie Scott and a single-level T-shaped corridor of stores. The second anchor, Montgomery Ward, opened about a month later, also in 1980, and a third anchor, Target, opened in 1982. 

Only about 60 percent the size of Eastland Mall, College Hills Mall never had the same cachet of stores, but it served as a successful ancillary to it for a number of years.  An anchor change occurred at College Hills Mall in 1989 when Peoria-based Bergner’s purchased Chicago-based Carson Pirie Scott.  Because Bergner’s did not want to operate two adjacent stores in such a small market, the Carson’s at College Hills was closed in favor of the extant, larger Bergner’s at Eastland.

Following the departure of Carson’s at College Hills Mall, management quickly found a replacement for the space – Davenport, Iowa-based upscale department store Von Maur.  For those unfamiliar with Von Maur, it is considered in the same class and quality as Nordstrom and Lord and Taylor, a step up from Carson’s/Bergner’s.  A weird fit for an ancillary mall, it gave College Hills an upscale cachet that management thought might translate into greater success. 

Unfortunately, though, the location of Von Maur at College Hills Mall did very little to upscale the mix of stores there.  In fact, during the 1990s, the mall began a slow period of decline, and finished the decade in extremely poor shape.  In the early 90s, College Hills Mall had a decent mix of stores, including MC Sports, Kay-Bee Toys, Waldenbooks, Spencers, The Buckle, Foot Locker, and Champs Sports.  But the loss of a department store anchor and a change of ownership in 1997 brought an irreversible decline from which College Hills would not recover.   

In 1997, Montgomery Ward exited the mall amid a round of closures and in 1999, a Hobby Lobby crafts store was brought in to replace it.  Discounter Stein Mart moved into the middle of the mall, taking a few dead store spaces in 1997, but this move turned out to be an unprofitable mistake for the chain and it closed in 2000.  Meanwhile, many of the aforementioned national chains closed and were not replaced due to lacadaisical remote management by the Chicago-based owner of the mall.

By the 2000s, College Hills Mall was in serious decline with many vacancies as in-line stores closed and weren’t replaced.  Many of the stores relocated down the street to the larger, more successful Eastland Mall, which completed an expansion in 1999, adding a Famous-Barr anchor.   By mid-2004, only 11 tenants remained at College Hills Mall, including the three anchors, Target, Von Maur, and Hobby Lobby, with Radio Shack, Payless Shoes, Bath & Body Works, GNC, Christopher & Banks, Diamond Dave’s Mexican Restaurant, and some local stores among the remaining that were left. 

In 2004, ownership changed again and the College Hills Mall was purchased by Peoria-based Cullinan Properties, who had recently developed the successful Shoppes at Grand Prairie outdoor mall in Peoria in 2003.  Given the sad state of College Hills, Cullinan decided to demolish the existing mall and develop another lifestyle center.  The enclosed mall’s last day was June 30, 2004, when the interior corridors were sealed until demolition began a short time later.  The anchors – Target, Hobby Lobby, and Von Maur – remained open and continue to operate today in their original buildings. 

Almost immediately, demolition work began on College Hills Mall, in order to transform it into The Shoppes at College Hills.  The extra ‘e’ in Shoppes apparently confers an ‘upscale for ladies’ vibe – there’s no doubt that your mom or girlfriend would enjoy shopping here.  All of her favorite stores are present – J Jill, Chico’s, Ann Taylor Loft, Coldwater Creek, Lane Bryant, Yankee Candle, and Bath and Body Works.  These, combined with Von Maur, Target, Gordman’s, Starbucks, The Childrens Place, Hobby Lobby, and a make-your-own-stir-fry chain restaurant, will keep mom and all her girlfriends busy all day.  In fact, there’s even a Hampton Inn in case they get too tired after all that shopping.

I don’t mean to hate on The Shoppes at College Hills – it’s not terrible or anything, just kind of poorly executed in light of the image and vibe they are trying to sell.  I mean, it’s definitely not for me, and I’ll certainly concede that it’s better than the hulking dead mall that was there before.  I can’t help but wonder, though, did the enclosed mall fail due to mismanagement?  It was pretty dark and dated inside, so couldn’t they have just renovated it and put all these stores in there?  Clearly there was a market for a retail center here, and I wonder how many people really want to walk around in the cold, rain, snow, and excessive heat – Central Illinois is a land of extremes, after all.  This isn’t the Sun Belt, and ‘perfect’ days are rare.  It’s kind of a moot point, anyway, because no one is realistically going to walk around here all day either – it’s not that pedestrian friendly and really set up more like a strip mall than anything else, where you can park near the door of your favorite stores.  Want to visit another store?  Get in your car, drive over there, and park there, too.   

My biggest problem with this place is that the type of branding they’re selling is really a bunch of smoke and mirrors.  All they really did was demolish the interior of a dead mall and replace it with a few, much smaller buildings, and a sea of parking lots.  There are no definitive pedestrian corridors that encourage people to use them, except the sidewalk in front of some of the stores – which is how any strip mall is set up – and there’s no cohesion bringing the center together.  Target and Hobby Lobby don’t even have entrances facing the rest of the development. 

And yet they are selling a brand, a lifestyle even.  Whatever that means.  Whose lifestyle?  Doesn’t a lifestyle center really need to have some non-retail components such as entertainment options, or more than one restaurant?  Some even argue that a true lifestyle concept needs housing as well. 

According to the mall’s website, which also states that the Shoppes are “where outside is in style”,  “The Shoppes at College Hills has a stylish fountain in the midst of our outdoor lifestyle center in a beautiful, relaxing setting.  The fountain is the base for a sculpture entitled “Adventure” by Jim Davidson.  The fountain and sculpture pair encourages the shopper to rest or meet friends near the soothing sound of its waterfall.”  This is nice, don’t get me wrong.  But they fail to note that the fountain is really located in the corner of one of the parking lot seas, and that the whole setup of this place really lacks cohesion and encourages driving between the stores, not meeting at a fountain in a far corner of the parking lot.  When you go to a strip mall or big box center, do you often walk to the far edge of the parking lot to meet?  I don’t.  There’s absolutely no reason to.

There are definitely good ‘lifestyle’ centers that pass muster, with legitimately cohesive plans and a density that allows for well-placed pedestrian concourses that will actually be used.  This just isn’t one of them.  Many of them have pedestrian-only corridors, like Easton Town Center in Columbus, or if the corridors allow cars the focal point is not hindered by automobile traffic but rather a dense, urban-like streetscape, like Victoria Gardens in southern California.  Lacking encouragement for people to walk around and linger, a lot of the stores miss out from foot traffic walk-by sales.  On a different level, without people walking around and staying a while there is less of a community feel.  Plus, it doesn’t look as nice aesthetically, either.  By the way, Cullinan’s outdoor mall in Peoria is a pretty good example of what a lifestyle center should be, so that makes this even more perplexing. 

I visited College Hills Mall in May 2001 and June 2004, just a couple days before the mall closed forever.  Feel free to leave your own experiences on the comments page.

Photos from May 2001:

Photos from June 2004, days before the mall closed forever:

Brookdale Center; Brooklyn Center, Minnesota

Located in Brooklyn Center, an inner-ring suburb 10 miles northwest of Minneapolis, Brookdale Center is a behemoth of a mall living on borrowed time. Opened in 1962, Brookdale debuted to a new, sprawling post-war building boom which eventually levelled off as the area became built out. Over time, many original residents serving the mall’s purpose moved up and out to newer and better suburbs, and were slowly replaced by those with a different socioeconomic status. Today, Brookdale is in serious decline, existing as as an ever-dwindling collection of stores inside the husk of a super-regional mall on the precipice of closure.

Located in Brooklyn Center, an inner-ring suburb 10 miles northwest of Minneapolis, Brookdale Center is a behemoth of a mall living on borrowed time.  Opened in 1962, Brookdale debuted to a new, sprawling post-war building boom which eventually levelled off as the area became built out.  Over time, many original residents serving the mall’s purpose moved up and out to newer and better suburbs, and were slowly replaced by those with a different socioeconomic status.  Today, Brookdale is in serious decline, existing as as an ever-dwindling collection of stores inside the husk of a super-regional mall on the precipice of closure.

In the early part of the 20th century, Brooklyn Center was a far different place.  It incorporated in 1911 to stave off annexation from neighboring Minneapolis, in order to remain remain the rural, farming community it had been since pioneer days.

Fast forward a few decades.  After World War Two, masses of returning GIs and their growing families needed housing, so large neighborhoods of single-family housing were built quickly and cheaply.  Brooklyn Center and other formerly rural communities close to Minneapolis were no longer able to resist development, and became built out over a relatively short span.

With the suburban housing boom and post-war automobile culture came shopping centers.  Long before the Twin Cities had the Mall of America, which opened in 1992, they had the ‘Dales’ – a foursome of enclosed, super-regional malls that were developed by Minneapolis-based Dayton’s department store and built between 1956 and 1974.  First came Southdale in 1956, which debuted as one of the first regional malls in the country, and was located in well-to-do southwest suburban Edina.  Next came Brookdale, in northwest suburban Brooklyn Center, which opened in 1962; later came Rosedale in Roseville, between Minneapolis and St. Paul, in 1969; and finally, Ridgedale opened in west-suburban Minnetonka in 1974.

In addition to the ‘Dales’, the Twin Cities also had other regional shopping centers like Apache Plaza, which opened in 1961 in the northeast suburbs of Minneapolis, and Knollwood Mall, which opened in 1955 in west-suburban St. Louis Park.  All of these malls were moderately to extremely successful throughout the years, and all of them exist today in some form or another – redevelopment or otherwise.  Only one – Brookdale – is in dire straits today, following an extended period of decline which began slowly during the 1990s.  Ridgedale and Rosedale are still immensely popular, and despite some recent trouble still remains viable.

Brookdale Center was originally conceived by Dayton’s department store to provide a northern complement to its successful Southdale Center.  Famous mall visionary Victor Gruen, who also created Southdale, was hired to design the mall.  Elements of his influence are still present today in the wide spaces and tall ceilings in the main corridor.  Also, unlike the other ‘dales’, which are all two levels, Brookdale was designed to be one level because it is situated on a former swamp; as such, it has always been the smallest of the four malls.

When Brookdale opened in 1962, it was anchored by a two level, 180,000 square foot Sears and a tw0 level, 50,000 square foot JCPenney (dry goods only at first).  The mall was expanded in 1966-1967 to include Dayton’s and Donaldson’s stores, and JCPenney expanded to a full-service format.  The mall was extremely successful and drew patrons from the entire northern half of the Twin Cities metro, until competition and demographics began to change the game.

In 1972, some competition arrived for Brookdale Center in its north metro trade area.  Northtown Mall opened in Blaine, approximately 10 minutes north of Brookdale.  However, this wasn’t a huge blow for Brookdale, as Northtown is across the river and serves a mostly different set of suburbs (Coon Rapids, Blaine, Anoka, Fridley).  In fact, Brookdale even remained viable into the 1990s, as numerous other malls and even the humungous Mall of America opened across town in 1992.  The late 90s weren’t as kind to Brookdale, though, as it battled a 30 percent vacancy rate and a foreclosure in 1996.

Not long after Brookdale began its first spiral of decline, the mall was renovated, expanded, and temporarily saved, beginning in 2001 with a driven commitment by Talisman Corporation, its new owner.  The 2001-2002 renovation replaced and modernized the flooring and general decor of the indoor corridors, which had not seen a significant renovation in decades.  In addition, several popular national brands were wooed to the mall, including Old Navy, Gap, American Eagle, and Hot Topic, and the mall was given a weird new logo.  At one point in late 2003, Brookdale rebounded to a 95 percent occupancy rate and had all four anchor stores filled.  The expansion involved tearing down the northwest wing of the mall and replacing it with a brand new, slighty larger wing containing a new food court and a Barnes and Noble store.

Several anchor changes have taken place at Brookdale through the decades.  There were barely any major changes from the 1960s until 1987, when north anchor Donaldson’s was sold to Carson Pirie Scott of Chicago and operated as a Carson’s until 1995.  The Carson’s purchase in Minnesota ultimately turned out to be an unprofitable mistake, so all Carson’s stores except Rochester were sold to the parent of Dayton’s, Dayton-Hudson, who then converted all the stores to its Mervyns division that same year.  Mervyns was a better fit for the space, and lasted until Dayton-Hudson -who in 2000 renamed themselves Target Corporation – sold all of its non-Target stores in 2004.  A group of investors bought Mervyns from Target and immediately began closing all of the Minnesota stores, including the one at Brookdale.  It has been vacant ever since, despite an attempt, in 2007, by Wal-Mart to secure a store there, which was blocked by Sears in a lawsuit.  Sears said they believe their tenant agreement gives them the right to approve the stores there.  The lawsuit soured Wal-Mart, who later said they are no longer interested in pursuing the location.

The east anchor, which opened as Dayton’s in the 1960s, became Marshall Field’s in 2001 when Dayton-Hudson decided to consolidate its brands in Minneapolis (Dayton’s), Chicago (Marshall Field’s), and Detroit (Hudson’s) under one nameplate.  They chose Marshall Field’s because the venerable Chicago store was not only representative of the largest city and number of extant stores among the three brands, but also because of the venerability of the brand.  It all ended up being sort of a moot point a few years later, when Marshall Field’s parent Target Corporation decided to focus on the Target stores and get rid of everything else, selling Marshall Field’s to May Company.  Then, after owning Marshall Field’s less than a year, May became acquired by Federated Department Stores (Macy’s), who rather quickly decided to consolidate all of the May nameplates, including Marshall Field’s, into one unified Macy’s banner in 2006.

After the May acquisition, Macy’s suddenly had hundreds more stores covering 90 percent of the country, and they also inherited some unprofitable stores as well.  Macy’s has gone through several rounds of closures to help eliminate these, and in 2008 they decided to eliminate the store at Brookdale.  It closed in March 2009  and remains empty as of early 2010.

Here’s a shot of the east anchor, Dayton’s, in April 2001:

Here’s the same shot from April 2010:

Here’s a shot near the middle of the mall facing JCPenney in April 2001:

Now take a look at a similar shot from April 2010.  Sad, isn’t it?

Brookdale’s south anchor, which had been JCPenney since the mall opened, operated for over four decades before closing in February 2004 and relocating to a brand new standalone store in Coon Rapids.  However, the anchor wasn’t dead long, replaced in September 2005 by Steve and Barrys, a flash-in-the-pan cheapo clothing anchor that expanded quickly nationwide in the mid- to late- 2000s, often taking dead mall anchors and having no qualms operating in dead or dying malls.  Not surprisingly, Steve and Barrys quickly became insolvent, and closed for good at the end of 2008.  The Brookdale store was shed a few months before the entire chain closed, though, as they attempted to focus on their more profitable stores.  The anchor remains empty as of early 2010.

The western anchor, Sears, has remained the entire time since the mall opened, and currently has no plans to close.  A Kohls Department Store also still operates on the mall’s periphery and is included in the Brookdale complex, but is not part of the mall structure.

In addition to losing three of its four anchor stores over a span of five years, Brookdale has also had to deal with increasing competition in what was left of its trade area – the northwest Twin Cities suburbs – when a large retail district and lifestyle center opened in nearby Maple Grove in 2003.  Lacking a downtown of its own, northwest suburban Maple Grove began growing at a breakneck pace in recent decades, attracting a more affluent base than inner-ring suburbs such as Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park.  In order to take advantage of this affluent suburban growth, Maple Grove constructed a new downtown in phases, and the entire development is referred to as Arbor Lakes.  Included in the development is over 6 million square feet of retail space, clustered around a large lifestyle center and a neotraditional Main Street.  Nearly every retail chain and box store in the country is represented in Maple Grove, including those traditionally located in enclosed regional malls.  Located just ten miles from Brookdale, this development more than any other has dwindled Brookdale’s waning viability, essentially nudging it out of having any trade area at all.

Faced with increasing competition, many of the updates Talisman materialized in the early part of the 2000s disintegrated by 2005.  After losing two anchors in – JCPenney and Mervyns – in 2004, Old Navy, American Eagle, Gap, Pac Sun, and many of the other stores brought in by the renovation closed in short order.  Most of the other stores operating at Brookdale are local stores, and the number of national, popular chains has dwindled.  In 2009, shortly after Macy’s jumped ship, Barnes and Noble left as well, creating even more empty space.

In late 2009 and early 2010, the owners of Brookdale Center, Florida-based Brooks Mall Properties, defaulted on their mortgage.  Then, in February 2010, Brookdale was purchased by its mortgage lender in a voluntary foreclosure sale, for $12.5 million.  It’s currently anyone’s guess as to what the new owner plans to do with the site, although rumors from office to residential to a new Vikings stadium have emerged.  I say make the whole thing one huge kitty condo.  One thing is for certain – the mall has almost no viability in its current state, especially at its current size.  So to all you dead mall or Victor Gruen fans – you better get to this one soon before it’s too late and the doors are closed for good.

Brookdale’s website still exists, but is over a year out of date – indicating both Steve and Barrys and Macy’s as being open, as well as numerous in-line stores which have also closed.  The mall advertises having 70 retailers, but only about 30 remain open as of early 2010.  Brookdale also put up a new pylon a couple years ago along Highway 100, featuring the dumb logo which is moderately illegible against the big bird-yellow background, and features a smattering of stores that have since departed.  You know your mall is in trouble when a local cell phone store shows up on the pylon.  Just sayin’.

I’ve visted Brookdale many times, beginning as a little kid in the 90s, and have witnessed the roller coaster death spiral first hand.  Even then, I remember Brookdale being a ‘lesser’ alternative to the malls in the southern and western suburbs.  But I also thought that it was so incredibly cool how dated and cavernous the mall was, with amazingly wide and tall corridors.  And who could forget the parking lot locator animals?  I know I parked in the elephant lot at least a couple times.

Also, don’t forget to check out this more in-depth (and hilarious) commentary from dumpystripmalls.com, a blog that highlights – and lampoons – Minnesota retail.  There are also a few vintage shots from Brookdale here – believe it or not, the interior looked essentially the same until the early 2000s.  As an aside, I hope she updates her blog soon!

Feel free to leave your own comments/experiences with Brookdale.  And, if anyone happens to have any pre-renovation pictures I’d love to see them.

UPDATE 4/2010: I visited Brookdale Center in April 2010 and noted the following stores open:

  1. K Fashion
  2. K Fashion Casual
  3. Champs Sports
  4. Wet Seal (who had their own uniformed security guard)
  5. Sears (the only anchor)
  6. GNC
  7. Q Studio (a photographer)
  8. Jackson Hewitt (tax return kiosk outside Sears)
  9. Skyway Jewelers
  10. Payless ShoeSource
  11. Twinstown (athletic/urban wear)
  12. Foot Locker
  13. Harold Pener Man of Fashion (urban wear)
  14. T2 (urban wear)
  15. Chinamax (the only food court stall open)

Most of these stores are located between Sears and the food court wing.  There was only one store in the Mervyn’s wing, and one in the former Macy’s wing.  Also, I noticed now that Macy’s has closed there are distinct Dayton’s labelscars on the building – that’s neat.  Surprisingly, there were at least a couple dozen people walking around the mall when I visited on a weekday afternoon.  One girl was even using the dilapidated, ripped seating in the former Macy’s court to sit and read a book – it’s peaceful down at that end.  Despite all the closures, mall management has not updated any of the directories or signage in a couple years, and a mural in the food court depicts many stores that have long since closed.  They haven’t even taken down little stand-up signs which direct shoppers on a wild goose chase down mostly abandoned wings of the mall to stores that no longer exist.  Sad.

Also, I unfortuately witnessed some trouble when I left the mall via the food court entrance, as both the police and mall security were interrogating some rowdy looking people who were in a van in the parking lot.  Then, as I left the mall, a couple who were walking to the mall were having a heated argument, and a large group of teens were walking abreast in the ring road, completely oblivious to traffic.  Fun times and anarchy abounds at Brookdale!

While all this is undoubtedly very grim, a nugget of hope for Brookdale is possibly on the horizon.  Brookdale popped up in the news in late March 2010, as murmurs of Wal-Mart have emerged once again.  According to KARE 11, the NBC affiliate in the Twin Cities, owners of two stores at Brookdale have recently been approached by Wal-Mart representatives, who asked if they would stay if Wal-Mart came to the mall.  The owner of K Fashions, who has been at the mall 12 years, said he would definitely stay and would welcome Wal-Mart to the mall.  Apparently the option in Sears’ lease regarding anchor approval expires this year, so Sears will no longer be able to veto Wal-Mart, or any other anchor for that matter.  I think if Wal-Mart came to the mall, it could possibly reverse the trend of closing stores and might even save the mall from certain death.  We’ll keep you up to date.

UPDATE 5/6/2010:  Brookdale is officially closed, as of April 26, 2010.  A local film producer wants to buy the mall for studios and a technical school, and possibly reopen a portion to retail.

I recently stumbled upon a set of vintage pre-renovation photos of Brookdale from April 26, 2001 – eerily, exactly 9 years to the day before the mall closed permanently.  Note the original dark tiled flooring, wood paneling, and the presence of all four anchors – including Dayton’s just weeks before it was rebranded Marshall Field’s.

Photos from April 2001:

Photos from April 2009:

Photos from April 2010: