Reflections

The Mall

• By fannieb
• August 11, 2014
• No Comments

1983 marked the Grand Opening of “The Center”.

You remember it well.

The parking lot was overflowing and

Your mom got into an argument with an excited customer over a parking space!

Your older brother, who sat in the backseat, just laughed.

 

Tenanted stores full of quality goods to be sold.

Eager patrons ready to buy them.

Later even kiosks lined the interior walkways displaying additional goods.

 

Three department stores anchored the other, smaller shops –

Two national chains and one very nice local retail establishment.

But the financially challenged suburb could not support the businesses

And stores began to close.

 

In 1996 the local department store called it quits closing all its locations.

A national chain replaced the failed local one,

But could not turn around the real estate and soon exited too

leaving the adjacent stores anchorless and adrift.

Soon shops in this end of the mall closed quickly.

Like a limb on a body with restricted blood flow

The shops turned gangrenous and died.

Store after store sitting empty, dark, and lifeless.

 

Thirty years later vacant, gated stores resembling darkened prison cells

stare back at the occasional shopper.

So different from its heyday of the eighties

When you and your teenaged friends flocked to “The Center” to hang out

On Friday nights and all day on Saturdays.

 

Now the two anchors, a Radio Shack, a Foot Locker,

Four national wireless carriers, and a handful of eateries are open for business.

The remainder of the barren retail landscape is occupied by two nail salons, several “Mom and Pop” shops hocking wares more suitable for a flea market,

and a few storefronts converted to “activity” centers –

scrapbooking, cheerleading, and even a job training school.

 

An odd hodgepodge that manages to sustain the mall for now,

but you can’t imagine it will for much longer.

“The Center” is going the way of the Plaza,

A defunct outdoor shopping venue.

 

The opening of “The Center” was the Plaza’s deathblow.

The last remaining anchor moving to the then new and vibrant mall.

You suppose the Plaza had its time in the limelight too,

but you were not living in the area at that time to have known it.

 

This scene plays out in shopping complexes across America.

Newer strip malls, open air shopping centers, and gallerias

steal away customers from aging ones.

Malls in economically depressed areas dry up, shriveling as they contract.

The many store fronts inside that held so much promise sit idle,

Saddening those who remember growing up there in the good ole days.

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Photo credit: Nicholas Eckhart https://www.flickr.com/photos/fanofretail/