Southwyck Mall - reduced to rubbleThis week's weird object is the Southwyck Mall in Toledo, Ohio. It's weird because they're tearing it down, all of it. And it's weird because we remember its heyday - not too long ago, maybe 20 years ago.
I guess the downhill slide began when Montgomery Ward's checked out and left a gaping hole where that anchor once held down the south end of the mall. Then the writing was on the mall's wall when developers started building those "lifestyle centers" that try to resemble the downtowns of yesteryear, and which are all the rage, much moreso than most actual, authentic downtowns.
Yep, the Southwyck area just fell into disfavor. Two big hotels sit on either side of the road just south of the ex-mall, hard by the Ohio Turnpike. I have stayed in each, when they were a high-rise Ramada and a Holiday Inn with an exciting (back then) "Holidome". Both are vacant now and the grass is growing unruly. Tumbleweeds may follow. This is simply an area to drive through on one's way to better shopping in Toledo's outer reaches. We seem to keep abandoning our close-in places and building out farther from the center, leaving a wasteland behind, sort of like a glacially-paced atom bomb.
Meanwhile, down in Columbus, the twenty-year old City Center mall has a date with the wrecking ball. Word is that this three-level shoppers' paradise for a brief period of history will be replaced with a park, a "pedestrian friendly gathering place". I believe the mall developers overestimated Columbus shoppers' allegiance to central city shopping. Today's hottest retail spot, Polaris, is a good 15 miles north, a good long drive up I-71 or U.S. 23 for just about everyone.
Columbus City Center
Pedestrian -friendly gathering placeSo this is my W.O.F. salute to those malls of yore that served the shopping public for but a blink of the eye. We're fickle and we simply moved on. In fact, we may be more fickle about where we buy than what we buy.
5 comments:
I sometimes wonder what will be the ultimate fate of Westview Mall.
Are you sure that last picture wasn't copied from a page of the Syms?
I'll have to ask my Ben if he is familiar with the Southwyck Mall. I hadn't heard of the term "life style center" before, but it really does fit the new shopping center model. They built one- "legacy village" in Beachwood, which is where my dad lives. It displaced all the deer in the area and now he has lots of deer roaming his suburban backyard.
We keep doing that here is Maryland also. We go from transforming neighborhood stores to malls back to neighborhood stores again. Everything cycles and comes back in fashion. It is like watching all these home improvement shows. You always feel like you must make a change to update your life. There is such an unhealthy attitude of bigger and better. I hope some of those building materials can be recycled.
Oh my gosh-I can't believe they are taking down the downtown mall. (I've only been there once.)
My memories of that location are actually before that mall; when Lazarus was there. My mom use to drive us up there for special shopping get-aways.
The likeliest issue in Columbus is that the downtown workers shopped over lunch hour, but got the heck out of downtown when the workday was over, the sidewalks were rolled up, and folks shopped out in the suburban ring when they had the leisure time.
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