Even these pictures are misleading, as the damaged appearance was actually done by a movie crew to a previous remodel. My mother worked at a store there in the eighties before any significant remodeling was done, and it had a creaky ancient elevator, a moldy health club pool in the basement, and crumbling chunks of the poured concrete it was made of all through the stairwells.

The last picture looks most like I remember it from then, and that’s the second floor for the stores. It’s now going to become government offices (we have a busybody heritage committee, and a nicely mobbed-up construction industry)

In its own way, it’s always been beautiful. Nice they were able to keep so much of the original floors and woodwork.

–GimpWii

Sunyvalle, CA bulldozed their entire mixed-use downtown district and replaced it with a mall sometime in the 70′s. By ~1990 all the stores had gone out of business.

Sunnyvale was a horrible mall – a bit like the place as a whole really. Soulless, boring, blah. But the mall was still there around the time I left for the (slightly) saner shores of BC, around 2004.  

There’s a dying mall near where I live

Sounds like a place with a cluster of care-homes, a few morticians, a funeral parlour, a crematorium. Might even be a viable business plans. Sort of a Twighlight-Hotel-California….

The Palm Springs Mall on Tahquitz Canyon Way is the perfect example of Functional and Economic Obsolescence. Only two stores remain open inside the mall – GNC & Radio Shack. It’s actually quite creepy to walk the length of the mall and the food court is completely intact with tables and chairs yet not a single food vendor.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/36509286@N03/6590557039

Sunyvalle, CA bulldozed their entire mixed-use downtown district and replaced it with a mall sometime in the 70′s. By ~1990 all the stores had gone out of business.  A few years ago they bulldozed the mall after coming up with plans to re-build the downtown. Now it’s mostly a big empty lot because the bank foreclosed on the whole mess.  Too bad they didn’t just keep the downtown they had to begin with.

You have heard by now that Renew Newcastle has been the inspiration for empty space revitalisation schemes across the country, like Renew Adelaide, Renew Townsville, Made in Geelong and Pop-up Parramatta.

http://www.firstandonlyevents.co.uk/events/zombie-survival-experience-days/

I think that’s finally persuaded me to go airsofting.

Let’s build prisons in the mall as well; that would provide a kind of completeness to the idea.

‘Why’d anybody ever call a store that?’ Rydell said.

‘Trying to fuck with my head, Rydell?’

‘No,’ Rydell said, ‘it’s just a weird name. Like all those places look like gaps, now. . .’

There’s another one in downtown Buffalo that’s similar – mostly empty except for a dollar store and stuff like that. Except that one has a surprisingly thriving food court, all local one-off restaurants that are pretty decent as far as that kind of restaurant goes. It’s one of only a handful of food places within walking distance of city hall and other downtown office buildings.