Rust Belt Mallwalker

  Archie the Snowman, in his new home at Lock 3. As malls continue to disappear, we hear more stories about the things that people miss about them. The one thing that crossed my mind (pre-pandemic) was Christmas. Malls used to have amazing decorations. I remember Rolling Acres Mall had a huge castle set up, and Santa sat in the middle of it. Richmond Town Square had a similar setup last year; I'm not sure whether they're still even open. When malls close, they usually leave everything in them, including all of the decorations. Akron's Chapel Hill Mall has been cruising slowly towards foreclosure all year, which made me start to wonder around September what would happen to Archie. Archie is an over 20 foot tall talking snowman, who has lived at Chapel Hill Mall on and off since the late 1960's. He lived at the mall until the early 2000's, during an ownership change. There was a crowdsourcing campaign to bring Archie back, which was a huge success. Archie was at Lock ...

I have a pretty extensive collection of various news clippings that I've collected over the past couple years, mostly focusing on Akron area malls. This article from The Ashtabula Town Beacon in 2007 is the early call: malls are dying. Most of the malls in this article have turned into Amazon fulfillment centers. Ashtabula Mall is owned by the same company who owns Akron's very dead Chapel Hill Mall, and is very much dead. Millcreek is the only mall that I think is still doing ok. "Hopefully there won't come a time when we buy everything either online or at Wal-Mart" makes me wonder if the writer of this is still around. I'd love to hear what he thinks now. COVID has kicked the collapse of the American shopping mall into high gear, but this has been happening for years now. We're seeing the American dream die in real time, both literally (the American Dream Mall is the most cursed mall in America), and figuratively (hi, I haven't been out of m...