Category: Illinois

Everyone carries pieces of nostalgia with them from childhood.  They’re personal memories we can look back and reflect upon, and they generally make us feel warm inside and even give us a sense of pride.  They evoke feelings of ‘way back when’ when things were indeed simpler for us.  We didn’t have to worry about paying bills and living adult lives with their many responsibilities; instead, we worried about whether or not mom would let us buy some candy or a cool toy somewhere, or where we would go for lunch.  Inherent with this sense of nostalgia comes place-making, or the fitting of our memories upon the physical places in which they occurred, thus giving the places richer meaning.   

A place of my nostalgia includes the Machesney Park Mall (this website appears to have nothing to do with the mall; the pictures aren’t even from it) near Rockford, Illinois, which opened in 1979 and experienced over a decade of success before falling victim to mass exodus of stores starting in the late 1990s.  The mall is currently in a perilous state, with only a handful stores out of a possible 80 open for business including 3 of the 4 anchor spaces; it is definitely a dead mall.  And recently, the owner is exploring a total redevelopment of the site which almost certainly spells disenclosure for the mall. 

My memories of Machesney Park Mall stem to the late 1980s, starting around 1987 or 1988 when I was a little kid.  My mom and I would drive from home in Janesville, Wisconsin south through Beloit, sometimes stopping at the mall there, and continue on down to Machesney Park which is just north of Rockford.  We often went to this mall because it carried chains not available in Janesville like The Gap and Casual Corner, and had different anchors as well.  It was also a newer mall, by comparison.  Machesney Park Mall was built in 1979, whereas the other shopping centers in Rockford, Janesville, Beloit, and even Madison were built about a decade or more prior.  The most important reason we went was its proximity from home and how easy it was to get there.  My mom didn’t like driving on busy Interstate 90, and this mall was easy to reach via regular roads.  It was also the closest of the malls in Rockford or Madison, which were and still are considered a step up from the malls in Janesville in Beloit, especially since the Beloit Mall closed up shop around the turn of the millenium following a tenuous struggle during most of the 1990s.  

Once we got to Machesney Park Mall, we always parked at Prange’s, the north anchor (later Younkers and now Bergners, owned by Bon-Ton Stores).  After extensive browsing by my mother at Prange’s, we’d enter the mall.  Our first stop was often The Gap which was along the west-facing side of the mall corridor near Prange’s, opposite one of the movie theatres.  That Gap location featured the company’s first logo which it used until 1983, visible in labelscar form here; this old logo has been resurrected more recently by the store itself on apparel.  After The Gap, we’d stop in other stores such as Limited, Deb, Afterthoughts, or one of the shoe stores and my mom would continue shopping.  I recall one of Machesney Park’s shoe stores, Baker’s Shoes, located about halfway down the corridor’s length on the east side.  The store featured long, bright green shag carpeting; it didn’t remodel that look until after 2000.  We also frequently stopped at Casual Corner, which was obviously one of their first prototypes featuring a colonial looking facade complete with amber stained glass lamps and elaborate showcase windows.  It most frequently housed a bicycle store called Humpal’s Bike Rack which has since closed.  Immediately next to the old Casual Corner was an old-school style Spencer’s Gifts featuring a lower-case swiveled logo not unlike the old Gap logo, with yellowish-orange paint along the store’s facade behind the sign.  Spencer’s was still open as of 2001, but has closed since.  After all the shopping we’d sometimes stop at Olga’s Kitchen, a chain of Michigan-based mostly mall-eateries which had a location along the east side of the mall corridor near one of the entrances from Highway 251.  It closed many years ago, possibly over a decade ago, but the space was still being used recently as an area for families to sit and relax while shopping.

Not only do my memories of going to Machesney Park Mall as a child stir up warm nostalgia while tagging along and sharing quality time with my mom during her hours upon hours of shopping, but they typify for me what modern, succcessful malls in the 1980s were like.  The dark tile, angular fountains and decorative skylights complemented the storefronts along the single corridor between Prange’s and JCPenney.  Short side hallways to the west of the main corridor led to Prange Way, Kohl’s, and the other set of Movie Theatres.  But the fountains don’t run anymore at Machesney Park and haven’t for a few years now, and the main corridor is completely barren save for a few people trying to get between the anchors without going outside.  The mall essentially looks exactly as it did when my mom and I frequented it during the late 1980s, except most of the stores are empty and no one’s shopping there.  Good for my reminiscing ability, bad for the mall.

 

Why did this mall fail?  A specific combination of new development decisions, changing retail demographics, stepped up competition, and generally slower growth in the region’s economy precipitated Machesney Park Mall’s demise.  Let’s go through the mall’s history to pinpoint where things started going downhill.  Opened in 1979, the mall was a joint development between JCPenney and Simon to build a large mall on Rockford’s fast-growing north side.  The communities of Roscoe, Rockton, Machesney Park, and Loves Park were all poised for growth, so it appeared especially prescient for them to build an enclosed mall there.  Also, considering Rockford’s larger, two-level Cherryvale Mall is relatively far away on the far southeast side, the developers thought the mall would become a success.

And it did.  Just after opening, the mall added Kohl’s as a fourth anchor, rounding out the mall’s anchor roster along with Prange’s, a mid-tier department store based in Green Bay, Wisc., Prange-Way, a discount department store under the helm of Prange’s, and JCPenney.  Remaining successful throughout the 1980s, the first blow to Machesney Park Mall occurred in 1990 with the closing of the Prange Way store, as a corporate restructuring saw them leave the Rockford market.  That blow was softened in 1991 when Phar-Mor, a hybrid discount store/drug box chain based in Youngstown, Ohio, reclaimed the Prange Way space.  Unfortunately, in 1992 Phar-Mor turned right around and closed their Machesney Park Mall store amid bankruptcy reorganization; their Rockford location remained open for almost another decade.  Also in 1992, Prange’s went bust and was sold to Younkers, another mid-tier department store chain based in Des Moines, Iowa.  Machesney Park Mall soldiered on mostly unscathed, still retaining 3 of its 4 anchor spaces after 1992 with JCPenney, Kohl’s, and Younkers, which became Bergner’s in a name change after both chains were purchased by Saks Incorporated and Saks decided to remove the Younkers name from the Madison, Milwaukee, and Rockford areas. 

During the rest of the 1990s Machesney Park Mall began a slow trend downward, with many long-time retailers leaving such as Gap, The Limited, Casual Corner, Osco Drug and Foxmoor.  Some were replaced with discounty, mom-and-pop style stores, but many became vacant.  In 1997, JCPenney announced it would close its store at the mall after 18 years.  However, the village of Machesney Park convinced them to stay and they did, becoming JCPenney Outlet Store in 1998.  Also in 1998, the old Prange Way/Phar-Mor space retenanted after 6 years as Seventh Avenue Direct, a low-tier discount store with only one other known location in Davenport, Iowa.  On the eve of the new millenium, Machesney Park Mall finally had all 4 anchors filled but was no longer a top-tier destination mall but instead was trending toward a discount or secondary mall.

Changes since 2000 have essentially turned Machesney Park Mall from a potential gold mine as an ancillary, discount center to that of a ghost town destined for oblivion.  In 2001, Kohl’s left Machesney Park for a strip mall in an emerging development near the intersection of Ill. 251 and Ill. 173, about 1 mile north of the mall.  The new development at 173 and 251 has also brought a heap of new boxes, strip malls, and restaurants to Machesney Park, including Home Depot, Menard’s, Target, Gordman’s, Chili’s, Panera Bread, Del Taco, EB Games and more.  A new interchange currently under construction will allow easy access from I-90 at Ill. 173 in early 2007.  Unfortunately, all of this development is along this corridor and not near the mall itself.  Notably, very few of Machesney Park Mall’s outlots have ever been developed, except for a Taco Bell and a Tom & Jerry’s fast food location.  In fact, there is mostly residential development buffering the mall.  The village of Machesney Park outwardly encouraged this new development along Ill. 173 to be closer to the new interchange and not near the mall.  Why they did this is puzzling.  Wouldn’t it make sense to put resources toward revitalizing the ailing enclosed mall rather than to encourage new development almost a mile away?  All of these boxes and development could have been placed at or near Machesney Park Mall rather than where they were placed and all of this development has occurred over the past five years.  In fact, businesses have been leaving Machesney Park Mall for the new development just north of it.  GNC gave up the ghost inside the mall at the beginning of December 2006 for new digs at Ill. 173 and 251.   

Further agonizing Machesney Park Mall is other competition in Rockford, most notably Cherryvale Mall on the far southeast side of town.  Immediately adjacent to Interstates 90/39 and U.S. 20, Rockford’s southern belt, Cherryvale has undoubtedly always been the dominant retail center in Rockford since it opened in the early 1970s.  It’s larger at two-stories with 134 stores, and contains a top-tier roster of both anchors and in-line store space.  But in 2004, it renovated its dated look and added JCPenney as an anchor, further strengthening its position in Rockford.  Cherryvale is also located near the center of retail for the Rockford area, East State Street, which is lined for miles with boxes, restaurants, and strip malls galore.  Highway 251/North Second St. has always been an ancillary strip corridor, but has never been up to par with the offerings on E. State St.  Furthermore, with the new development at 173/251, Machesney Park Mall stands virtually no chance.   

In fact, its time may finally be up.  Since Kohl’s left in 2001, stores have been bleeding from Machesney Park Mall.  In 2002, Simon unloaded the mall on local rockford real estate developer Rubloff.  That same year, Waldenbooks and Rogers & Hollands closed.  In 2003, Kay-Bee Toys and Sam Goody closed.  In 2004, the popular HobbyTown USA closed and relocated away from the mall.  Also during 2004, talks stirred of redevelopment but never went anywhere.  In 2006, Lens Crafters, Deb Shops and Foot Locker closed, with the former relocating in a new strip mall along Ill. 173 about a mile north.  JCPenney Outlet, Bergner’s, and Seventh Avenue are still open and remain mostly unaffected by the mall’s demise.  In fact, the anchors are independently owned and the JCPenney Outlet is a very busy and profitable location.

Recently in the Rockford Register-Star, buzz has been once again generated about the mall’s redevelopment.  They are in the process of exchanging ideas about what to do with the failed mall, and most ideas which have surfaced have involved disenclosing the indoor portion of the mall and building a strip mall in its place.  That way, the stores will face Ill. 251 directly and so will the anchors, Bergner’s and JCPenney Outlet.  Other ideas involve invoking the ever-popular Lifestyle Center idea, bringing office space, residential, and retail to the mix. 

To me, Machesney Park Mall’s failure represents our wasteful throwaway society.  The mall, or at least parts of it, could have been saved by placing all or parts of the new development there, instead of building anew and creating more sprawl.  It could have had continued success despite the changing retail demographics and competition and repositioned as a discount or even an outlet mall.  Instead, the decision was made to allow the mall to fail completely, and that’s such a shame.  I’ll probably go down and visit one last time before the doors are shut for good and the inevitable wrecking ball comes to reclaim the physical structure of my childhood nostalgia.  But hey, I’ll always have the memories. 

UPDATE 5/23/07: The other shoe has dropped. Rubloff has announced a massive redevelopment for the site, including the demolition of the center court area which will begin in June.  Replacing it will be a tree-lined street with fountains, and the rest will become a focal point for the Village of Machesney Park.  It will not only feature retail, but a place for festivals, living space, and more.  The two anchors which remain currently, JCPenney Outlet and Bergners, will stay in their spaces.  More detailed plans will be announced in the coming weeks. 

It’ll be interesting to see if they keep any of the mall’s superstructure or even leave any enclosed space whatsoever.  I’m also not sure what kind of retail would want to be at this site, considering most of it has recently clustered about a mile north at the intersection with IL 173 which will very soon have an interchange with I-90/39, spurring even more growth.  I suppose if they make it attractive enough, and indeed promote it as the centerpiece for the community, the ‘if you build it, they will come’ mentality may cause an inflow of businesses to the long-abandoned site.

I took the following pictures in July 2001.  Note that many stores seem closed, but were actually just closed for the night.  As usual, feel free to leave your comments and observations.

   

  

  

  

  

These pictures were taken in June 2005.  Since then, most of these stores have also closed.

  

  

  

  

Finally, here are some awesome vintage pics courtesy of John Gallo.  They are most likely from the early 80s save for the Younkers one which is from the 90s.  I especially love the vintage cursive Kohl’s sign and obviously, Prange Way.

  

 

Located in a middle class northwest suburb of Chicago called Mt. Prospect, Illinois, Randhurst Mall opened in 1962 to great fanfare.  It had a major significance in the Chicagoland area in that it was the very first major enclosed suburban shopping mall in the region whereas today there are well over 30 suburban enclosed malls in the Chicago area.  Its original anchors were Chicago-area department stores Carson Pirie Scott, Wieboldts, and The Fair.  Also notable, the mall was designed by legendary retail architect Victor Gruen, who was the father of the suburban mall in America.

As an aside, I feel that Gruen’s work went largely unnoticed during his lifetime.  A native Austrian Jew, he was born in Vienna around the turn of the century and emigrated to the United States as a commercial architect during World War II to avoid persecution from the Nazis.  He arrived in the United States as an architect with no money and spoke no english, but before long his misfortune ended.  He started designing pedestrian shopping areas and other small retail venues, but he was most famous for designing (one of) the first large enclosed suburban malls in America.  It was in Southdale Mall in Edina, Minnesota.  Gruen then went on to design several more large enclosed centers, all with very unique and interesting footprints.  Another one is featured on this site and is also magnificent: Midtown Plaza in Rochester, NY.  It’s actually possible to get lost in some of his malls because of the unique layouts, which make today’s enclosed mall designs pale in comparison.  In Gruen’s designs, different levels don’t line up, there are unique angles and shapes, grand courts with 80 foot ceilings, hallways which weave around and loop back upon each other, and more design features of malls considered nonstandard today. 

Randhurst is surely one of Gruen’s more unique designs, and quite possibly one of the most unique mall designs in the country.  Gruen’s design for Randhurst is “…shaped like an equilateral triangle, with an anchoring department store at each angle. Additional stores lined the sides of the triangle on two levels: a conventional level and a level located half a floor below the first level (down a flight of stairs), facing the first level. A floor of offices occupied the level above this “subfloor” of stores. A ring of clerestory windows was mounted in a domed area over the center of the mall; mounted just inside these windows were numerous stained glass windows in various oval and round shapes, oriented in such a way as to cast beams of colored light into the mall itself. As the mall was built at the height of the Cold War, it included a fallout shelter big enough to hold every citizen of Mount Prospect” (Wikipedia).

Now that you know about Randhurst Mall’s original design, let’s talk about its history and modifications throughout its four decades as a shopping mecca.  Throughout the 60s, 70s, and into the 80s, the mall remained largely the same.  It was extremely successful despite encroaching competition in suburban malls throughout Chicagoland, and the only major change during that time period was the replacement of The Fair department store in 1965 with Montgomery Ward, another Chicago-area brand.

  

However, in 1985, many structural changes took place at Randhurst which modified the center into a much larger retail venue.  The owners, Rouse Company, decided to convert the second level offices above the subfloor into retail space, including a large food court – one of the first in the Chicago area.  The nature of the food court’s design meant that it was atop the subfloor, in the center of the mall, and the rest of the mall’s retail space was on the main level across, about half a floor in between the subfloor and the food court.  Got it?

As if this wasn’t a cool enough design already, by 1990 Rouse decided to expand the mall even more and finish a second level on top of the mall’s main level on the outside of the triangle.  Each department store already had a second level, so it was in their best interest to have both levels opening up into the mall, and the mall also added a lot of extra retail space in turn.  In addition, the second main level was connected into the food court level in the middle of the mall (which is half a level down because it is on top of the subfloor) via a series of ramps and catwalks. 

The late 1980s and early 1990s saw continued success for Randhurst Mall and the net addition of more retail space.  In 1987, the entire Wieboldts chain folded and Peoria, Illinois based Bergner’s took over their space.  However, in 1990 Bergner’s closed at Randhurst because Bergner’s bought Carson Pirie Scott which already operated a store at Randhurst.  As a result of this empty anchor space, Carson’s moved into the much grander former Wieboldts/Bergners space and JCPenney entered the mix – opening in the former Carson’s space.  Also in the late 1980s, Elgin, Illinois-based Joseph Speiss & Company built a 61,000 square foot mini-anchor near Wieboldt’s/Bergners, and around the same time the Chicago-based Main Street Department Store chain built another mini-anchor near Montgomery Ward.  Unfortunately, the Joseph Speiss store closed in 1992 amid financial woes (The entire chain closed in 1994).  The Main Street store became a Kohls Department store in 1989 following the purchase of Main Street by Kohls, a Wisconsin retailer who would later go on to become one of the larger chains in the country, in one of Kohls’ first expansions.  In 1995, the empty Joseph Speiss store became Circuit City and Old Navy, and a Filene’s Basement occupied a large portion of the subfloor.  The mid 1990s were the pinnacle of Randhurst’s success: it had three major anchors: Wards, JCPenney, Carson Pirie Scott and four minor anchors: Filene’s Basement, Old Navy, Circuit City, and Kohls.  This was unfortunately the last hurrah for Randhurst as the next decaded proved an uncertain future for an ailing mall.

In 1996, just as Randhurst reached its biggest capacity things started to go sour. Chicago’s largest shopping center, Woodfield Mall, embarked on a massive expansion project which extended a wing of the mall, added a Nordstrom, and gave it the status of largest mall in the nation in terms of retail space for some time.  This spelled major trouble for Randhurst, being only 15 minutes away from Woodfield, and devastated its customer base.  In-line mall stores began disappearing, and the Filene’s Basement was the first of the more major anchors to close in 1999.

The early 2000s continued the downward spiral for Randhurst as two major anchor stores left at the same time in 2001: Montgomery Ward and JCPenney.  Wards left as the entire chain went out of business, and JCPenney was amid financial woes and identified the Randhurst location as an underperforming store.  Also, Chicago’s first lifestyle center, Deer Park Town Center, opened farther out into the northwest suburbs in 2000, further decimating Randhurst’s customer base.  Then, in 2003 Kohls announced they were jumping ship for a better location at a former Venture store on the south end of town.  All three of these departures were devastating to the mall, and many more inside stores closed.  Articles surfaced about Randhurst on the site deadmalls.com and although there are several glaring factual errors and the two articles seem to disagree with each other, it was not a good omen for Randhurst. 

2004 saw some resurgence of the mall with a few additions and cosmetic updates.  Both the former JCPenney and Kohls anchors were razed for a 150,000 square foot brand new Costco anchor.  Similarly, most of the Wards anchor was also torn down, giving way to a brand new entrance called the “Promenade” with new restaurants Applebees and Buffalo Wild Wings.  In 2005, Circuit City and Old Navy closed amidst the new construction, but were quickly replaced by Steve and Barry’s University Sportswear and Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  In addition, Jewel-Osco, Borders Books, and a Home Depot continue to operate on the outlots.

Today, the mall is humming along and appears to be holding its own.  The Limited, Victoria’s Secret, and American Eagle Outfitters all continue to operate, along with about 90 other stores and services (including outlots).  Hopefully, with the recent updates and continued pandering, shoppers will still frequent this outdated mall and keep it open, at least for us Vic Gruen fans.

The pictures below of Randhurst were taken in October 2005.  The man seen in one of them with what looks like a large orange cone was standing in the middle of the parking lot between Borders and the mall’s Promenade entrance spinning the orange cone on its top repeatedly.  He was middle aged and kind of looked like Mike Ditka (or one of the other Superfans) and just kept spinning that cone, like a small child would do.  Only he was a middle aged man with a moustache.  He also didn’t pay any attention to anyone driving by.  Must have been fun. 

Update 10/6/08: Randhurst has closed for good after 46 years, as of September 30, 2008.  At the end of the month of October a sale of Randhurst’s holiday wares, benches, and other doo-dads that can be stripped from the mall will be for sale inside the former Steve and Barry’s location.  However, the mall’s carousel won’t be for sale; it’s already on its way to California to be used in another shopping center.  I hope they deserve it.  Look for a new development called Randhurst Village to emerge from the mall’s rubble sometime in 2010.  And finally, for some really awesome vintage shots of Randhurst check out John Gallo’s blog Stores Forever.

  

  

  

North Towne Mall was a hybrid enclosed-strip mall located at the corner of W. Riverside Blvd. and N Main St. on the north side of Rockford, Illinois.  It opened in 1956 and at some point either a portion or the entire center was enclosed.  Its main anchor was the Rockford-based department store Charles V. Weise and Company, which most people called Weise’s (pronounced why-zees).  In 1982 Weise’s was bought out by Peoria-based Bergner’s and all the stores changed hands, including this one.   

During the late 1980s and 1990s, when I was growing up just 30 minutes away from North Towne Mall.  The small enclosed portion of North Towne at that point consisted of a portion that connected Bergner’s Department Store to the Kerasotes Theatres, and was parallel to W. Riverside Blvd.  The rest of the center from the theatres all the way around the corner parallelling Main St. was a strip mall.  Bergner’s closed in the early 1990s and moved across the river to Machesney Park Mall (which has seen better days itself).  The empty Bergner’s was replaced during the late 1990s with local Gustafson’s Furniture, who did not renovate any of the inside space of the store whatsoever.  It’s still open, and going in there is like going into a time warp.  Imagine lots of dark woods, mirrors, various puke-colored carpeting, etc.  I think they even left some of the fixtures up, and I know on some of the doors it still says “Employees only – P.A. Bergner & Co.”  So that’s kind of cool.

Anyway, growing up 30 minutes away, we never once went to this mall as far as I can remember.  We always went to either Machesney Park Mall across the river (which was very successful during the 1980s) or the much larger and ever-dominant two level CherryVale Mall on the southeast edge of town.  I suppose that says something about what this mall had to offer.  It never drew from a expansive radius and was more of a neighborhood center throughout its life.  However, I do remember the TV commercials for North Towne Mall during the 80s and early 90s.  The commercials marketed both North Towne and Colonial Village Mall, another small enclosed neighborhood mall in Rockford, in the same 30-second spot.  We had occasionally gone to Colonial Village Mall to shop when I was little, because it had two anchors and more “destination” specialty shops, most of which were local.  Colonial Village Mall was also decidedly more upmarket. 

Since I saw the TV commercials for North Towne Mall and knew this mall was only half an hour away, I always wanted to see what it was like.  We’d driven by a few times when I was a kid, but it wasn’t until I got my own car that I was able to go inside.  When I finally went, it was almost too late.  Gustafson’s, the local furniture store that had taken over the Bergner’s space, had spilled out into part of the enclosed portion of the mall.  Alarmingly, not only were there no open stores in the enclosed portion, but there wasn’t a single one open.  At the end with the theatres, there was this strange basement court that again contained no retail activity whatsoever.  The theatres were accessible at the top of the basement court and were running discount movies.  Past the theatres, the center regained consciousness as a somewhat successful strip mall that continued down a ways and then turned the corner to face N. Main St.   

Considering none of the stores in the enclosed portion of the mall were open and the lights were off, it’s pretty much a no-brainer that it wouldn’t last long.  But why did North Towne fail?  Well, the simple answer is that it didn’t.  It is still, and has always been successful as a decently large strip mall for the north Rockford area.  However, the enclosed portion did fail, due mostly to the fact that it was not large enough to sustain itself as well as competition from the larger malls.     

In Summer 2003 the small enclosed portion was demolished and, in line stores were put in its place.  So now North Towne Mall is, in its entirety, a strip mall.  However, both the Kerasotes Theatres and Gustafson’s Furniture remain open, as well as the stores in the strip portion.  I took the pictures below in May 2002.  Notice the poor lighting inside the enclosed part of the mall because all of the lights were off.  It was actually much darker than these pictures suggest, because the camera compensated for the lack of light and exaggerated the light that was there from the exits and skylights.  If anyone knows anything further about the history of this mall, feel free to leave comments or email me – it would be greatly appreciated.

Also, check out the mall’s rather rudimentary website.   

  

  

  

  

This is one that started it all for us. During 1998 and 1999, Caldor and I took road trips on many weekends throughout the upper midwest. It started out by exploring various cities, often driving around aimlessly. Eventually we wanted to get out and stretch our legs, so we’d look for public places we could walk around, people watch, get food, and hang out. We weren’t terribly familiar with these cities and we were both teenagers at the time, so we didn’t really know where to go to get our feet wet. So, we turned to the places teenagers are known to flock and went to local malls in the cities we visited.

At first we didn’t really know what we were doing, but eventually it became systematic. We’d look at a map and go from mall to mall, driving around, looking at anything that looked interesting. Neither of us had more than very limited experience in the areas we explored: mostly the suburban and urban milleu of middle America. The experiences were simultaneously riveting, if not a little frightening. We encountered many different characters at the malls, saw malls in different physical as well as economic conditions, and got a taste of local flavor in every place we went. Without really categorizing them as such, we discovered what would later be categorized as a “dead” mall. We became amazed at the disparities we saw between large, successful, packed malls and old, dated, or for whatever reason emptier malls. We began to realize that many don’t even realize the differences or, if they do, they don’t really consider them. We found them fascinating, and started to contemplate the bigger picture. This blog is essentially the culmination of our explorations, our discoveries, our ruminations, and efforts in putting together a semblance of understanding in the retail puzzle of America.

Pekin Mall is the first remarkably dead mall we visited, in January of 1999. Located at the end of the commercial strip headed out of town on East Court/IL Route 9, Pekin Mall was an enclosed mall of about 500,000 square feet. It obviously opened sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s, but I’m not exactly sure. It was anchored by Bergner’s, JCPenney, Hobby Lobby, and Big Lots, and shaped like a carat. When we approached the mall from sad downtown Pekin on Court Street, it looked spectacularly dated on the outside, but nothing, I repeat, nothing could have prepared us for the inside.

We entered through Bergner’s on the east end of the mall and walked into the main mall and suddenly timewarped into someone’s psychadelic, drug-induced trip from 1972. The floor tiles were this shiny mix of off-white, deep blue, purple, and what can only be described as puke green. Horrifically, the tiles alternated colors so a striped pattern repeated the mismatched color scheme throughout the entire mall. I’ve never seen anything like it, and haven’t since (thankfully, I was born in the 80s). Strangely, the mall also seemed rather dimly lit, despite the manmade lighting and the very cool mod-70s windows carved into the ceiling for natural light.

However, I’m afraid that’s only the beginning. These 3 foot long, vertical rows of christmas lights (?!) hung down from the ceiling every so often, glistening against the visually assaulting, unholy kaleidoscope of colors on the floor. Every store, open or not, was horribly dated. Several stores had untreated wooden storefronts, which seemed to be popular in the 1960s or 1970s. The Fashion Bug’s font was very strange and old, and purple. The Deb shop’s sign was this neon green color, but you can be sure the store had the very deep purple carpeting and all the various trapeze-looking apparati which hung down from the ceiling to display all the latest fashions. The Waldenbooks, or should I say Walden Books, was one of their original mall store designs, built vaguely to look like an old bookstore on some urban street. It had the horrible dark green carpeting and the chandeliers common for Waldenbooks during this time. As an aside, I think these stores are more aesthetically pleasing (sans the carpeting and maybe the chandeliers) than their current bland design. In addition, one former vacant store was full of 2-3″ mod 70s green shag carpeting and another store was being used as a gymnastics studio. Imagine the disassociation therapy the kids will have to go through in order to enjoy gymnastics again!

I won’t ever forget the smell from that day either. During our visit was this bizarre fair in the mall, which consisted largely of card tables with various knick-knacks, Native American wares, and people. They were smoking pipes, cigars, incense burning. All mixed together with the musty old mall, it was a very strange, offensive smell.

As for the stores, I’d say well over half were vacant during our visit in 1999. The handful there weren’t dazzling or upscale by any means, as far as for actual shopping and utilitarian mall use. I’ve already mentioned most of them, actually. Add Payless, Radio Shack, GNC, and that about rounds out the major players that were in Pekin Mall in 1999-2000.

As for the mall’s entire history, I’m a little unclear. Like I said, the mall probably opened sometime about 1970. It had not received any sort of renovations, ever. As for its recent history, I know that a Sears once stood where Big Lots and Hobby Lobby are, but it closed in 1993. The Hobby Lobby didn’t have access to the mall either; it was walled off. The pictures featured with this entry were taken in the Summer of 2000 (They’re vintage!) but the mall is in mostly the same condition as it was when Caldor and I visited in 1999.

During 2001, the mall was sold and the development company announced huge plans to redo the mall as (what else?) an open air power center, read: strip mall. However, due mostly to lack of interest, an honest effort by the company to come through on their promised plans to redevelop the horrid mall failed. So the mall sat, and all the while the mall emptied out completely. During my last visit to the mall in January, 2002, the Hobby Lobby wing of the mall was entirely shuttered.

It was not until late Spring 2002 that the mall finally came down, in pieces. The original Bergner’s anchor remains, and the new development is called East Court Village. Surprisingly, few items exist on the internet to document the mall’s recent history and transition. East Court Village doesn’t even appear to have its own website. JCPenney announced it would be leaving the development and closed their doors in 2002. However, Goody’s Family Clothing appeared to take their place in 2004. Big Lots and Hobby Lobby still anchor the west end of the redeveloped strip mall. I’ve actually not been back in some time. How is it doing? Leave some comments or E-Mail me and let me know.

NEW: Check out a recreation of the Pekin Mall directory and site plan, put together by Kurt Schachner. (PDF)

Added 8/20/2006:

When you look at a city, you’re viewing a kind of publication – a publication written on the landscape in the form of buildings, roadways, parks, and much more. Although these publications in the landscape are not like the ones you can experience in books or newspapers, they can still be read. In their reading, they disclose a product of the set of dreams, visions, aspirations, accidents, and mistakes of people who by various means left a legacy of “text” on the landscape. I’ve always been fascinated by reading this textual fabric and how people have used the built environment to publish their lives and legacies.

A large component of the built environment consists of retail and shopping centers. Since I was very little I was intrigued by retail chains, malls, and the like. Over the years it has become a dedicated interest, and I’ve toured retail landscapes from Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine and everything in between. A common misconception is that this hobby is married with that of ’shopping’ – it is not. I have little to no interest in shopping or any sort of excess, but merely in seeing how these retail landscapes transform over time and publish a legacy, for better or worse, relating to the places where they are.

My first post will discuss the former Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois. Dixie Square Mall was located at the intersection of 151st St and Dixie Highway in south suburban Chicago. I feel it’s an appropriate place for me to start, because it not only represents the most extreme example of what can go wrong in retailing, but it is also one of the first exposures to this genre of downtrodden retail I had in 1999 (The first of which being River Roads Mall in Jennings, MO). Because Dixie Square Mall is possibly the most publicized ‘dead mall’ and there are more complete articles on wikipedia, and even a film documentary currently being made about the mall, I’ll instead focus on my own personal experiences with the mall and the implications the mall has on the urban millieu of Harvey and that part of Chicagoland

I first wrote about Dixie Square Mall almost exactly five years ago in 2001 on deadmalls, following earlier trips in 1999 and 2000. In fact, it was somewhat of an accident that I discovered Dixie Square Mall in the first place. Caldor and I were driving around Chicagoland in 1998-99, when he noticed Dixie Square Mall labelled on my map. I quickly discounted it as ‘nothing’ and we kept on going. I was so sure I had at least heard of most of the malls in the Chicago area that a mall called Dixie Square, being in Harvey of all places, was simply preposterous to me. Then, a few months later, I investigated further and shockingly discovered that not only was Dixie Square a mall, it was a huge mall. Whoops! Furthermore, the reason I hadn’t heard of it is because it was only successful for a few years in the 1960s. Throughout much of the 1970s the mall was a failure, and everything in it had closed permanently by 1979, several years before I was even born. Even more amazing, I learned the mall had been sitting abandoned ever since.

I’ve been back several times since I first published about it on dead malls dot com almost five years ago. I’ve also learned a lot about the Dixie Square Mall, most notably that the mall was used during the chase scene in the original Blues Brothers movie in 1979, and that a young woman was raped and murdered in the abandoned JCPenney store in 1993. Wow.

But back to what I wrote about at the very beginning of this article. How does Dixie Square Mall function as a text of the landscape of Harvey, or on a greater scale? More succinctly, why did this mall fail? Much of the resources online are dedicated to ‘what happened’ but few delve into ‘why’ – I think an understanding of the events that caused Dixie Square’s failure is as interesting as the downfall of the mall itself. Probably more important than anything else is urban sprawl, which both created and destroyed Dixie Square as well as Harvey as viable places to live and shop. In the post-World War II economic boom, suburbs sprouted up very fast around Chicago as well as many of the nation’s industrial centers. As a result, suburbs such as Harvey grew from zero population to tens of thousands in a matter of less than 20 years. The problems with Harvey, and with all urban sprawl, are twofold. First, there’s nothing dynamic or unique about these suburbs to distinguish them from any other suburb. They don’t contain functional centers where people work, because all the people are commuting into the city. In fact, most 1950s-1970s suburbs look much the same no matter where you go in the entire country. Second, urban sprawl doesn’t stop – it just keeps going (like the Energizer bunny!) Before Harvey was 20 years old, development began to move farther and farther out to places like Orland Park and the exurbs in the Land of Beyond. At the same time we have people both moving out to ‘better’ newer places, we have Harvey, with nothing unique to retain people’s interest. Sounds like trouble to me!

So what’s driving urban sprawl? It has to be more than just the economy. And it is. There are also other considerations, such as the notion of white flight. The issues of who is moving where also drives what happens with urban spaces. As urban sprawl pushed development farther and farther out, the land value in places like Harvey plummeted. As this happened, the (predominantly) African-Americans living in poor conditions (caused by urban sprawl) on the south side of Chicago moved into Harvey and surrounding areas. Because of this, the remaining whites in Harvey also left. Land values plummeted even more, crime rates rose, and more people left. People began to shop at newer, bigger malls in newer suburbs like Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, or Orland Square in Orland Park. This feedback negative cycle makes places like Harvey worse and worse, while constantly investing in things that are shiny-and-new. No one wins except for greedy developers and the brand new suburb-du-jour, and places like Dixie Square become the retail equivalent of a fossil record, indicating poor decisions in urban planning.

As for the future of the mall, your guess is as good as mine. Since 2002, several companies have expressed interest in the site. According to one source, the mall began coming down in February 2006. However, I drove past more recent than that and it was still standing.

I took the following pictures in July, 2001.