Dead Malls - Labelscar: The Retail History Blog

Summit Place Mall; Waterford, Michigan

Dear readers, I’m back from my extended weekend in the Detroit area. Why Detroit, you ask? Well, the area has always fascinated me beyond belief. The way the entire city is this fallow wasteland, seeming as though it is sleeping, like some sort of urban garden that hasn’t been watered in a while. Juxtapose that with the booming, successful suburbs, which is where most of the commerce in the metro Detroit area takes place, and it makes for an interesting exploration. Not to mention all the abandoned neighborhoods that have been converted to this eerie urban prairie of overgrown grasses, trees, and weeds. And the malls. Nearly all of the malls in the metro Detroit area have some interesting design features about them, whether they’re extremely dated, nearly dead, or remarkably amazing and successful. Not surprisingly, Summit Place Mall in northwest suburban Waterford is no exception.

Summit Place Mall opened in 1962 along Telegraph Road in the midst of Oakland County’s suburban boom. While the mall is technically located in Waterford Township, across Telegraph is the city of Pontiac. Oakland county’s most urban city, Pontiac is definitely separate from the suburban millieu that sprawls across much of Oakland County; it is its own city, and grew up not only because of Detroit but in tandem with it as well. It should also be mentioned here that Oakland County is the richest county in the state of Michigan, and aside from the Grosse Pointe areas along the shores of Lake St. Clair, it houses the cities with the highest per-capita income. Essentially, when everything (and everyone) left the city of Detroit, it came to places like Oakland County, leaving behind massive swaths of wasteland in Detroit, but concurrently building up a sprawling infrastructure of suburbia: Interstate highways, subdivisions, commercial and industrial parks, and shopping malls.

When Summit Place Mall opened, it was much smaller than it is today. It had two anchor stores: Hudson’s and Montgomery Ward, and a row of stores along an enclosed hallway between them. In 1973, a Sears was attached to the north end of the mall; however, the mall portion was not extended to Sears. Instead, Sears was essentially a standalone store tacked onto the north side of the mall. Eventually, developers realized the potential with this burgeoning, successful property and opened a JCPenney store behind Wards on the west side of the mall in 1988. Also during 1988, the mall was extended to JCPenney from Ward’s and again extended to the north to Sears, making it mall accessible for the first time after 15 years. By 1990, the mall added a Mainstreet (later and currently Kohl’s) store between Wards and Sears and a new food court was built to accomodate trends and the massive shopping crowds. A Service Merchandise was also added to the Hudson’s (Marshall Field’s) end of the mall. During the 1990s, this mall was the place to be. Several large strip malls were built on the outlots or just across from the mall, including a Sam’s Club, Target, HQ, Builders Square, Circuit City, major grocery, Sports Authority, and Best Buy, with space for even more.

The pinnacle of success was breached in about 1995, with the closure of HQ in the plaza on the north outlot of the mall. Shockingly, and as a testament to the mall’s dramatically fast failure, the HQ stands vacant and preserved today. However, the mall continued to prosper into the late 1990s until a deafening blow came with the opening of Great Lakes Crossing, a major, outlet/hybrid (think the Mills malls) enclosed mall in Auburn Hills, just a few miles away. The grocery store (Farmer Jack) and Sports Authority closed up shop, leaving more vacancies in the outlots. In 2001, the mall saw more changes and another blow as Montgomery Ward closed up shop. Also in 2001, Hudson’s was rebranded Marshall Fields, though the store essentially remained the same aside from the name change. Many national brand retailers left the mall for greener pastures (Great Lakes Crossing) and also stores in the outlots left as well. From the late 90s to the early 2000s, the mall’s vacancy rate jumped from 20% to 50%. The mall was sold.

Today, there are talks about what can be done with this giant center to make it profitable again. In her Oakland Press article, Lara Mossa wrote that in November of 2005 there were plans to demolish approximately half of the center and replace it with housing, making the mall a mixed-use development. She also reported that the new owner Namco also wanted to put a water park in the mall, but was unable to find the financing to do so. The article also reports the dramatically fast downturn of the mall. As recently as 1998, the mall employed 1800 people; today it employs 400. Other reports from more unofficial sources have heard rumors that the entire mall will be torn down for a condo development.

The decor of Summit Place is also interesting. Since many stores abruptly left since the late 1990s, many storefronts which are vacant are quite dated. Some vacant storefronts have ads for other stores in the mall, notably for Marshall Field’s. A large child’s play area sits on the concourse with the most stores, the original concourse between Marshall Field’s and dead Montgomery Ward. Between Montgomery Ward and Sears the stores are sparse, and all the way down by the Kohl’s wing there is almost no activity whatsoever. The food court has one lone pretzel vendor. Between Montgomery Ward and Sears there is also a very strange display of plastic trees and stuffed animals that is almost disturbing.

What will become of Summit Place Mall? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: the 1.5 million square foot center is far too large for its current demand. However sad the mall is, though, people still continue to shop there. The Marshall Field’s is slated to become a Macy’s in mid-2006 and will not close, at least right away. The Sears and Kohl’s at the mall do fine for themselves, it’s just the two dozen or so remaining tenants in the mall that are problematic. If anyone has any more info, contributions are always welcome. Pictures taken by me, July 2006.

2009 UPDATE: After protracted suffering, Summit Place Mall officially closed in September 2009.

Rolling Acres Mall; Akron, Ohio

Rolling Acres Mall is a sad, forgotten behemoth of a mall located in the southwest corner of Akron, Ohio. Due largely to renovations at other Akron-area malls, the nationwide trend away from enclosed dinosaur malls, and possibly the region’s downfall as a whole, Rolling Acres Mall has fallen on some very hard times recently.

Rolling Acres Mall opened with huge fanfare in August of 1975. During the grand opening, Sears opened with 21 other stores in its court on the north end of the mall. Before long, JCPenney and Montgomery Ward followed suit and opened their anchor stores onto the mall. Around this time, the mall featured typical mod 70s decor, a funky yellow “bubble elevator”, and a large aquarium in front of Wards. Sunken seating areas on the upper level would later be removed to give a more open feel to the center. It sounded like a great place to be, and it was. It quickly became the dominant center in Akron, which also boasted two previously-existing malls: Summit Mall and Chapel Hill Mall.

In 1978, a major expansion of the mall took place, adding a food court, in-line mall space on a new lower level at the south end of the mall, and O’Neil’s department store.

The mid 1980s saw continued success of Rolling Acres Mall through more popular national chains, and space in the mall was premium. Montgomery Ward closed, but it was replaced by Higbee’s which eventually became Dillards (and remains today). Also during this time the mall’s decor was updated, replacing some of the mod 70s colors with the pink and teal colors popular during the mid-1980s. The food court was renamed Picnic Place and remodeled with a vague Victorian-era look, which looks odd amid the rest of the mall’s design. It remains today.

During the late 80s and 1990s, a changing national retail landscape combined with extensive renovations and repositioning at other centers around Akron sealed the mall’s fate into the sad state it is today. Stores that once flanked Rolling Acres like Merry Go Round, County Seat, Petrie’s, and Chess King all folded at the national level, leaving holes at Rolling Acres. In 1997, Summit Mall in the now-booming retail area around northwest Akron got an extensive remodel and repositioned itself to receive the popular stores that would replace the ones that closed at Rolling Acres. It was around this time that the area around Rolling Acres experienced decline as well. Across the street are several dead plazas including one that was a Child World location. It was also around this time that JCPenney became JCPenney outlet, and Rolling Acres received its final addition: a Target store connected to a new, small wing off the food court in 1995.

Today, the mall’s condition is pretty bleak. Although the mall isn’t completely dead, I’d say it’s running with less than half a tank. In 2006, Target left the mall and opened in a new strip center 7 miles to the west in Wadsworth. The rest of the anchors remain; however, time will tell if Macy’s will keep the store during the conversion from Kaufmann’s, or for very long thereafter. As with many dead malls, a fan base has developed around the mall and its current condition. In fact, someone even created and maintains a myspace page as well as a fan site for the mall. This is, of course, not to be confused with the mall’s official website. All the pictures posted below are mine and were taken during the summer of 2005. As always, please leave comments about updates and/or corrections; they’re much appreciated.

UPDATE 1/28/07: The sale of the former Dillard’s and Target locations are underway. An auction will be held to sell the former 125,000 square-foot Dillard’s store on February 7, and the 98,000 square-foot former Target store will be purchased by Akron Commercial Development LLC by the end of this week. The Akron Beacon Journal reports that although speculation has emerged concerning the conversion of Rolling Acres Mall to a mixed-use hybridized retail/office center, these former anchors will be retail.

UPDATE 6/25/08: I just went to Rolling Acres on Sunday and it’s in really sad shape. All the info Mary has provided (in the comments) is accurate. None of the escalators are operating, so you have to take stairs between the lower and upper levels. Both JCPenney Outlet and Sears are open and have access into the mall during business hours (though JCPenney only opens to the upper level). The fountains are off, and the mall directories are at least a couple years out of date, though they indicate Macy’s as an anchor. Macy’s came to the mall in September 2006 when they ate Kaufmann’s, and then closed in February 2008. There are numerous issues with the degradation of the flooring, as many of the tiles have chipped off and have just been left as is. The ceiling has numerous leaks, as well as many spots on the floor beneath them. I thought this place was in bad shape when I first came here 3 years ago, but man, it’s incredible that the mall is even still open in this condition. Keep us posted on the deathwatch!

UPDATE 3/31/12: The Rolling Acres Mall is now closed permanently. The mall itself died with a whimper in October 2008 when the power company cut off electricity due to non-payment. Sears and the JCPenney Outlet Store continued to operate while the interior of the mall was sealed and left to rot. Three years later, in 2011, Sears and JCPenney Outlet both left the mall entirely, leaving the center 100% abandoned.

Lincoln Mall; Lincoln, Rhode Island

Prologue: Like all of the enclosed shopping malls in the state where I grew up, Lincoln Mall holds a special place in my heart. It was an accidental trip there in January 1998 that began my modern fascination with malls, and–quite literally–how the “other half” lives. When I say “other half,” I’m talking about a geographic (not economic) disparity. I lived in the suburbs south of Providence, and Lincoln Mall existed in the northern suburbs. As such, I very rarely had cause to go there, and it was during one leisurely visit spent people-watching on a rainy day that the whole mall obsession really dug its claws in. This was the other side of my city, with totally different people shopping in a totally different shopping mall, yet I didn’t know it or them. From then on, I’ve always had (in every way) to know what’s around the next bend.

Rhode Island’s Lincoln Mall was built in the mid-1970s at the junction of routes 116, 146, and I-295 in Lincoln, Rhode Island. At a little over half a million square feet, the mall was mid-sized, and its design–one long hallway with a 45 degree crook in the center and anchors at each end–was relatively standard for the time. The mall was initially anchored by Zayre and Woolco, with three junior anchors: Cherry & Webb, Peerless, and a movie theatre.

Tenants would shuffle about over the years, and by the mid-1980s, Caldor would replace the Woolco and Kmart would build a rather shiny and attractive store in the former Zayre space. Despite these decidedly mid-market tenants, the Lincoln Mall did quite well and courted a large roster of standard mall tenants such as The Gap and Lerner. One long-time fixture was the Christmastime presence of “Randy the Talking Reindeer,” a Santa Claus-like attraction that was advertised heavily on Providente television every year.

The mall was also the only mall serving the relatively populous Woonsocket trade area, and is located near the sprawling CVS Pharmacy Headquarters, the Amica Insurance Headquarters, and a large Fidelity Investments office campus, all of which would bring well-paying jobs into the area for many years. There is very little other chain retail located around the mall, which likely served it well in its earlier years but hurt it in later years as it was impossible to cross-shop with other big box chains, all of which were 15 minutes away.

Like many malls of its type, Lincoln Mall took many hard hits through the years. Built as one of the first wave of enclosed malls constructed around Providence, it was the lone mall in the city’s northern suburbs until the late 1980s and had no immediate competition. In 1989, the massive Emerald Square Mall (with 170 or so stores spread across three levels) would open a few miles away just over the Massachusetts border, but the mall would be relatively unaffected by its presence, continuing its operations prosperously for another decade. In 1999, Lincoln Mall was hit with twin challenges: the even larger (and very upscale) Providence Place Mall opened up, also about ten minutes away, and the mall lost Caldor when the entire chain folded. For awhile, the mall limped a bit, but was given a major boost with an extensive (mainly exterior) renovation in 2000. Despite the loss of many of its junior anchors, the mall rebounded by replacing them: Pay/Half moved into the Cherry & Webb space, HomeGoods took the long-underused Peerless space, and the movie theatres were taken over by a medical center. The Caldor anchor was mostly demolished and replaced by a Stop & Shop, which (for obvious reasons) did not open into the mall. It did, however, drive traffic, and the mall continued on. Eventually, Marshalls took the remainder of the former Caldor space and a tiny bit of the old mall and acted as the mall’s eastern anchor. As recently as January 2003, the mall was almost fully leased.

Also, in 2002, another major contender opened just a few exits away at US-44 and I-295. Smithfield Crossing is a large outdoor shopping center that hosts many traditional mall tenants and wooed some tenants (such as The Gap) away from Lincoln Mall. It would have more of an impact on the Lincoln Mall than either Emerald Square Mall or Providence Place.

Unfortunately Kmart would close their 110,000 square foot Lincoln Mall store as part of a round of closings in 2003, and the loss would impact the mall severely. Stores began emptying out at an alarming pace and by February 2004 the mall was over 50% vacant. The still newly-opened Marshalls also shut their mall entrance, dooming the mall. The center was sold to WP Realty at about this time, and they announced plans to demolish much of the mall and replace it with an outward-facing plaza. Demolition began in mid to late 2004.

Now, the mall is an extremely strange mall and plaza hybrid. The majority of the western Kmart wing was demolished in 2004 and has been replaced by an outdoor strip plaza anchored by a Target. The eastern wing was also largely big-boxed, with Marshalls, Home Goods, and a party store having exterior entrances only.

Strangely, two pieces of the mall interior remain. The cross hallway (and eastern entrance) closest to Marshalls (former Caldor) has remained in place–and remained open–seemingly so patrons can access a nail salon hidden deep inside of the old mall. Notice that the Marshalls sign above their shuttered interior entrance actually remains! I recorded this anomaly with this picture:

Similarly, most of the center court area of the mall was not big boxed and in fact remains today exactly as it always has been. There is a mall entrance in the front to access the center court, and there remains room for about 20 stores in the mall’s interior. Many of them (well over half) are vacant. Despite having frontage with the side of the Target store, it does not open into the mall, and the other end of the mall faces Career Education Institute, a job training school that’s long been a tenant at the mall even when it was successful. They moved to this larger space, taking up much of the interior of the old hallway (and separating this part of the mall from the dead area near the Marshalls, shown above).

In addition, a rather large “Cinema World” movie theatre was added to the back of the mall as a part of this renovation. It seems that the center court of the Lincoln Mall is now acting as a de-facto movie theatre lobby, and in fact the only new tenant to open inside of the enclosed portion of the mall during this time has been a Subway.

I’m not sure why the enclosed portion of the Lincoln Mall was kept, but I’m grateful for it. It does raise some false hopes; if Target would knock down the wall separating them from the mall, and if the CEI space was removed, then about 66% of the original mall from Target to Marshalls could be reopened and could again function as the enclosed mall it always was. Will this happen? Sadly, almost certainly not. But is this one of the stranger repositionings that I’ve seen? Absolutely. It’s puzzling as to why WP Realty would keep the center court yet not have mall access to abutting anchors, such as Target. There’s enough of the mall remaining to have a substantial enclosed center still, but as it is now its doomed to be a low-rent haven with little visibility.

I took all these pictures a couple weeks ago, and in the time since that the Lincoln Mall was recently sold again.

Prangeway: I visited Lincoln Mall on August 25, 2001 and took the following pictures. It’s interesting how mostly successful the mall was when I visited and how many changes it has gone through to become the “Frankenmall” it is today. Hopefully the new owners have a long-term vision for the mall and aren’t essentially just winging it with this fragile little mall.

Western Plaza; Amarillo, Texas

I discovered this gem of a dead mall while on a road trip to California in July of 2004. Now, Amarillo was a strange place for me to begin with. Something about the flat, wide open spaces on the way into town, and the many signs along I-40 advertising the Big Texan Steak Ranch, where if you eat 4.5 pounds of steak in an hour it’s free. Something about the way I-40 seemed to be the main commercial corridor for Amarillo, and the rest of the city seemed to be locked in a mild slumber. Amarillo’s definitely unique.

When I first saw Western Plaza beneath I-40, I was immediately alarmed to the fact that this mall might no longer be open. Shockingly, it was open, so we went in. Inside were less than a handful (no, really) of stores open, including a Furr’s Cafeteria and a local dance club. The decor inside the mall was ancient. The mall had clearly not been renovated at any point in its history, and although I’m unsure as to the age of the mall I’d bet money that it’s at least from the early 1970s. However, as of my visit I’d say the mall was kept in good condition.

There are definitely some pieces missing to the mall’s story. From what I’ve gathered, the mall was interestingly the location of the first Hastings store in the chain, which opened in 1968. So, I’m guessing it’s about that old. Through the 1970s, the mall enjoyed a great deal of popularity, and had stores like Radio Shack, Orange Julius, Woolco, Montgomery Ward, and Dunlaps. In 1982, Amarillo’s successful, larger Westgate Mall opened just west of Western Plaza along I-40. This probably had a lot to do with the downfall of Western Plaza, as Westgate has all the typical mall stores that any major superregional center would have. In 1997, a tragedy occurred at the mall when a well-known local young man was murdered in the parking lot. An article from 1999 cited the mall as a clustering of hispanic stores serving that community. When I visited in 2004, even this was gone, and nothing was left to replace it. There were far more senior citizens walking the mall than stores for them to shop in. In 2005, it was reported that the mall was no longer heated in the winter and people could see their breath inside the mall. In June, 2006, the Western Plaza mall sign came down, and plans were in the works to eventually raze the entire center and build a new retail development. The Furr’s location has also closed. No word as to whether or not the center is in fact still open for walking.

Obviously there are some missing links in the history of Western Plaza. I’m interested in what exactly the mall’s anchors were, and did the mall fall down fast or was it a slow, gradual death? Maybe there are other factors that led to the mall’s failure. Have any more information? Please feel free to contact me or leave a comment. All photos taken July 2004.

Heritage Village Shops (formerly Beaver Dam Mall); Beaver Dam, Wisconsin

Beaver Dam Mall is a one-story, small enclosed shopping center located at the interchange of Hwy 151 and Business 151 North in Beaver Dam, WI (population: 15,000). Beaver Dam Mall opened in 1980, anchored by Woolco, Minnesota-based Herberger’s, and JCPenney. It was presumably built as part of the growing national trend for any decent sized city in America to have a shopping mall. The Hwy 151 bypass around Beaver Dam was slated for completion and the mall would be located on it, spurring a commercial strip along Business 151 leading north from downtown.

In 1983, the entire Woolco chain folded and that anchor closed. Not long after it was replaced with Wal-Mart. During the 1990s, Herberger’s was eventually acquired by the same company that operates Boston Store and Younkers. By the mid-2000s all the stores owned by this company (Boston Store, Carson Pirie Scott, Younkers, Herbergers, Bergners) would brand exactly the same. In August of 2004, Wal-Mart opened a brand new Supercenter across Highway 151 from the mall and closed their smaller mall store; the mall parcel remains empty today. In January of 2005, JCPenney decided to throw an axe chop into the efforts to kill the mall and made their swift departure as well. In the past few years the number of vacancies within the mall have also increased despite the fact that as recently as 2000, there were several ubiquitous mall chains such as Bath and Body Works still operating. Sadly, I would definitely classify this mall in its current state as almost beyond repair.

The floor plan of Beaver Dam Mall is shaped like a carat(^), with Herberger’s in the middle and JCPenney and Wal-Mart abutting the ends (before they closed). There are entrances on all sides, but the main entrance is in the middle in front of Herberger’s. The decor of the mall appears original (ca. 1980) with no large-scale renovations; however, planters and mall seating areas have been more recently updated. Some stores in the mall, such as Regis Hairstylists, were shockingly still using their early 1980s-era stained wooden storefront and logo. This Regis was in operation in April 2004. It has closed since. Also, the Aurora Pharmacy looked like it was once an Osco Drug, but I’m not certain.

Why is Beaver Dam Mall faltering? I would cite mismanagement along with the national trend away from enclosed malls and toward strip malls with outside-only access. We already know about that trend, so let’s focus on what’s happening in Beaver Dam specifically. For one, Beaver Dam was never really large enough to support this type of mall, which is much more typical of a city twice Beaver Dam’s size. Also, Beaver Dam is about a half hour of the 1 million square foot, recently renovated East Towne Mall and every big box store under the sun in Madison. Forest Mall and many stores in Fond du Lac are about the same distance. Beaver Dam Mall could have also attempted to make Kohl’s fill space in the mall vacated by Wal Mart, which left about the same time Kohl’s opened across the street from the mall. To that tune, they could have also wooed the stores opening in both strip malls attached to the new Wal-Mart and Kohl’s, respectively, to the mall.

What’s next for Beaver Dam Mall? In 2006, a Slumberland furniture will open in the former JCPenney space. However, there are still a very large number of vacancies in the mall as well as the dead Wal-Mart anchor. It’s obvious that they haven’t scrapped the idea of the mall entirely, allowing an anchor to add onto it, but why did they allow this to happen in the first place? The law of diminishing returns definitely applies to these types of situations, so does reinvesting in the mall by adding Slumberland as an anchor make any sense? Is really going to bring the type of traffic to the mall that the few stores that are open need to survive? The mall still has Herberger’s as its saving grace, but for how long? Only time will tell. Any updates and additions to the information I’ve posted would be greatly appreciated.

Photos: April, 2004. Full list of tenants, April 2004: Wal-Mart, Herberger’s, JCPenney, Aurora Pharmacy, Flamingo Bay, Sterling Optical, Floral Expressions, Regis Hairstylists, Freier’s Fine Jewelry, Wonder Nails, Alexandra Jewelers, Claire’s Boutique, GNC, Emerson’s Hallmark, China Palace, Carlson’s Travel, CR Communications, and many empty spaces. Tenant list, early 2006: Herbergers, Flamingo Bay, China Palace, Wonder Nails, Floral Expressions, Sterling Optical and Evenson’s Hallmark.

UPDATE 5/29/2008: A few interesting, significant changes have been afoot at the former Beaver Dam Mall since we first posted almost two years ago. First, the mall has been renamed to Heritage Village Shops and Professional Center. And, as one of our commenters posted last fall, ownership has changed hands. The new local ownership, consisting of Dick and Todd Hedberg, Dave Fister and Jeff Kitchen, has begun to woo retailers back to the center. In addition, the mall has a website for the first time. The new website for Heritage Village Shops indicates future plans for bringing in a mix of local and national retail chains, dining and recreation destinations, and office-y businesses. The website also focuses on an area in the mall where comfy chairs and furniture are available for relaxing, the mall walking program, the farmers market, floral shop, the Chinese buffet, and the fact that the mall is climate controlled – a selling point often overlooked for enclosed retail centers in extreme climates.

We think this is an excellent path for the mall and really the only way it could be reconstituted as viable without major renovations. Such a small mall in an equally small market can only survive with local ownership who are willing to monitor the mall and be there regularly to work on its progress. It was said that the former owner, who lived about 5 hours away in Minnesota, did not care about the mall and did little when it lost all its stores over the past several years. This new ownership, new name and new logo should inject a reinvigoration for the mall, and become an effective metaphor for the new owners and their readiness to fix things up.

Hopefully we will see Heritage Village prosper in time, or at least hold its own by providing an adequate tenant mix to keep people coming inside. But first, they need to get the ball rolling, because as of right now there are only a small handful of businesses operating inside, including anchors Herberger’s and Slumberland Furniture, which replaced the former JCPenney. Once one or two tenants are in, others may trickle in as well, like a retail domino effect, and hopefully people in the area won’t need to drive to Madison or Fond du Lac as much for their shopping.

One question I have for someone who has been to the mall recently: Does the Slumberland have access into the mall or just an exterior entrance? Is it even open? The mall’s website has a pdf which shows Slumberland, but the tenant roster does not indicate it at all. Hmmm.

Parkway Mall; Saint John, New Brunswick

This is going to be post number 112,495 where I apologize for the quality of the pictures taken with my old camera phone! Sorry! Eventually you’ll get tired of hearing me apologize for this (I know I’ve gotten tired of doing it), but you’ll forgive me when you see gems like these. Even when kicking it VGA-res style like it was still the grunge era, you can tell that the Parkway Mall in Saint John, New Brunswick is a gem. And guess what? It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere. So I probably won’t be back. This is what we get then.

Another thing about this mall: I don’t know anything about it and the good ol’ interweb won’t bail me out this time. I can say this: Saint John is a city of about 70,000, making it the largest in the province of New Brunswick. It’s very much a northern coastal city; it’s a sprawling blue collar city filled with oil tanks and paper mills and shipping ports, and it’s quite unlike most comparable New England cities. Saint John is also notable because–like many Canadian cities–it seems to have about one mall per every 10,000 residents. I saw five of these, but I may have missed two more! Don’t worry, I’ll post some fuzzy pics of those others someday. Eventually.

Parkway Mall is a relatively small center located at the intersection of McAllister Dr. and Westmorland Rd. on Saint John’s east side. It’s located directly across from McAllister Place, the city’s largest shopping mall and the reason I was in the area in the first place. Parkway Mall didn’t come up on my radar beforehand, and came as a very pleasant surprise. Despite being in the middle of the city’s most active retail district, these pictures illustrate that, as of when they were taken in June of 2005, the center had very little left operating inside. If I remember correctly, there was a shoe store and a dollar store, and “The Bargain! Shop,” which only had an exterior entrance.

As you can see, this one is a true dead mall gem. That sad little luncheonette in the center of the main mallway is my favorite; I can only imagine that when it was built, it was probably a really cool place. Those purple and blue stripes look like something I would’ve had on some cheap sneakers about 20 years back, too. The Parkway Mall is simply amazing, and worth a stop if you’re ever in the area (which is admittedly pretty unlikely). If you know any of the history of the mysterious Parkway Mall, please comment!

Rhode Island Mall; Warwick, Rhode Island

This is a tragic one.

When I was a kid, Rhode Island Mall was the mall. I always derisively labeled the neighboring Warwick Mall–the successful one today–as the “clothes mall.” Rhode Island Mall was the fun mall. It had the Aladdin’s Castle arcade, it had video game stores, toy stores, and everything else a kid would want. Now it has next to nothing: it’s one of the most notorious dead malls in New England.

What’s especially sad is that it didn’t have to be this way. The Rhode Island Mall had a long, long run as a big and successful center, and it died mostly due to a set of circumstances it couldn’t control and a few questionable management decisions.

Built in 1968 as the “Midland Mall,” this was the first suburban enclosed shopping mall in Rhode Island, and the first two level shopping mall in New England. Built on what was then remote swamplands, it was located next to I-95 and later I-295, and would be the catalyst for a massive amount of retail development that would turn this stretch of route 2 into “Rhode Island’s Main Street.” Providence experienced the greatest proportionate outmigration of any major American city in the post-war era, and Warwick, a suburb about 10 minutes south of the city, absorbed many of these residents, balooning to 85,000 people. To this day, Warwick is the second most populous city in Rhode Island, and many other suburbs in the area (such as neighboring Cranston, with a population of 75,000) are uncharacteristically large.

The Rhode Island Mall is a simple, two level dumbell style mall. It was built with a Sears store anchoring the mall’s west end. As far back as I can remember, the mall’s eastern anchor was a location of Hartford’s G. Fox chain, but it may not have been original to the mall. Despite a seemingly uninspiring layout, the mall is one of the widest and most open malls of its style that I’ve visited, lending the central common areas a certain grandiosity.

In 1972, the larger Warwick Mall opened just to the north of the then-still-Midland Mall. If you look at this satellite photo, you can see how the smaller Rhode Island Mall (at the bottom of the frame) is within a stone’s throw of the Warwick Mall. Warwick was more fashion-oriented from the start, and included Rhode Island’s first outlets of Boston mainstay department stores Filene’s and Jordan Marsh, so this presented a considerable challenge. However, because neither mall was terribly large and there was room for both to house stores without much overlap, they co-existed very peacefully for a long time. The presence of both malls made Warwick into one of the most major retail destinations in New England, and many of the shopping centers that line route 2 for miles in each direction sprung up during the era when both malls were thriving.

In 1984, The Midland Mall underwent an extensive renovation and rebranding, and this was when the Rhode Island Mall name was born. This was still relatively early for a mall to renovate since most of them were still in their infancy, and as such the mall received a substantial shot in the arm as a result. Mall owners added the glass elevator that’s present today, as well as a large food court on the second level outside G. Fox called the Greenhouse Cafes, which was the very first mall food court in the entire Providence metropolitan area. By the late 1980s, the Rhode Island Mall was so popular that management attempted to make room for more tenants by constructing temporary, cubicle-style spaces in the center of the mall’s wide first floor corridor.
Despite the opening of the 3-level, gargantuan Emerald Square Mall in North Attleboro, Massachusetts in 1989 (the first of the larger, more modern enclosed malls in metro Providence), the Rhode Island Mall didn’t suffer–the bigger mall was just a bit too far away, and the two malls combined were still larger than it. Even when Warwick Mall finally renovated in 1991, adding an even larger food court than the Rhode Island Mall, it didn’t seem to have an impact.

The beginning of the end came around 1994, when the G. Fox chain, which was owned by The May Companies, acquired Filene’s. Because Filene’s was the stronger regional nameplate, the G. Fox stores were converted to Filene’s. For a time, this G. Fox store (which was relatively small) was converted to Filene’s, but as there was already a larger Filene’s at the Warwick Mall next door this was extremely redundant and it was closed within a year or two of the rebranding.

That began the long and very slow death of the Rhode Island Mall. Despite that Sears was the lone anchor remaining, most of the stores remained in the mall despite dwindling business, holding on to the hope that the G. Fox store would be filled, but nothing came. By 1997, the vacancies began piling up, and by 1998 there were rumors that the mall would be torn down and converted to another use despite a still-healthy occupancy rate.

In 1999 or 2000, it was announced that the G. Fox store and approximately 1/3 of the mall (including the Greenhouse Cafes food court area, which was now completely vacant) would be demolished to make room for two new anchors. A Wal-Mart would open on the first level, and the tenant for the second level was unannounced. Wal-Mart constructed a store in 2000, but it did not open into the mall, leaving a temporary construction wall to greet patrons inside of the mall. Many speculated that construction could not be completed until a second anchor built a store atop the new Wal-Mart. In 2002, Kohl’s announced that they would be the Rhode Island Mall’s third anchor, and many expected this strong trio of mid-market anchors to bring the mall back to prosperity.

Unfortunately, when Kohl’s was completed, it too did not open into the mall and it became obvious that both had every intention of turning their backs on the mall–permanently. Convinced that the mall would never be anything more than a dead mall again without more anchors, nearly all of the remaining tenants cleared out, leaving the mall extremely barren and empty. Miraculously, the Rhode Island Mall remains open but today there are only about ten stores (out of a high in the late 1980s of close to a hundred) still operating inside of the mall.

I firmly believe that if Kohl’s and Wal-Mart had opened into the mall then the Rhode Island Mall would still be successful today. The neighboring Warwick Mall, despite its size (about a million square feet) has room for only about 70 stores and Rhode Island could still house an additional 50 or so. There is plenty of market demand in the area for such purposes, and the roster of Sears, Wal-Mart, and Kohl’s is relatively strong for a value-oriented mall.

I’ve heard that Royal Ahold (the parent company of Stop and Shop Supermarkets) has leased much of the interior of the mall with the intention of blocking Wal-Mart from being able to expand their store into a supercenter should the mall itself close. I’m not sure if this is true, but if so, I would hope that Ahold would find it in their interest to try and sub-lease that space to tenants, even if they’re charity cases like local retailers or public interest groups.

The following is a 1970 photo of the Midland Mall that I found on Keith Milford’s excellent (in fact, it’s a must-see) Malls of America blog. I’ve also tried to repeat the same shot today, though the mezzanine level of the staircase visible at left was removed in the 1984 renovation:

There are more pictures below, all taken June 11, 2006. A decade after the beginning of its agonizing, slow decline, the Rhode Island Mall is in sadder shape than ever. There are a few things to note. One photo shows the strange way in which Kohl’s is stacked above Wal-Mart, as visible from I-295. Also be sure to pay attention to the shots of the “temporary” construction wall that blocks the mall from Wal-Mart and Kohl’s. That wall has been in place since at least 2000.

Prangeway: I visited Rhode Island Mall on August 25, 2001 and took the pictures below. Note the Tape World store still in operation, the Thom McAn labelscar, and the fact that the Kohls and Wal-Mart “anchors” were under construction with a glimmer of hope that they may open up to the mall. Unfortunately they didn’t, and as a result most of the stores open in the photographs below have closed since then and the mall is currently on life support.

Newport Mall; Newport, Rhode Island

When we created this blog, the main purpose was to study retail history–to document the way shopping centers are now or were in the past, so that people in the future could have some record of them. Unfortunately, we’ve arrived a bit late–hundreds of malls throughout the United States have already been shuttered, and we don’t have pictures to remember all of them. The Newport Mall is one.

I need to preface my entry about the Newport Mall with a personal anecdote: I was born and raised in the Aquidneck Island town of Middletown, Rhode Island, in a house about three miles from this particular mall. Growing up, the Newport Mall was never particularly successful, and any serious shopping trip demanded a trek off of the island. Since this was the ’80s, malls seemed like a true cultural emblem. I learned about them through TV sitcoms, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and, later, Saved By the Bell, and always felt that we were somehow missing out on this cultural epicentre because our own mall was never able to ascend past being “dead.”

Of course, this isn’t entirely true: Newport is a thriving coastal tourist city, and courts millions of visitors a year. A stretch of Thames Street a little over a mile long in downtown Newport houses hundreds of stores and restaurants ranging from national chains to local institutions, and it is (and always has been) the true cultural and retail center of this area. Apart from the restrictive geography of the island, this is truly why the mall didn’t make it, especially since downtown Newport was the location of choice for most of the better chains that would’ve made their home in an enclosed mall elsewhere.

Still, the allure of the elusive “mall” was probably a big part of why I became so enamored with them, and the fact that my own hometown mall was a “dead mall” likely has something to do with why I became so fascinated with the failure of shopping centers in general.
Labelled 1995 satellite view of Newport Mall in Newport, RI
The Newport Mall opened in 1984. From its birth, it was kind of a hack-job; the developers merely enclosed an existing 1950s (or 60s?) vintage shopping center on J.T. Connell Road (Connell Highway to the locals) and added some extra sales space. The center’s original main anchor, WT Grant’s, had folded and was replaced with a JCPenney store (complete with a sit-down restaurant that had a separate mall entrance, a true rarity), and Peerless (one of the many local Providence downtown department store chains) opened a small outlet at the far end of the center. The center of the mall had been anchored by a Food Mart store with a garish lemon-and-lime color scheme that was distinctly of its era. When the mall was enclosed, Food Mart shoppers were forced to somewhat awkwardly wheel carts of groceries through the mall to get to their cars as the supermarket only had access into the mall. It would be replaced by a TJMaxx not long after the mall opened.

Consisting of about 300,000 square feet and with room for around 40 stores, the mall was not large but was relatively spread out. The decor was decidedly spartan, consisting of exposed steel beams in the ceiling, a large glass atrium at center court in front of TJMaxx, and relatively standard-issue planters and benches throughout the mall. The Newport Mall was also not located in one of the better parts of the city, surrounded on all sides by big city-style decaying public housing projects, and shoplifting was a terminal problem. During the peak of its life (around 1990 or 1991), the center housed about 30 stores, including Record Town, Waldenbooks, Foot Locker, Afterthoughts, Hallmark, Fashion Bug, and other stores that tended to flock to smaller malls. Unfortunately, throughout the center’s life, nearly every store that did open in the mall was located on the wing between JCPenney and TJMaxx. Bar longtime tenant Fashion Bug, no tenants were ever located between TJMaxx and Peerless, and at its best the mall reached about 60% occupancy. The Peerless store itself would not last long, closing a few short years after the mall opened and being replaced in the early ’90s by a West Marine that shunned the enclosed portion of the mall entirely, opening only into the parking lot.

The mall was barely able to survive throughout its entire 14-year existence. The fatal blow came in 1997 when JCPenney announced they were going to close their store at the mall on December 24, 1997. When the Christmas sales were completed, the store went dark and nearly every mall tenant followed shortly thereafter. By the following summer, only Foot Locker, Waldenbooks, TJMaxx, West Marine, and Fashion Bug remained. In fall of 1998, the enclosed portion of the mall (ironically the exact area that was added in the 1984 expansion) was demolished and the plaza was opened back up to the parking lot. The southern end of the mall was also expanded and reconfigured, and an entrance was added to Admiral Kalbfus Road (RI-138).

Because the mall began its life as an outdoor shopping center and is now again a strip mall (titled RK Newport Towne Center), anyone who visited the site today would find no trace of the center’s era as an enclosed mall. Anchored by Wal-Mart (who filled the former JCPenney), Super Stop and Shop (who demolished most of the always-empty southern wing), West Marine, Old Navy, a 99 Restaurant, and a slate of smaller tenants, it has been relatively successful in the past half-decade. Interestingly, TJMaxx and Foot Locker are the only two tenants who continue to operate in the exact same place they were located when the center was still enclosed.

Because the Newport Mall closed seven years ago and was never well-loved, I don’t have any photographs of the inside or outside. The best I can find is the black and white satellite view below, which shows how the enclosed addition (with the gray roofline with the white border) was grafted onto the existing shopping center (much of which has the black or white roofline). If you happen to know of some, I would greatly appreciate if you would email me and let me know.

1995 satellite view of Newport Mall in Newport, RI

Dutchess Mall; Fishkill, New York

In keeping with the theme of late, I wanted to post another find about a long-dead mall here in the northeast: The Dutchess Mall in Fishkill, New York. According to the website of the Dagar Group, the mall’s management company, it has very recently (finally) been torn down. I wouldn’t believe it, but this picture seems to prove it’s for real.

Located at the junction of US-9 and I-84, this ragged old mid-70s vintage mall has sat abandoned for nearly a decade. This half-a-million square-foot, simple-dumbell-style mall simply couldn’t compete with the larger titans further north on US-9; it’s actually one of four enclosed malls on the same strip. While one of those four is quite small, the other two–the massive Poughkeepsie Galleria and the large-yet-flailing South Hills Mall–both dwarf this poor old relic.

According to Dead Malls, the place once housed a Mays Department Store and local Poughkeepsie grocery chain Luckey Platt, but neither truly lasted long. The mall apparently was open until 1999, though when I first visited it in March 2000 it was already completely shuttered and had the feeling of having been abandoned for a very long time. The former Jamesway store at the north end of the complex sported a large, barn-like canopy that was eerily foreboding, and the Service Merchandise at the opposing end of the plaza had been converted to a flea market. There were few other signs of life, and the concrete interior floors had about as much charm as a subway station. While plenty of malls die due to demographic reasons or competition–and both certainly played their part here–I really think this place was just plain ugly.

I can’t take credit for this excellent set of photos— I found them all on a really cool website made by someone who refers to himself as Comrade Mr. Yamamoto. His website has even more than the sampling I’ve featured here, but he focuses mostly on road and transit geekery. As our crew is made up of across the board planning wonks–not just retail–we definitely feel like we’re kin. If you have an interest in photos of upstate New York freeway sign gantries, check out his site.

Mystic Mall; Chelsea, Massachusetts

In one of my inaugural posts about the Billerica Mall, I noted that it was one of four malls around the Boston area constructed with the same basic design. Mystic Mall is another, and it’s in the process of being torn down.

Before I wax poetic about the ol’ Mystic Mall, let me add a pair of disclaimers: I’m sorry for a) talking so much about Massachusetts and b) focusing so heavily on dead malls lately. The former is something of a necessity on my part given my location, but I do branch out often. Similarly, these two have converged in part because news has dictated it so: demolition efforts have begun at both the Billerica Mall and the Mystic Mall very recently, and I wanted to get these pictures up and send out an alert for any soul who may wish to swing by and take a look before it’s too late.

OK, now that we’ve got business out of the way, we can talk about Mystic Mall, a largely forgotten inner city mall that’s been shuttered for four years. Unlike the nearby Assembly Square Mall, which has made constant news since closing in 1999, the Mystic Mall is not located in a desirable location and its redevelopment hasn’t captured the imagination of ambitious New Urbanists. Like the Billerica Mall, the Mystic Mall was constructed in the early 1970s, and it housed a Market Basket (without a mall entrance) and a Kmart. While Billerica is deep in the northwestern suburbs of Boston, however, Mystic Mall is located in the heart of the dense urban city of Chelsea, built as part of a redevelopment effort in the middle of an eighteen-block swath of land that was destroyed by the Second Great Chelsea Fire of 1973.

From the outset, the little Mystic Mall had the deck stacked against it. Located on Everett Street a half mile off busy route 16–the main retail corridor for the area–and buried deep in a section of Chelsea known for gas fields, warehouses, strip clubs, and scrap yards–it wasn’t exactly in the middle of a shopping mecca. Like its three sister malls (the Billerica Mall, the Woburn Mall, and Weymouth’s Harbourlight Mall), Mystic Mall sports a brutalist, ’70s modern decor that’s heavy on such out-of-favor architectural characteristics as corduroy concrete. All four malls had about as much charm as a subway station, with dark interiors and exposed concrete walls. Furthermore, it was located within a few miles of several larger, more successful malls, mainly the Meadow Glen Mall in Medford and the Assembly Square Mall in Somerville. Lastly, crime in the area (or at least the impression of it being unsafe) largely kept away everyone but local residents.

What is weird about this place is that it hummed along relatively well until 2002. Granted, towards the end of its life, most of the stores inside were local, secondary tenants catering to the largely Latino local clientele, but it was mostly leased. Then in early 2002, it was announced that the mall was going to be redeveloped and it was rather abruptly shuttered and all of the stores vacated. The lone exception was one cross wing in front of the old Kmart, which had long since been taken over by a local furniture and housewares store called Adam’s, and two other local stores adjacent to it within the center. At the opposite end of the mall the Market Basket and Brooks Pharmacy stores, which both had exterior entrances, remained open. After this initial buzz of activity, however, the news on the center stopped coming, and it was just left to rot, making its abrupt abandonment even sadder.

While details are still hard to come by, it does seem as though the Mystic Mall is actually going to be demolished in the very near future. Several of the last remaining tenants have vacated the center (and Adam’s Furniture is apparently moving out) and the entire center of the mall has been gutted. Reportedly the two anchor buildings, which sit at opposite sides of the lot, will remain while the entire center of the mall is demolished.

I’m not really sure about Mystic Mall’s redevelopment prospects. Given its location, it wouldn’t make sense for residential and most of the successful retail development in the area is clustered a bit to the west, around busy Wellington Circle at routes 16 and 28. The best bet is probably to incorporate a smaller shopping center with industrial and office uses, especially since it’s difficult to find such a large and unbroken piece of real estate so close to the center of Boston.

The pictures below were all taken in late May, 2006. I wanted to highlight the one above in particular, because it’s kind of neat. You can (clearly!) see that this building was once a Speedy Muffler location, but before that it was the Kmart Auto Service center. It’s actually part of the main Kmart building in the mall.

Prangeway: Here are some vintage photos of Mystic Mall from August 24, 2001. They feature more of the interior of the mall, which was vacated and closed off in 2002 except for the area by Adam’s furniture. Also, one of the pictures is a candid of Caldor laughing at a vacated Deb Shop in the mall after we reminisced about how Deb’s fixtures and overall design in general were ridiculous up until the 1990s. The hanging metal trapeze-looking things and the store’s color scheme of purple, magenta, and sometimes bright green were very new-wave and would be considered kind of outrageous (and maybe a little S&M, if you know what I mean) today.