Dead Malls

[webny99]

In Rochester we had the old Irondequoit Mall, which basically died when JCPenneys (IIRC) pulled out and the other anchor stores followed suit. It was bought out and renamed the Medley Centre, which was a joke and a half from the get go. Except for Target (which is detached), the entire mall is still sitting there empty. Kind of creepy.

[US 89]

Salt Lake City has the Gateway Mall, which basically died when the City Creek Mall opened up three blocks to the east. Most of the stores moved there, and a lot of the others closed completely. It’s a shame, especially because the decline has caused the Mall and surrounding neighborhood to be much more dangerous than ten years ago, filled with homeless, drugs, etc.

[ftballfan]

Michigan has quite a few dead malls:

* Courtland Center (Burton) - Not as dead as some other malls on this list (still has JCPenney and appears to have decent occupancy)
* Rogers Plaza (Wyoming) - In a rough area and anchored by Montgomery Ward and Best Products; still around as a shopping center with stores like Family Fare (regional grocery chain) and OfficeMax
* North Kent Mall (Grand Rapids) - Anchored by Montgomery Ward and Kmart. The mall was demolished for a Lowe's in the early 2000s. Kmart remained open until 2016 and Wards was subdivided into three stores. More info: http://gr-retro.blogspot.com/2011/03/north-kent-mall.html
* Cherryland Mall (Traverse City) - Anchored by Sears, Kmart, and Younkers. Put out of business by a much larger and nicer mall in a better location with Hudson's (now Macy's), JCPenney, and Target. Still exists as a strip mall with Sears and Younkers (the Kmart closed last year): http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/cherryland_mall.html
* Universal Mall (Warren) - Anchored by Montgomery Ward, Mervyn's, and Value City, all of which filed for Chapter 7. Converted to a strip mall with Burlington Coat Factory and Marshalls as anchors: http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/universal_mall.html

[Flint1979]

Michigan has quite a few dead malls:

* Courtland Center (Burton) - Not as dead as some other malls on this list (still has JCPenney and appears to have decent occupancy)
* Rogers Plaza (Wyoming) - In a rough area and anchored by Montgomery Ward and Best Products; still around as a shopping center with stores like Family Fare (regional grocery chain) and OfficeMax
* North Kent Mall (Grand Rapids) - Anchored by Montgomery Ward and Kmart. The mall was demolished for a Lowe's in the early 2000s. Kmart remained open until 2016 and Wards was subdivided into three stores. More info: http://gr-retro.blogspot.com/2011/03/north-kent-mall.html
* Cherryland Mall (Traverse City) - Anchored by Sears, Kmart, and Younkers. Put out of business by a much larger and nicer mall in a better location with Hudson's (now Macy's), JCPenney, and Target. Still exists as a strip mall with Sears and Younkers (the Kmart closed last year): http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/cherryland_mall.html
* Universal Mall (Warren) - Anchored by Montgomery Ward, Mervyn's, and Value City, all of which filed for Chapter 7. Converted to a strip mall with Burlington Coat Factory and Marshalls as anchors: http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/universal_mall.html

Out of these malls I'm familiar with Courtland Center. It is a pretty dead mall if you've ever been inside it you'd notice numerous vacant storefronts but of course JCPenney's is still there and there is a Dunham's on the other end of the mall as well as a Planet Fitness but other than that there are some stores on the outside like Staples, JoAnn's and Old Country Buffet. I can't remember if the movie theater is still open or not but I don't think it is. The theater was in the back kind of in an out of the way area if you ask me.

[empirestate]

I'm surprised to see that, if I'm not mistaken, we haven't mentioned Dutchess Mall in Fishkill, NY yet. This one's weird because, although the mall was closed and demolished, only the middle part of it was torn down, leaving the anchor buildings at either end standing. In the newly vacant space between them, they built a Home Depot. But even with that going on to this day, the site is still extremely dead-looking.

[briantroutman]

This one's weird because, although the mall was closed and demolished, only the middle part of it was torn down, leaving the anchor buildings at either end standing.

There's a similar situation a few miles away from where I live. The Granite Run Mall was a typical '60s/'70s-type enclosed suburban shopping mall that started to struggle in recent years. The mall was sold to new owners who decided to tear down the mall itself and redevelop the site as an outdoor "lifestyle center" . However two of the anchors (Boscov's and Sears) were left standing and are still open for business amidst the rubble and construction debris that litter the site while the the rest of the site is being developed.

I have no doubt that the reborn Granite Run complex will be bustling once its open, but currently, it's a bizarre sight. The Sears and Boscov's stores had to hang large "We're Open!"  banners on the sides of their stores since the scene looks so desolate.

[Flint1979]

In Courtland Center in Burton I count 29 current stores. In the mid-1990's this mall had about 80 stores.

[Hurricane Rex]

In my opinion, Lloyd Center in Portland is slowly dying and Pioneer Place is dead.

[thenetwork]

Saw this one over the weekend on the internet -- Burlington Center Mall in Jersey.  Looks like the main mall died for good after the water pipes recently burst. 

The one head scratcher to this mall's demise, is that Sears is the only thing remaining open there now...for now.

Here is a video of the mall back in September:   
https://youtu.be/kK7z3JO-vvU

[1995hoo]

The thing about Sears stores remaining open at otherwise-dead malls is that Sears (the corporation) usually owns said store's space at a given mall, rather than leasing it from the mall's owner(s).

[WillWeaverRVA]

I guess I'll talk about Richmond malls...

Virginia Center Commons Mall in Glen Allen, VA has been moribund for a few years now - it has a rather high number of vacant spaces. An anchor space (formerly Dillard's) has been taken up by American Family Fitness, but there is no access to/from the mall from the gym. The food court has a number of chain knockoffs, most notably "Chick & Burger", and a large non-anchor space formerly occupied by Old Navy is now a seedy children's playground-type place called Circus Playhouse.

Stony Point Fashion Park in Richmond could be called a "dying" mall - even though it's an "upscale" open-air mall, it has fairly high vacancy rate and suffers from the fact that it's almost completely isolated from the surrounding community. The only way in or out of the mall is via VA 150, and there are no direct connections to any other roads except a closed-off access road connecting the adjoining office park to Cherokee Road.

The Shops at Willow Lawn in Henrico County is doing well as a strip mall right now but was a very stagnant enclosed mall for about 20 years after being converted from an open-air mall. The few times I visited it when it was an enclosed mall, there was never anybody there and many of the spaces were vacant. Until late last year it was noteworthy for having the area's only non-standalone Chick-fil-A (which occupied a space in the adjoining strip mall after the enclosed mall was demolished) - a standalone location with drive-through is now open across US 250.

I never visited Fairfield Mall in the East End, but it's been demolished and replaced with an open-air shopping center. It was never a particularly lively place while it existed.

Short Pump Town Center continues to thrive and drain the life from pretty much every other major shopping center and mall in the Richmond region. A lot of people prefer to shop there rather than at Chesterfield Towne Center or Southpark Mall (in Colonial Heights) despite crushing traffic on US 250 and I-64 and being somewhat out of the way for quite a few people.

[abefroman329]

I don't know why anyone would go to a mall. It is boring and you could just buy all that stuff on amazon.

Talk to some girls about women's clothing sizes and you'll quickly understand why malls are still needed (just maybe not to as large a degree).  I refuse to buy clothing online unless it's another item of something I already own or I have no choice.

It's not just females who have that sort of issue. The kid probably doesn't know this because his mom probably shops for him, but not all brands of men's clothing are cut the same way. For long-sleeve dress shirts, where the size is measured by neck and sleeve length (example, 16.5—33), it's pretty easy to get the right size as long as they tell you whether it's a regular fit, slim fit, etc. But for other stuff where the sizing is "large," "extra-large," etc., unless you know the particular brand, you don't know until you try it on whether it fits. It's a pain in the arse ordering, finding you got the wrong size, sending it back, waiting again, etc., when you could just go to the store. Even pants measured by waist and inseam can fit differently through the leg and crotch (too many of them do not specify the crotch rise, so trying stuff on is still important).

I seldom wear suits these days, but those are one item I will never buy online. They ALWAYS need to be tailored, plus I always have to get "suit separates" for sizing reasons. You go to the store, they can very easily figure out the right size for the alterations you'll need.

I bought a suit online recently, but this was a few months before I had weight-loss surgery, and I didn't want to spend a lot on one.  It did require more tailoring than I'd expected, but other than that it was fine.

The scenarios you describe above are why I generally like to buy clothing from brick-and-mortar stores online, because then I can return them to the store (don't have to ship them back).

[index]

We've got a mall over in Monroe that's struggling. Monroe Crossings, I believe. Two out of three of its main stores, JCPenney and Sears, left, which comes as no surprise, considering both companies are on the decline.

I remember, when I was three or four, I tried to steal a DVD from that mall by hiding it behind my back... It obviously did not work.

[Brandon]

Posted this to Facebook (due to yet another article blaming the internet), but I'll do it here as well, and elaborate later:

Malls have reasons they fail.
1. Location: wrong side of town, away from major roads.
2. Access: cannot be accessed easily from the roads leading to/near it.
3. Visibility: you can't shop at what you can't see or find.
4. Layout: weird and convoluted layouts are difficult to navigate.
5. Crime: not crime itself, but the belief that the mall is a high-crime area, even if unjustified.
6. Competition: a better mall located nearby that can out-compete your mall.
7. Anchor existence failure: not always fatal, but losing the primary anchors can lose the possible draw a mall has.
8. Mismanagement: the big elephant in the room. Mismanagement can kill a mall that has everything else going for it.

[formulanone]

Posted this to Facebook (due to yet another article blaming the internet), but I'll do it here as well, and elaborate later:

Malls have reasons they fail.

2. Access: cannot be accessed easily from the roads leading to/near it.
3. Visibility: you can't shop at what you can't see or find.
4. Layout: weird and convoluted layouts are difficult to navigate.
5. Crime: not crime itself, but the belief that the mall is a high-crime area, even if unjustified.
6. Competition: a better mall located nearby that can out-compete your mall.

I'm not saying your wrong, but amazingly, 2-5 hasn't stopped some of these silly open-air malls from blossoming and taking over the mall business, making them the #6 on the list. I think there were also tendencies to build new malls in areas that couldn't support them, or just weren't necessary, while the existing ones were still vibrant and busy. Once a place picks up a reputation, people and retailers flock to the nearest shiny new thing.

- Most of them are convoluted in design (wider walkways and exposed to the elements)...[2,3,4]
- Parking is either further away or congested (usually the anchors are easier to find, but where is Store X?) [2,4]
- Probably has less riff-raff. Like anything else, give it time. [5]

I guess they look upscale, because anything that's new and fashionable always attracts more well-healed clientele which makes people feel better about shopping. We'll know in another decade if it was also a bad idea, and the land gets converted to something else.

Personally, the utilitarian and boring design of the strip-mall still works for me. I don't need the fancy stuff in dull concrete expanse made to look like a generic movie set.

[hbelkins]

The only surviving mall in Lexington (Fayette Mall) is located on Nicholasville Road (US 27) just south of New Circle Road (KY 4) near one of the most heavily-congested areas in the state. Yet it's survived and thrived despite being on the opposite side of town from the interstates that bring the regional traffic that keeps the mall going.

[Beltway]

I guess I'll talk about Richmond malls...
Virginia Center Commons Mall in Glen Allen, VA has been moribund for a few years now - it has a rather high number of vacant spaces. An anchor space (formerly Dillard's) has been taken up by American Family Fitness, but there is no access to/from the mall from the gym. The food court has a number of chain knockoffs, most notably "Chick & Burger", and a large non-anchor space formerly occupied by Old Navy is now a seedy children's playground-type place called Circus Playhouse.
Stony Point Fashion Park in Richmond could be called a "dying" mall - even though it's an "upscale" open-air mall, it has fairly high vacancy rate and suffers from the fact that it's almost completely isolated from the surrounding community. The only way in or out of the mall is via VA 150, and there are no direct connections to any other roads except a closed-off access road connecting the adjoining office park to Cherokee Road.
The Shops at Willow Lawn in Henrico County is doing well as a strip mall right now but was a very stagnant enclosed mall for about 20 years after being converted from an open-air mall. The few times I visited it when it was an enclosed mall, there was never anybody there and many of the spaces were vacant. Until late last year it was noteworthy for having the area's only non-standalone Chick-fil-A (which occupied a space in the adjoining strip mall after the enclosed mall was demolished) - a standalone location with drive-through is now open across US 250.
I never visited Fairfield Mall in the East End, but it's been demolished and replaced with an open-air shopping center. It was never a particularly lively place while it existed.
Short Pump Town Center continues to thrive and drain the life from pretty much every other major shopping center and mall in the Richmond region. A lot of people prefer to shop there rather than at Chesterfield Towne Center or Southpark Mall (in Colonial Heights) despite crushing traffic on US 250 and I-64 and being somewhat out of the way for quite a few people.

Chesterfield Towne Center has a considerable number of vacant stores, probably about 20%.   Likewise is the case with Virginia Center Commons Mall.

There are a growing number of stores being built at the site of the demolished Cloverleaf Mall, but the population of the businesses has been slow.

The Libbie Mill site near I-64 and US-33 has a lot of newly built stores, but many are still vacant.

Many big box stores are all over the region, and seem to be doing pretty well.  But the shopping mall model seems to be a declining industry all over the country.

[Stephane Dumas]

I spotted an article about converting deserted shopping centers parking lots via a post on Skyscraperpage. http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=231815
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/toronto/home-sweet-mall-a-new-kind-of-neighbourhood-building-intoronto/article37704089/

Thanks to the e-commerce-induced demise of major retail chains, such as Sears and Toys "R" Us, the closing of hundreds of malls across North America has triggered a push by municipal planners to find ways to recycle these forlorn asphalt islands.

- While malls in the Greater Toronto Area haven't faced the same kind of pressure, owners are nonetheless thinking hard about future shopping trends. Across Toronto, the owners of at several large shopping centres, including Yorkdale, are pressing ahead with transformative rezoning/development applications that aim to add high-rise residential, office and entertainment projects onto the edges of malls that have functioned for years as parking lots.

- Over the next several years, thousands of Toronto condo owners and tenants will begin calling the mall home. This move marks a significant shift in residential development patterns for Toronto — one that poses new planning and traffic challenges about how to create genuinely complete neighbourhoods equipped with public spaces and community amenities, such as day care centres or even schools, on land that's long been zoned and operated exclusively for shopping.

- Some are simply tabula rasa undertakings that involve the total demolition of older shopping malls. With the Galleria Mall, at Dufferin and Dupont, developer Elad Canada is rebuilding the entire property and will then sell the apartments. – With others, the owners, typically the property management divisions of large pension funds, want to intensify their holdings with non-retail uses as a hedge against shifts in the way people shop and travel.

- The dynamics at Yorkdale are far more complicated. According to mall general manager Claire Santamaria, Oxford Properties envisions a 20-year transformation that will involve high-rise condos, a hotel and office buildings. – It is expected to become one of major nodes of new high-density development in Toronto over the next two decades, city planners say.

[Flint1979]

Lakeview Square Mall in Battle Creek has two vacant anchors with only a Sears remaining as an anchor. One of the vacant anchors was Jcpenney but I can't tell what the other one was probably a Macy's.

[Brandon]

Lakeview Square Mall in Battle Creek has two vacant anchors with only a Sears remaining as an anchor. One of the vacant anchors was Jcpenney but I can't tell what the other one was probably a Macy's.

Started as a Hudson's.

[Flint1979]

Lakeview Square Mall in Battle Creek has two vacant anchors with only a Sears remaining as an anchor. One of the vacant anchors was Jcpenney but I can't tell what the other one was probably a Macy's.

Started as a Hudson's.

Which is what all Michigan Macy's did, I don't remember Macy's existing in the state when Hudson's, then Marshall Field's were still around.

[thenetwork]

In the Cleveland area, two former dead mall sites are becoming regional Amazon Distribution Centers. 

One was the former Randall Park Mall in North Randall, OH (which was billed as the world's largest mall when it opened in the mid-70s) and the recently-razed Euclid Square Mall in Euclid, OH (both on the east side).

Both centers are about 10-15 miles apart, but between the two, they are a stones throw from 3 major interstates (I-90, I-271 and I-480) and are pretty much within 20-30 minutes access from the rest of the Cleveland/Akron area freeway system plus the Ohio Turnpike with easy, direct access to any city within a 2 hour radius (Akron, Canton, Youngstown, Erie PA, Toledo, Pittsburgh, etc...)

[Brandon]

Speaking of possible anchor existence failure...

The Bon-Ton Stores, Inc. Announces Locations of Store Closures as Part of Store Rationalization Program

Some interesting ones on the list:
- Streets of Woodfield.  The former One Schaumburg Place, reworked into a lifestyle center and ancillary to the Woodfield Mall.
- Millcreek Mall.  By all means this is a successful mall, even Sears was replaced with a Boscov's.
- Fox River Mall.  Mall seems successful.  Wonder what happened with Younkers?

[briantroutman]

^ And somehow, my hometown mall's Bon-Ton was spared. That surprises me since the store has been dead the few times I went in there prior to Christmas to get a last-minute item.

This news is a slight reprieve for the mall as The Bon-Ton is Lycoming Mall's last surviving department store. Within the past twelve months, the mall's Macy's, JCPenney, and Sears have all closed. Additionally, about half (maybe more) of the mall's special store space is unrented, and recently, Toys-R-Us listed Lycoming on its list of 182 store closures. I don't really see any recovery possibilities for the mall as a viable shopping center.

[doorknob60]

Salt Lake City has the Gateway Mall, which basically died when the City Creek Mall opened up three blocks to the east. Most of the stores moved there, and a lot of the others closed completely. It’s a shame, especially because the decline has caused the Mall and surrounding neighborhood to be much more dangerous than ten years ago, filled with homeless, drugs, etc.

That one's kinda sad, though it's certainly not dead yet. I visited a bit over a year ago and stayed at a hotel right next to there. Never visited the area before then. The lack of people was weird (though it was a Sunday in December; we went back in March and there were a lot more people, at least around the theater) and 80% of the shops being empty is weird. But having the Barnes and Noble and the movie theater seems to be keeping it afloat, and we visited a few of the other smaller shops (eg GameStop and Hot Topic). Hopefully they can do something to revitalize it. But yeah City Creek is much more lively, that place is nice and I wish other downtowns had something like it, because if they leave it as is more shops will probably start leaving (though I could see the theater still surviving). At least Gateway is open on Sundays though!