Call it the revenge of main street USA!
Malls are dying.. quickly. They have been for quite some time.
Today we shared a post showcasing the final day of the Lycoming Mall.
February 24 2023 was the final day for shoppers to gain access and walk the once bustling metropolis of 1980s greasy capitalism and modern retail.. modern retail now consists of quick clicks and overworked delivery drivers who are often independent contractors and lack the protections of workers comp, unemployment insurance, and labor laws… But that is for another post, another day.
Things were once great for this mall (like others) … In 1978, the Lycoming Mall opened and was heralded by media.. 10,000 or more were set to walk through the hallowed halls of shopping, greeting stores like Gee Bee at the time…
The mall opened July 17 1978. It began with three major tenants bringing in customers, Sears Gee Bee and Hess.
The mall was 472,000 square feet strong and was committed to providing people with 65 stores. The grand ribbon cutting took place with the following folks joining in the celebration: Chamber of Commerce president Kevin Keely, Glosser Brothers president Leonard Black, Gee Bee owner Nick Pasquerilla, and Lycoming County Commissioner Chairman Robert Beiter. Joining them was the Mayor of Muncy, Donald Wilt.
But … there were fears .. The Hazleton STANDARD SPEAKER reported on July 27, 1978, that downtown was worried.. The paper wrote,
“They forecast “moderate continuing growth” downtown but tempered that optimism with acknowledgment of the major competitive threat posted by the now-opening Lycoming Mall. The planners said that Lycoming Mall would take another 25 percent of the shopping volume from local merchants if the merchants did not come up with something to catch the shopper’s eye.”
Main street was at a disadvantage immediately. There was never going to be a way for local merchants to come up with something eye catching. There was never a possibility.
Just like now.. There is no way for malls to compete over the eye catching immediate online retail world that we have come to accept as normal.
About 8 months ago, a mall explorer posted a video of a nostalgic walkthrough…
So in the end, Spencers team 311 and others have to say goodbye for good.
Here is a shock number for those following: Ten years from now, there will be approximately 150 malls left in the US, Nick Egelanian, president of retail consulting firm SiteWorks, told The Wall Street Journal in 2022. That’s down from around 2,500 locations in the 1980s and 700 today.
Lycoming Mall is the latest to join the crowd of closures.. This is nothing new for the area.
When you research any location that a mall ended up being placed, you can find debate took place prior about what it would do to main street–the local town … Promises were often made by political leaders and business executives in each case arguing that a mall in a town would create a better environment for the town itself.. More business. More traffic. And a rising tide that would life all boats..
Instead, we know what happened. Stores dried up. Towns became deluged by economic despair, eventually showcasing more and more battle scars from the big dreamy mall coming to town. Eventually drug abuse and crime followed. And then after all that.. malls closed anyway..
Victor Gruen, the main who can be credited with creating the entire of the mall, had a dream. It became a nightmare as towns became mired in the mud of mercantilism. Gruen was a trained architect, he was soon designing storefronts in New York. He fled his native Vienna in 1938 after the rise of Nazism and made his way to the United States. He wanted to re-create in microcosm the walkable, diverse, and livable town centers he so loved in Vienna.
It is very interesting what happened after.. Gruen had planned for an efficient mall experience and despised the blatant money grab, the phenomenon was named after him. It’s now known as the Gruen Transfer. BUT.. Gruen was disgusted by what suburban malls became and their impact on downtowns. He eventually disavowed malls and became involved in the U.S. urban renewal movement to try to revitalize urban centers. He returned to his hometown in the final decade of his life after his hopes of an amazing future of shopping got dashed…
But we had an amazing life of shopping, to a degree? We enjoyed these malls.. Some of only knew them.
For those born in the 1980s and beyond, we don’t know much of the amazing main streets that once existed. We see boarded up dilapidated evidence that it was there.. But we only new malls. People pondered if malls would kill main street. They did. Now main street got its revenge.. malls are dying too. Sadly it’s too far gone for main street to even think about a comeback, at least in most places.
And that is the sad
BACK TO THE LYCOMING MALL..
Plenty of people are getting awfully nostalgic over the mall as it now shares the same fate as many others before it.. Memories that consist of Black Friday shopping, center court busyness, and even one who recalls meeting her deceased husband while they together at Gee Bee.. These are pure and true memories, for sure.
You can feel that hurt, you can even smell the cigars and cigs from the 80s flowing deeply into your soul..
But people who saw main street dry up felt the same. The little shops and hardware stores just could not compete, no matter how many “eye catching” things they tried to do.
Main street fell to the mall.
The mall is falling..
Did main street get its last laugh in the end?
It is the joke still on it?
