35 haunting photos of abandoned shopping malls that highlight the impact of the retail apocalypse over the past decade
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Nov 12, 2019, 23:54 IST
This is the Carousel Mall in San Bernardino, California, which closed in 2017.
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The mall had been hanging on by a thread after it lost its two main anchors, Montgomery Ward and JCPenney, several years earlier.
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San Bernardino is now considering 11 different offers for the redevelopment of the abandoned shopping center.
Euclid Square Mall in Ohio, pictured in 2013, had a similar fate and shuttered in 2016.
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It was temporarily used by religious congregations who held services in old stores.
In September 2017, Amazon announced plans to build a 1.7-million-square-foot fulfillment center in its place. That fulfillment center has since opened.
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Photographer Seph Lawless has become famous for his photos of abandoned malls. In 2016, he captured Chicago's Lincoln Mall, which closed in January 2015.
In its heyday, the 700,000-square-foot mall had the capacity to host four anchor stores and 100 smaller shops.
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But in the months before it closed, it was home to just 40 businesses.
In 2013, the mall's owner told The Chicago Tribune that the mall was losing $2 million a year. The same year, a court-ordered receiver was appointed to force the location to pay taxes and fines, as well as make necessary repairs.
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The mall's tenants did not generate enough in rent to pay for the improvements or repairs, according to an attorney for the owner.
The mall reportedly failed to make these changes, which included creating new exits to comply with fire codes and replacing electrical and air-conditioning systems.
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In November 2014, a Cook County judge ordered the closure of the mall following the holiday shopping season. The mall was demolished in 2017.
Lawless also captured the Metro North Shopping Center in Kansas City, Missouri.
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The mall opened in 1976 and covered over 1.2 million square feet, housing more than 150 retailers.
The mall was shut down in 2014, but the decaying interior makes it appear as if it's been deserted for decades.
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The once-bustling mall is now completely run down.
Lawless said it was "by far the creepiest mall I've been in."
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Developers had planned to renovate the mall, but the makeover was estimated to cost $200 million. The plan was ditched in 2015.
The mall was finally demolished in 2017 to make way for a golf and entertainment complex. The developer also hopes to build a new hotel, health club, and specialty grocer in the area.
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Rolling Acres Mall in Akron, Ohio, was once packed with visitors but faced a similar fate as many other malls when it closed its doors in 2008.
Lawless visited in 2012 to capture these haunting photographs that show how the complex was left to rot.
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The inside of the mall was crumbling and covered with snow, left exposed to the Ohio elements.
In June 2016, the city deemed it unsafe for locals, issued warnings for people to stay away, and increased police presence after it gained a reputation for being a crime hotspot.
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Multiple deaths occurred on the property after the mall was abandoned. Perhaps most horrifyingly, the body of a likely murder victim was found in the woods behind the building.
After several rounds through the bankruptcy courts, the property was acquired by the city of Akron.
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In 2016, the Rolling Acres Mall was demolished. In 2018, Amazon purchased the property for $600,000 from the city of Akron with plans to build a new 700,000-square-foot fulfillment center.
These eerie photos were taken of Cloverleaf Mall in Chesterfield, Virginia, in 2011.
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It was the area's first large-scale, regional shopping center, but the mall officially closed in 2008.
Once a buzzing hub, the inside looked completely barren and was littered with decaying plants and debris.
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In 2011, the building was demolished and replaced with a Kroger supermarket.
Hawthorne Plaza in Los Angeles, California, closed its doors in 1999. In July 2011, Chris Cognac took these photos while performing a security check with workers working on partial demolition inside.
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Since the mall closed, it has been used as an appropriately spooky spot for filming some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters, including "Gone Girl," "The Fast and The Furious: Tokyo Drift," and "Minority Report."
Today, it is just a shell that's covered in graffiti and crumbling away.
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In 2016, drone enthusiasts transformed the space into a drone-racing track, where people could race their remote-control drones around the building while it was lit up in fluorescent lights.
However, these pop-ups were short-lived. Later that year, the city of Hawthorne agreed to demolish the building and replace it with a $500 million open-air development, but that still hasn't happened.