Author: Caldor

Jason Damas is a search engine marketing analyst and consultant, and a freelance journalist. Jason graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern University in 2003 with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism and a minor in Music Industry. He has regularly contributed to The Boston Globe, PopMatters.com, Amplifier Magazine, All Music Guide, and 168 Magazine. In addition, he was a manager for a record store for over two years. Currently, he focuses on helping companies optimize their web sites to maximize search engine visibility, and is responsible for website conversion analysis, which aims to improve conversion rates by making e-commerce websites more user-friendly. He lives in suburban Boston.

Southland Mall; Hayward, California

Hayward, California is a large blue collar suburb of 151,000 people in the central East Bay region of California, located about 15 miles south of downtown Oakland. Like much of the Bay Area (and the East Bay in particular), it’s a culturally/racially and economically diverse city, with recent immigrants and long-time residents alike. Historically an industrial suburb–fruit canning factories dominated the job base for much of the 20th century–Hayward today still has one of the larger industrial job bases in the Bay Area. On a retail-related front, Hayward was also the home base of Mervyn’s department stores until their bankruptcy and closure in 2008.

Hayward is in many ways typical of a post-war suburb, with a large stock of housing built in the 50s-70s, and it exists more or less as the southern terminus of Oakland’s street grid. As a result, it’s little surprise that the Taubman Companies constructed the Southland Mall in the middle of Hayward’s development boom, in 1964. Southland was one of several malls being developed at the time in the rapidly developing region, part of Alfred Taubman’s plan to move business from his native Michigan to growing sun belt cities. Interestingly, Taubman’s own autobiography claims that Southland was the first mall in America to include a food court, a claim I haven’t been able to corroborate anyplace else (and an odd revelation, since Taubman malls rarely ever included food courts, and the architecture of Southland Mall is quite atypical of Taubman malls of this period).

Southland actually began its life in 1961 as a somewhat more modest outdoor shopping center named Palma Ceia, featuring a Lucky’s Supermarket, Thrifty Drug Store, and Sears as anchor stores on the sprawling lot off Hesperian Boulevard. Three years later, the first large enclosed portion of the mall was added, with Woolworth and JCPenney added as anchor stores. The original enclosed incarnation of the mall included the aforementioned “World’s Faire” food court in the space currently occupied by Ross Dress For Less, and the mall also sported a large aviary (popular at the time), indoor water features, and a large arcade and bumper car attraction called La Mans Speedway, located in the mall’s basement. Another large expansion was added in 1972, adding a Liberty House department store at the end of a whole new wing that also included an ice rink. This expansion may have also involved moving the food court to the basement space underneath JCPenney, where it resides today, but I may be wrong about this.

Over the years, the mall saw many changes, though most of these didn’t change the basic structure of the center. In 1983, Liberty House shuttered, and was replaced by an Emporium-Capwell. A large flagship Mervyn’s store opened in the mall in 1995, and Old Navy replaced Woolworth’s the same year. The ice skating rink was at some point replaced by a Good Guys electronics store, which itself was later replaced by Steve & Barry’s. Lucky’s, Steve & Barry’s, Mervyn’s, and Old Navy all closed in the late 2000s, but the Mervyn’s space was quickly replaced by a large new Kohl’s store.

In the meantime, development shifts caused more development to move further into the suburbs, causing other malls to supplant the dominance of Southland. Ironically, it was the Taubman-developed Stoneridge Shopping Center–over the hills seven miles away in affluent Pleasanton–that probably was the biggest factor in kicking Southland down to “B” mall status. (also, it was Southland that probably played some role in dinging the nearby Bayfair and Eastmont Malls down a notch–the ecosystem goes on…) Today, the mall is still mostly leased and seems to do relatively well, but it has a fairly anemic tenant mix. The aging 100-store, mostly single-level mall is owned by General Growth Properties, and sports Sears, JCPenney, Macy’s, and Kohl’s as primary anchors, and also contains Ross Dress For Less, Planet Fitness, and even Sears Outlet (on an outlot pad adjacent to the main store) as secondary anchors. The old gal is showing her age–as you can tell from these photos–but it still retains some of that “old mall charm” (high ceilings, wide open corridors, the cavernous center court and basement food court) that has been renovated out of so many malls of this era. General Growth had been planning a full update and refresh of the mall prior to their recent economic troubles; it’s a relatively safe bet that a renovation will come for the still-relatively-successful Southland (and Newark’s nearby Newpark Mall) in the next few years.

Beverly Center; Los Angeles, California

Los Angeles is known for its malls in a way almost no other major city is. Its urban built environment is proto-suburban, an odd blend of almost-urban density and car-culture all blended into a stew. So unlike other large cities, where malls feel like something of an afterthought, grafted onto the edges of cities at a beltway, Los Angeles is a place where they feel purposefully like hubs within the urban fabric.

The west end of Los Angeles is this sprawling city’s most famous swath–the ten or so miles from the beach in Santa Monica to downtown Los Angeles are home to a jumble of infamous neighborhoods, including Hollywood and Beverly Hills. As you might expect with names such as these, it’s a fashionable and affluent stretch of the city, home to multiple malls and miles of street-front retail.

The Beverly Center is something of a monolith at La Cienega and San Vicente Boulevards, between West Hollywood and Beverly Hills (both actually separate cities from LA itself, but totally surrounded by it). From the outside, the mall is positively gargantuan, standing well above all surrounding structures and visible for miles down Beverly Blvd. The center is organized in an odd fashion, with a six story parking garage beginning at ground level and leading up to the mall, which is perched atop the large structure. In actuality, this is horrendous urban form; instead of interfacing with the street and surrounding neighborhood, the mall is above its surroundings as if a massive luxury penthouse.

Opened in 1982, the Beverly Center was developed by legendary mall developer A. Alfred Taubman and replaced a small old amusement park on the site. The mall’s vaulted structure–criticized earlier–does serve a purpose: there’s oil underneath the mall, and the structure of the center allows for an enclosure for active oil wells underneath a portion of the property. Originally anchored by Bullock’s and The Broadway along with a movie theatre, the Beverly Center was also home to the first U.S. location of the Hard Rock Cafe. Today, mall itself is an attractive blend of upscale stores, anchored by Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s (both of which replaced the original anchors after they were absorbed into Federated in the mid 90s). The theatres which opened with the mall in 1982 just closed this month; they were open at the time my photos were taken in March of 2010. The three-level mall is somewhat austere and ’80s modern (with updates, of course), but it earns some significant points from me for its almost total lack of kiosks and its hotel-style center court bar, both of which lend to the un-harried ambiance.

Also, due to its location, the Beverly Center has unsurprisingly been mentioned in a ton of movies, books, songs, and whatever else, plus it has served as a spot for B list (and lower…) celebrities to take part-time retail jobs while waiting for work. Case in point: Danny Pintauro of “Who’s The Boss” apparently worked at The Gap for awhile. Don’t remember Danny Pintauro? That’s why he was working at The Gap!

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.

Gottschalks to Return From the Dead?

OK, file this one under “WTF:”

Defunct California department store chain Gottschalks–who were claimed about a year ago by the recession–may be re-emerging under their old banner in some locations, starting with the Sierra Vista Mall in the Fresno suburb of Clovis:

Joe Levy wants to begin reviving the Gottschalk brand in Clovis, opening the first in a chain of “leaner and meaner” department stores on Nov. 1.

The former Gottschalks store in Sierra Vista Mall would become the flagship store and corporate headquarters for “Gottschalk by Joe Levy Inc.,” a company created by the now-defunct retailer’s former CEO. The new retailer uses a variant of its predecessor’s name to avoid legal concerns while promising to bring back the kind of store many Valley shoppers still love.

Although Gottschalks was far from hip, they did have their fans. Some of the vacant stores have been filled by Forever 21, which, um, appeals to a pretty different demographic:

“A Gottschalks-style store could go back into Century Center and do very well,” he said. “I think there is a void in Modesto and in the Central Valley for stores like that. My 88-year-old mom, for example, loved Gottschalks. She wouldn’t go to Forever 21.”

I, for one, welcome our new zombie retail overlords! Gottschalks was kind of a quirky old store to have around and this type of thing doesn’t happen often.

Northshore Mall; Peabody, Massachusetts

Strangely, the malls that we have some degree of personal attachment to seem like the hardest ones to post. Neither Prangeway nor I have posted the ones closest to our houses yet, for example, and although I have a cache of photos of malls all over the country, I don’t have a lot of the ones in the Bay Area (where I actually live) yet.

Possibly that’s why it took so long to get around to posting the Northshore Mall, a massive super-regional mall on the north shore of Massachusetts, approximately 25 miles northeast of Boston. For about four years from 2001 to 2005, I worked in a Newbury Comics record store just a quarter of a mile down the street from this mall, so I was here all the time, whether it was to scarf down some Umi from the food court to lunch, or just to pick up some new shirts after work. To this day, I can’t go to this mall without spotting a bunch of familiar faces–maybe not necessarily people I know personally, but people I remember as customers at my record store. I was way into malls well before my stint working in the shadows of one, but I was never as immersed in mall culture as much as I was during that era. As a result, I still have some pretty warm, fuzzy feelings about the people in that area.

In addition to all of this, the Northshore Mall is one of the oldest malls in New England. At 1,684,718 square feet, it’s also one of the largest malls in New England. At a time, when the mall still had its gargantuan old Jordan Marsh store, it was even larger. For a brief time, it was the largest overall mall in New England, even, which is strange since (aside from anchor stores) the mall exists primarily on a single level and only has around 120 stores. But like many old behemoth malls built in the northeast, Northshore had so many hulking anchor stores that the total square footage was very significant. In short, though, this mall has been through so many changes over the years, it’ll make your head spin. And it just recently changed significantly all over again. Let’s dig into the details.

Peabody, Massachusetts is a large suburb about a half an hour north of Boston, centrally located amongst a cluster of densely populated cities and suburbs that date to colonial times. Salem, made famous for its witch trials, is located only a few miles from the mall, and other storied New England seaside cities such as Gloucester, Rockport, Beverly, and Newburyport are all in this economically diverse, somewhat-suburban, somewhat self-contained region north of Boston. In the post-war era, the area began to change, with increased suburbanization in all directions, due in large part to the recently-constructed route 128 beltway and Interstate 95. Although the region has gone through many changes over the years, much of the area today would still be recognizable to a resident from 50 years ago due to the historicity/preservation of the cities, and zoning policies that have mostly preserved the rural character of the less-developed (and subsequently, fairly affluent) towns in the area.

The Northshore Mall was originally developed on route 114 in Peabody, Massachusetts, by Allied Stores (then parent of Jordan Marsh) as a completely outdoor shopping center in 1958, replacing an old estate with gardens, fountains, and a farm. The center had actually been planned as early as the late 1940s for a different site in nearby Beverly (and some books on retail history, including at least one Victor Gruen book, have renderings of this original proposal), but this site was later chosen for unknown reasons. It’s likely that developers knew even then that the site was very strategic: it offers great access to freeways and both the long-established, dense cities clustered along the north shore but also to the many then-burgeoning suburban areas further inland to the west. Originally, the center was anchored by a large, four-story Jordan Marsh store, as well as a smaller (adjoining) Filene’s store, along with Kresge, J.J. Newberry, RH Stearns, and Stop & Shop. The center was truly multi-purpose, also featuring a small amusement park, a cinema, and a bowling alley. The mall was also developed with a then-unique underground delivery tunnel running the length of the mall. At the time, snow removal for the main concourse of the outdoor mall was performed by dropping snow onto trucks in the tunnel and trucking it out of the center.

In 1960, the St. Therese Society of Mt. Carmel Chapel opened in the mall’s basement, becoming the first chapel in a shopping mall (and paving the way for another Carmelite chapel to be opened later, in New Jersey’s Bergen Mall). Sometime during the 1970s, a Sears anchor was added to the front of the center.

In 1972, New England Development constructed the Liberty Tree Mall, a fully-enclosed 1 million square foot center, only a half a mile away from Northshore Mall. The new enclosed mall made an immediate splash and became a major shopping destination, despite not having a similar roster of old-line department stores like Jordan Marsh and Filene’s (Liberty Tree sported a far more middle-tier blend of stores like Ann & Hope and Lechmere). In response, the Northshore Mall slowly began to enclose, beginning with a small section near Sears and ultimately enclosing the entire center.

In 1986, Allied sold the Northshore Mall to Edward J. DeBartolo Sr., who in turn sold it to New England Development in 1992. As New England Development now owned both of the large, competing malls, they began a major expansion and renovation of the Northshore Mall that increased the size of the mall considerably. Filene’s moved their store to a new location at the western end of the mall, and a new Lord & Taylor store was added to that side of the mall as well. The original Filene’s space was filled with JCPenney–still somewhat of a rarity in the Boston area, even today–and the entire center was given a modern refresh with skylights and a food court. Other than a sale of both malls to Simon in 1999, the only change at Northshore until the mid-2000s was the re-bannering of Jordan Marsh to Macy’s in 1996.

In 2005, after the Federated-May merger, things began to get very interesting again. Post-merger, May had three stores at the Northshore Mall, occupying nearly half of the square footage of the entire mall. Especially troubling was the large, four story Macy’s store, which was one of the last remaining portions of the original 1958 structure. Impractically large for a one-level mall, Federated made the decision to close the store and move Macy’s to the former Filene’s space. At about the same time, they decided to shut the mall’s Lord & Taylor store, leaving two anchors at the mall completely dark. This would be somewhat temporary, however, as Federated soon split out the Macy’s store into two locations, with Mens & Home moving into the former Lord & Taylor.

The former Macy’s, however, was an entirely different story. Simon landed Nordstrom as a replacement tenant, but rather than trying to occupy part of the over-large old Jordan Marsh space, the 50 year old anchor was demolished entirely. Simon built an entire new two-level wing (in contrast to the mall’s single-level orientation) with soaring skylights and new tenants including Zara and Forever 21 to lead to the new Nordstrom store, and the expansion opened in November 2009.

Interestingly, disconnected portions of the basement have had stores at various times in the mall’s history. There’s a small, abandoned space that once housed a Kitchen Etc (and was accessible only from outside or by elevator), tucked next to the former Lord & Taylor. The Carmelite Chapel still operates in a small portion of the basement towards the front of the mall, and there is a small basement area underneath the food court with Filene’s Basement and a golf store. At the center court, there is a small basement level that once housed Sam Goody; today it has access to both Forever 21 and H&M. The first level of the new two level wing is also at the basement level of the mall, but does not connect directly with other portions of the basement.

Are you confused? You should be. Although I always thought of the Northshore Mall as pretty straightforward (and I went to the place often enough that I got pretty darn bored of it), a lot of the recent expansions have transformed the floorplan into something of an oddity. We have something of a soft spot for malls that randomly sprout new levels (*cough* Merle Hay) and the way the new wing opens dramatically and unexpectedly from the narrow, twisty main corridor is kind of a fun surprise.

There are a lot of random photos of this mall. Most date from two trips: the first ten are from one in summer 2001, and most of the rest from another in December 2009 after the most recent expansion. There are also several old shots taken from old postcards of the mall, one aerial shot (from Bing Bird’s Eye view), and one shot of the old Jordan Marsh store mid-demolition in September 2007.

Logorama: Fun With Logos

Logorama from Marc Altshuler – Human Music on Vimeo.

Logorama is an outstanding short film that’s made of nothing but corporate logos, and it’s a great piece of fun pop art. Directed by the French animation collective H5, François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy + Ludovic Houplain, it was presented at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. It opened the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and won a 2010 academy award under the category of animated short.

I think at least some of you will like this! It’s nothing short of adorable, though I warn you that there’s some NSFW language.

Warwick Mall; Warwick, Rhode Island

UPDATE 4/3/2010: I’m resurfacing this post from 2006 specifically because the Warwick Mall has been all over the news this week. Rhode Island’s Warwick Mall was a victim of a flood that was the worst Rhode Island has seen in 200 years, and the entire mall was buried under 2+ feet of water (and as much as 6ft in some places) and is currently closed indefinitely for a rebuilding and cleaning effort. Although the future of the mall is somewhat in question, it seems likely that the still locally-owned mall will be repaired and reopened in roughly the same state it was in before. Scroll down for some updates on the flood itself, along with photos (and links to more) of the Warwick Mall flood of 2010. Also, one unsubstantiated (and possibly strange) potential impact of this: the neighboring (and very, very dead) Rhode Island Mall has been rumored as a potential site for some short term leases for stores that were displaced in the flooding. Could this be the beginning of a return for Rhode Island’s only Gruen-designed shopping mall?

The Warwick Mall is a 1 million square foot enclosed shopping mall at the junction of interstate 295 and RI-2 in Warwick, Rhode Island. It is immediately across the freeway from the beleaguered Rhode Island Mall, which we’ve posted about before, though I wouldn’t say that the Warwick Mall was responsible for killing it.

Warwick Mall opened in 1972, just a few years after the adjacent Rhode Island Mall (which was then called the Midland Mall). For a very long time, the two malls coexisted very peacefully. Rhode Island Mall was anchored by G. Fox and Sears, while Warwick Mall featured Rhode Island’s first outlets of Boston-based department stores Filene’s and Jordan Marsh, along with branches of downtown Providence department stores Peerless and The Outlet, as well as a Woolworth. The JCPenney building at the west end of the mall was almost certainly added later, and Caldor replaced The Outlet some time in the early 1980s. Despite that Warwick Mall was almost twice the size of the Rhode Island Mall, it houses only seventy stores. This is because it houses six anchors instead of two, and the large size of these anchors and in-line store spaces. The Jordan Marsh store alone housed more than 300,000 square feet of floor space.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Warwick area became the king of Rhode Island retail, and the route 2 corridor became a boomtown of strip malls, stretching miles to the north and south. Both malls profited and continued to thrive, but by the late 1980s, the Rhode Island Mall may have gained a slight edge via a renovation and addition of a food court, plus its ability to actually hold more tenants in spite of its smaller size. The Warwick Mall responded with a 1991 renovation, which added the arched trellis ceilings you see in these photos today, and removed many of the mall’s more vintage elements, such as the sunken sitting areas, extensive greenery, large fountains, and statues. The mall’s historic clock does remain, along with a much smaller version of the center court fountain. Prior to the renovation, the Warwick Mall’s center court featured a large penny fountain with a large, vaguely Grecian statue. I wish I had some vintage photos of this mall, because the way I remember it as a child was truly stunning–very much the model of a “classic” shopping mall. One of my favorite features was a sunken sitting area in the center of the mall which housed an Orange Julius (the kind with the “wall of oranges” facade).

In addition, the renovation replaced the departed Peerless anchor with a large food court. Around this time (I’m not sure of the exact date), Woolworth’s also departed the mall and was replaced with an extremely large Express/Bath and Body Works/Structure combination store, which still has its own exterior entrance.

This 1991 renovation repositioned Warwick Mall as the dominant mall for the southern Providence suburbs, which is the status it retains today. Rhode Island Mall’s influence began to decline a few short years after the renovation when the May company acquired Filenes, and ultimately decided to shut their G. Fox store at Rhode Island Mall while expanding the Filene’s store at the Warwick Mall, adding to this mall’s overall square footage. The 1999 bankruptcy of Caldor didn’t phase the mall, as the space was filled relatively quickly with a large Old Navy store. Interestingly, however, the Caldor was a two-level anchor store, and the existing Old Navy is only one level, so the second level of the Caldor is not in use and could potentially even be something of a time capsule. Similarly, the 1999 opening of the massive and upscale Providence Place Mall had no measurable impact on the Warwick Mall, which has remained successful. A large Showcase Cinemas also opened on the mall’s outlots in 2000 or 2001.

In a strange twist, the Warwick Mall has remained privately owned throughout its entire history. Developed by Bliss Properties, Lloyd Bliss sold the mall to his son-in-law, Cranston City Councilman Aram Garabedian, the mall’s owner today. Today, the May/Federated merger has created the mall’s largest vacancy ever, with the 300,000 square foot former Macy’s/Jordan Marsh sitting dark. Garabedian has purchased the site from Federated and said he is exploring demolishing the structure (which, given its size, seems almost inevitable) and replacing it with a lifestyle component to anchor the southern end of the mall. While I agree that what the mall needs most is more in-line space (70 stores is tiny for such a dominant, super-regional mall), I’m not so jazzed about the lifestyle concept in general because I fear it will look tacked on. I’d rather see the mall receive a second level addition with a collection of alternative anchors at its southern end, but one challenge facing the Warwick Mall is that the success of its surrounding shopping district means that there are very few chains not already present. We’ll see. UPDATE 4/3/2010: Actually, the massive Jordan Marsh store was replaced with a Target store on the ground level, and a Sports Authority on the second level, as seen in many of the 2010 flood photos. At least one of my original 2006 predictions was correct!

Historic Jordan Marsh photos courtesy Michael Lisicky — Vintage Jordan Marsh photos courtesy Michael Lisicky

In the photos, be careful to notice the distinctive copper-green awnings of the former Jordan Marsh/Macy’s, and the unusually large facade that Old Navy has inherited by occupying just one level of a two-level store. And if you want more, check out the virtual tour on the official website!

UPDATE 3/31/2010: Massive flooding due to storms in New England caused the Warwick Mall to be completely flooded with over 2-3 feet of water inside the mall and more in the parking lot. At the moment, it remains to be seen when the mall will reopen. Initially it seemed the severity of the flood in the area of the mall was comparable to many of the malls around New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina that never reopened, but on closer inspection it appeared that the mall was not as heavily damaged as originally suspected. Mall owner Aram Garabedian has stated that the mall should reopen in a matter of weeks or months at most, though it will remain closed indefinitely. A security guard at the mall had to be rescued by boat, and some bunnies being used in Easter photo shoots at a photography studio were drowned in the flood. More pictures and story here, via the Huffington Post. Photo below via the Providence Journal.

Prangeway: Here are some more pictures of Warwick Mall from August 25, 2001.

Westfield Oakridge; San Jose, California

San Jose is the third largest city in California, and the largest city in the San Francisco Bay Area, trumping even the region’s more famous namesake city in population. San Jose, however, is a much different kind of city than San Francisco: sprawling and modern, built mostly in the automobile age, this formerly agricultural metropolis with around 1,000,000 residents is the hub of the world’s high tech industries, with many computer manufacturers and internet companies (Apple, Google, HP, etc.) all calling the region home. The San Jose MSA–even viewed separately from San Francisco–is one of the highest-income metropolitan areas in the United States and also amongst the most expensive places to live.

Because San Jose is mostly suburban in character–with much of it built in the post-war era and cris-crossed with massive boulevards and defined by tract housing–it’s surrounded by a bigger crop of malls than much of the rest of the Bay Area. We’ve already discussed the most prominent dead one–Cupertino Square/Vallco Fashion Park–but here are some tidbits about the most significant one serving the city’s mostly middle-class southern flank.

Westfield Oakridge (formerly known as “Westfield Shoppingtown Oakridge” or, originally, just “Oakridge Mall) is a large shopping mall located on the south side of San Jose, in the Almaden/Blossom Hill area. One of three malls along the Blossom Hill Road corridor and the largest by far, the mall is one of the largest and most dominant malls serving Silicon Valley and one of the largest overall in Northern California. Westfield Oakridge was originally built in 1971 by The Hahn Company, with anchors Montgomery Ward and Macy’s. A Bullock’s store was added somewhat later. Bullock’s closed in 1983 and was replaced by Nordstrom in 1985, when Nordies acquired all of Bullocks stores in the region. Unfortunately, the store underperformed and was sold to Sears in 1994, and they continue to occupy the space today.

Westfield bought the mall in 1998 and did their standard rebranding deal wherein they make the logo look like every other Westfield mall on the planet. Bigger changes came the following year when Target replaced bankrupt Montgomery Ward to anchor the mall’s eastern end in 1999. As you can see from the photos, the exterior of this Target store is *really* cool and modern but with quite a bit of the hip old verve of the department stores of the old days. I have to give Target credit; their mall anchor stores (and even their standalone multi-level stores) have some of the best new department store architecture today.

In 2003, Westfield decided to significantly upgrade and expand Oakridge with a $150,000,000+ renovation that added a new multiplex Century Theatres and tacked an entire new parallel wing in front of the old mall. This is a fairly standard tack for Westfield (they’ve done similar at other malls in Northern California, including Westfield Valley Fair and Westfield Roseville Galleria) and it created a distinctive “racetrack” design and significantly expanded the size and dominance of the one-level mall. Borders, Old Navy, and Nordstrom Rack (originally Linens N Things) also complete the roster as junior anchors, and there’s a restaurant row outside of the mall along the side facing Blossom Hill Road.

More on Westfield Oakridge from BigMallRat.
Aerial shot of the mall area.

East Hills Mall; Bakersfield, California

The East Hills Mall in Bakersfield, California is the smaller of the two malls serving this central valley city, and is one of California’s most troubled malls. All of the anchor stores–Harris, Gottschalks, and Mervyn’s–in the 415,000 square foot center have shut, and it serves an area of Bakersfield that is impacted heavily by both crime and the housing crisis of the late 2000s.

During the height of the economic collapse last winter, I took a trip to one of the most threatened malls in California: Bakersfield’s East Hills Mall. It doesn’t take a genius to see why this place is having a hard time, because it has practically everything stacked against it:

Its anchors are/were Gottschalks (which was, at this point, a few weeks shy of announcing that they were going out of business), Mervyn’s (whose stores had all just shuttered), and Harris, who were acquired several years ago by Gottschalks. The Harris store at East Hills Mall was shuttered a few years ago. This leaves only a United Artists Theatre as a major anchor tenant in the center.
It’s located in California’s Central Valley, one of the regions of the nation most heavily impacted by the precipitous drop in housing prices from 2007-2009
It’s located on the *EAST* side of Bakersfield, which is a higher-crime and lower-income part of town.
East Hills Mall isn’t a terribly large mall overall.

First, just a few notes about Bakersfield itself. Bakersfield is one of the largest cities in California’s central valley, located about 100 miles north of Los Angeles and due west of the Mojave Desert. The region has long been known for its oil production and agriculture, and was one of the prime spots for migrants from the Dust Bowl during the depression. As a result, the region has long held the honor of being California’s most conservative city, due to the influence of Evangelicalism and country music (Buck Owens and Merle Haggard were both from here, and Bakersfield is sometimes referred to as the Nashville of the west). In recent years, however, Bakersfield’s identity has been transforming from its Okie past as new residents–mainly from the Los Angeles area–have come to the area in search of cheaper housing. In addition, a significant number of immigrants from locations as diverse as Mexico, Phillippines, and many countries in the middle east and northern Africa. Bakersfield has even become known as something of a destination for Basque food, which isn’t easy to find just anywhere. Despite the city’s considerable growth, however, it does not remain much of a cultural hotbed, and has significant issues with poverty and crime (as well as a nasty history of racism), and its hot, dusty climate is one of the least favorable in California. With a population of around 330,000 in the city proper and approximately 800,000 in the entire metropolitan area, Bakersfield is the third largest inland metropolitan area in California after Sacramento and Fresno.

The East Hills Mall is one of only two enclosed malls serving the Bakersfield metropolitan area, and is the far smaller of the two. Unfortunately, there’s also almost nothing about the history of this unloved mall floating around on the internet. Judging by the architecture, it appears that the 415,000 square foot mall was probably built sometime in the late 1980s. Although we know Harris and Gottschalks were former anchors, I’m not entirely sure if the third anchor was originally a Mervyn’s–something about the architecture of the store tells me it may have been a Target originally (and there is a Target on the outlots of the parcel) but I’m not entirely sure if the timeline matches up for Target to have been in California at the time. I also wouldn’t be shocked if one of these anchors had at one point been a Montgomery Ward or a Robinson’s-May, but I am really guessing here. It does appear that the mall’s decline began a long time ago–late ’90s-ish, and was sold in 2003 to a developer who had a plan to modernize and expand the center, especially to cater to the growing suburban area in the city’s northeast hills. Bakersvillians, help us out!

When I visited in early January 2009, there was a robust plan to redevelop the center, bringing in new tenants and adding more of an entertainment and dining focus. A year later, the anchorless East Hills Mall filed for bankruptcy, its hopes dashed by the low likelihood of a housing rebound in this somewhat depressed corner of California. While the mall remains open, it serves as little more than a lobby for the movie theatres and a handful of local merchants who have been able to survive with so little foot traffic. The bankruptcy itself may also force even more dramatic changes–such as the (possibly likely) outcome that the mall will be demolished and completely replaced. Given its condition, that may not be a terrible option.

The Mall at Steamtown; Scranton, Pennsylvania

Steamtown Mall opened in 1993 as a keystone of Scranton’s downtown revitalization. Featuring nearly 100 stores and 564,000 square feet of retail space spread across two levels, the mall was wedged in the center of Scranton’s downtown area and was meant to bring shoppers and activity back to the region’s core city from suburban malls and shopping centers.

A couple weeks ago, I was going to post the Roosevelt Field Mall on Long Island–the biggest mall in the metropolitan NYC area, and an IM Pei-designed landmark–because it had a brief run in the news after a bunch of teenage girls waiting to see teen pop sensation Justin Bieber caused a riot. Pretty crazy stuff for someone no one had ever really even heard of, but nothing new I guess.

This reminded me, though, of another time I got caught in the middle of something similar, back in the summer of 2007. And I never posted THAT event, and I was there! So here we go.

On one of my (many) trips to go out and collect photos and do research for Labelscar, my sidekick and I wound up on a Friday night in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a faded old mill town in the northeastern part of the state that nowadays is mostly known as the setting for “The Office.” Normally one of the benefits of taking vacations in places like Scranton is that absolutely no one else is interested in doing the same thing, so hotel rooms can be had cheaply and with little notice. Not so this time: I used four or five online aggregators, tried going direct to hotel sites, and nothing–EVERYTHING was upwards of $100. Eventually, after an hour or so of digging, I managed to find a lone Days Inn that let me stay for a mere $88. And believe me, I’ve stayed in some terrible Days Inns, but this one might’ve been the worst.

The next morning, sidekick and I headed out to start our trek, and our second stop was The Mall at Steamtown, which is right in the center of downtown Scranton. Despite that we arrived before the place opened, it was weirdly, bizarrely packed. The parking garage was nearly full, there were people everywhere… I couldn’t make sense of it. We went in and it became immediately apparent.

Hannah Montana is here.

This of course explained not only the crowds but also the hotel pricing–because families were descending on Scranton from all over Appalachia for a peak at Ms. Montana. In retrospect it’s already a bit funny to talk about the Miley Cyrus (aka Ms. Montana) frenzy in the present tense–not because she’s DONE, or anything, but just because this Bieber dude and those celibate werewolves in that Twilight movie seem to have stolen her thunder. But anyway, the place was packed to the gills with dedicated and screamy teen girls who just needed to see their idol. And of course, there was me, a then-27 year old walking around with a camera surreptitiously taking pictures of the “architecture.” I did not look creepy. Not at all.

OK, here’s where we get a bit more serious: Scranton, Pennsylvania is an old industrial city of 76,000 located in the Lackawanna River Valley portion of Northeastern Pennsylvania, and is the lynchpin city of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre metropolitan region, which has around 560,000 people in total. Scranton was an industrial town that came of age in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century as a coal, iron, and steel town, and via the prosperity of these commodities grew to a population of 143,000 by the 1930s. Like many other industrial cities of this era, however, Scranton’s prosperity ended with World War 2, and went into steep decline for a long period through the 80s, when the region began to stabilize. Population losses have since slowed, although the region has struggled to replace the industries that were once its driving force.

The Mall at Steamtown opened in 1993 as a keystone of Scranton’s downtown revitalization. Featuring nearly 100 stores and 564,000 square feet of retail space spread across two levels, the mall was wedged in the center of Scranton’s downtown area and was meant to bring shoppers and activity back to the region’s core city from suburban malls and shopping centers. The mall was built with two original anchors–Montgomery Ward and Boscov’s–but it also contained a skywalk portion to connect to the historic downtown location of The Globe, a homegrown Scranton retailer, making for a third. This also made the mall’s total square footage a bit larger than what was really contained within the “mall” itself–closer to 700,000 square feet. The Steamtown Mall also featured one very unique feature–a pedestrian bridge from the mall’s food court that connected to the Steamtown National Historic Site, which contains exhibits honoring Scranton’s past as a railroad town.

Unfortunately, The Globe would last less than a year after the mall opened before shuttering. The space later became a Steve & Barry’s location, but since Steve & Barry’s went out of business the section of the mall has closed completely to the public. In addition, Montgomery Ward obviously shut their store at the mall at some point in the 1990s, and the space was quickly filled by The Bon-Ton.

By and large, the Mall at Steamtown does fairly well today as one of the main mid-tier malls in the region, even if there hasn’t been a dramatic impact on the surrounding downtown business district. In recent years, it (like Scranton in general) has been thrown back into the spotlight due to “The Office,” which takes great care to incorporate local landmarks as much as possible and has repeatedly referenced the center by name. There is at least one episode of the show that was set and at least partially filmed at the Steamtown Mall and in the mall’s parking garage, and the center has been referenced on the show many times (such as the site of the coffeehouse “Jitters”). As of summer 2007, when these photos were taken, there was also at least one vacant storefront that was dedicated to Office schwag as a nod to show.