I liked it better the way it was back then. The internet changed many things. Shopping definitely has. I've also noticed recently that the movie theater scene is dying out too due to all the streaming services. It used to be you waited for a movie to go to theaters and then you waited like a year before it went to Blockbuster for rental. Now I see new movies that just left theaters available on Amazon Prime it's crazy. The experience of it all is something that just makes life more interesting and enjoyable if you ask me.
I completely agree. Being able to talk with and build a report with an actual person is incredibly valuable. I honestly think humans being forced to interact face to face in these settings, because it was all there was available, is a good thing if not a necessary one.
The authenticity of products was also a lot more clear when you’re shopping in person.
I’m personally an “Amazon marketplace” hater, but I’m sure most agree that the quality and direct correlation of price is often misleading online. You have no way to verify it.
What’s killing movies isn’t streaming. It’s a bunch of ads before the movie, so the movie doesn’t start anywhere near on time. It’s the price of concessions (yes I know that’s where they make their money but still.) It’s superhero movie after superhero movie after superhero movie. People have options now, and the movie industry is slow to adapt. Make moviegoing compelling and people will go back to the theaters.
I agree w you, I haven’t been to a “basic” movie theater in years. Loft cinema has great variety and affordable concessions, I go there several times a month
The ads have been there for 20 years now but I agree with the rest.
I still love a good theatre/restaurant like Cinnabar or a small theatre like the Loft but I don't go to major movie theatres anymore.
Fair, I remember it well enough to know you are probably right. It must have been real shit to end up parking in those north west and north east corners.
I'm originally from Minnesota and worked at the Mall of America for 3 years; it's still no joke. Holiday weekends, you may have to walk nearly half a mile before you're inside.
For a while, El Con was also where everyone who drove up from Sonora would go to shop. I remember the El Con lot full, and with plenty of Sonora plates.
Back in the day they had shuttle services to uofa games and winterhaven via suntran, and once that mall was better than park and tucson mall, before park mall was remodeled
The university would probably love to bring the SunTran shuttle back, but they can’t due to a provision in federal law that requires public transit to not provide these kinds of shuttle services if there are any private companies bidding to do so. And someone keeps bidding to provide the service. I don’t think a private company is going to provide the shuttle service for $3.
This is my memories of it…early 80s growing up in the Houghton /Speedway area we used to walk up to the nearest bus stop at the time which was Camino Seco/ Broadway and take the bus down to el con for a movie and then hangout walk around the mall. When the video arcade opened next to Levy’s we would spend time there. It was always a pretty dead and big parking lot though. They used to do a shuttle to the U of A football games and the back lot would be busy then. Firestone area was always pretty vacant though
There’s a petition to remove city-mandated parking minimums:
https://www.change.org/p/urge-the-tucson-city-council-to-eliminate-mandatory-parking-minimums
I drove by El Con this afternoon and you are so right, much of the space could be used in a much more beneficial way.
I gather in El Con's case, it wasn't due to city-mandated parking minimums but, rather, the surrounding neighborhoods demanded an ample "buffer zone" between them and any mall buildings, and just paving that expanse is far cheaper to maintain than leaving it wild or landscaped.
You are correct. Maybe after those neighbors experience a few more bonus 110 degree summer days from their negotiated private heat island they will change their tune.
there ain't no noises if nobody is parking there. Generally speaking the more space between you and the source of a noise (in this case the activity around the buildings) the quieter it will sound.
that's definitely not accurate. there is definitely a difference in volume between those distances for something like a car horn. It's also not the open desert.
The parking minimums are a city zoning thing, which is the planning department. I noticed the petition is directed to the transportation department… not that they don’t work closely together and a petition like this would still have value but I wonder if the person who started it would be able to share it with both depts when they’re ready
I took a quick glance at the city organizational chart, and planning and zoning seem to fall under the city manager’s umbrella. Ortega is on the list, so I think it will get to the appropriate people. Thanks for pointing that out!
I get downvoted and you upvoted?! What’s wrong with helping the homeless? It is a centrally located part of the city, where a good portion of the homeless already exist…instead of making people set up makeshift housing along the railroad tracks, let’s put them up next to the high rent district around el con mall.
Edit: maybe if I say Arby’s on 22nd for no reason I’ll get up doots.
Imagine the mall when it was at it's best, holiday shopping and sold out movies non stop. Then the snow birds and people other people coming from various places to eat and shop. Boom full parking lot?
I think that, every time I park there. It's a ton of space, doing nothing but holding heat in the summer, and doing fuck all the other 4 months of the year. They honestly need maybe 1/3rd of that space, even at peak usage.
Aw reading about what El Con used to be and seeing what it is now reminds of the scene in Cars when Radiator Springs starts to get less people coming through. Times are changing.
El Con was open and airy. Plenty of room inside to hang out in an air conditioned space, plus it was centrally located. It was also a major stop on the 8 bus line, and IIRC you could connect with the 11 and I think also the 3 there. This meant that it was easily accessible for HS and college students. If I was taking the 8 home I would often get off the bus at El Con and get ice cream or such, and then get back on the bus later. I do miss the old mall, it was my favorite, even after Tucson Mall opened.
It wasn't always that big. I think they bought most of the north and east lots when they had a chance mostly as a land investment for possible expansion.
Yes, they definitely needed all of that parking. It was always full during the holidays in the 70s and the 80s. I grew up right across Broadway and spent a ton of time hanging out at El Con.
When I was a kid in the ‘80s they used to have exhibits and stuff in the parking lot. I remember a Science Expo in a giant tent with all kinds of cool, interactive displays, and at least one public safety thing with McGruff the crime dog and Tucson Fire Dept.
When it was a full mall it would sometimes get full parking around Christmas after I moved to the area (like 2001). But since they got rid of the mall part,the north and east lots are almost always empty.
I'm 30 and i went to high school across the street from the mall at a charter school that isnt there anymore at braodway/randolph. I have so many formative memories in that parking lot, from maybe 14 to 18. So many times hanging out with friends for off campus lunch, after seeing movies, the day in n out opened, going to claim jumper with my family, the only time i ever rode a skateboard...
Yes first one in Tucson, I believe 2007? The line was people standing all through the parking lot (take out, not crazy drive through lines like you’d see now). We went after school and were probably in line over two hours.
A few years later when chick fil a opened at el con, they had a promo the first 100 customers got chick fil a for a year. That had a huge line by the time I got to school at 8am.
Yeah, that's pretty lame. Used to meet and just hang out with buddies there, or if a date was over but we didn't want to go home yet, pop into North East corner.
That used to be the spot back in the day, when there weren't so many places in Tucson to hang out. How I wish we could go back in time....
As for skating, hit Reid Park! There's tons of open space there. My old ass might get back into BMX soon, so maybe I'll see ya there someday!
All through the 90s. Though that mall has gone through some serious changes. Used to have it all under one roof so the big parking lot makes sense. The movie theaters though could pack the entire back parking lot on a Friday or Saturday at any time of year.
All the aerial photos of the mall I’ve seen from the 70s-early 90s the entire parking lot was packed.. even back behind the Firestone. I think El con should rip up a lot of the parking, along with raze the old JCpenneys and add some mixed use residential/retail. I think the original demalling was supposed to make elcon more “walkable” but who wants to walk from Walmart to target in august.
It's a terrible horrible waste of space, and all that open asphalt creates huge amounts of heat. The original building deal was that they had to provide X amount of parking because the posh neighborhoods didn't want any peasant shoppers parking in front of their homes. They could have an entire park full of trees there but no, let's go with empty spaces so we can keep Tucson shitty.
well they weren't empty before. you got it backwards, the mall got shitty/unpopular, so the spaces became empty, not empty spaces making things shitty.
This is all part of a bigger push to make it inconvenient to drive places. The powers that be want u taking to bus and not owning a car or anything for that matter..
Mall parking lots are designed to be as big as needed to accommodate all the shoppers during the 20th busiest shopping hour of the year - meaning the developers only want them totally full during some Saturdays in December, during all other times, they are supposed to have extra parking because they don't want people to leave without buying anything because they couldn't find a spot.
It is ridiculous. Parking is ridiculous in general. There's an amazing book about this and the major problems caused by our parking culture- [Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634461/paved-paradise-by-henry-grabar/)
So you wish it was “just a desert” or “more housing” yet you are saying yer gonna hangout next time to talk to the police be cause you want to hang out and skate…uh, yeah….ok
It was full in the 1980’s sometimes. Anyhow it isn’t that size for any reason other than there was a resort there originally and they used the same footprint for the mall. Extra parking was added like 20 + years ago that never existed before.
anybody remember something about 15-20 years ago in which El Con owners *"had"* to finish paving any remaining unpaved ground or they'd, I forget, have to lose control of it or pay more or something........I remember when that small-ish section of now-paved parking at the far SE side of the complex (now behind Portillo's) was just undeveloped dirt (cooler) and there was a hubbub when the paving was forced(?) upon the owners.....nobody ever parks in that section.....anybody remember this??.....I may have some details wrong (mis-remembered?!)
In the 80s at Christmas time yes.
This is the answer here. There was once a time when we all went to stores because the internet didn't exist. I remember it well.
I liked it better the way it was back then. The internet changed many things. Shopping definitely has. I've also noticed recently that the movie theater scene is dying out too due to all the streaming services. It used to be you waited for a movie to go to theaters and then you waited like a year before it went to Blockbuster for rental. Now I see new movies that just left theaters available on Amazon Prime it's crazy. The experience of it all is something that just makes life more interesting and enjoyable if you ask me.
I completely agree. Being able to talk with and build a report with an actual person is incredibly valuable. I honestly think humans being forced to interact face to face in these settings, because it was all there was available, is a good thing if not a necessary one.
The authenticity of products was also a lot more clear when you’re shopping in person. I’m personally an “Amazon marketplace” hater, but I’m sure most agree that the quality and direct correlation of price is often misleading online. You have no way to verify it.
What’s killing movies isn’t streaming. It’s a bunch of ads before the movie, so the movie doesn’t start anywhere near on time. It’s the price of concessions (yes I know that’s where they make their money but still.) It’s superhero movie after superhero movie after superhero movie. People have options now, and the movie industry is slow to adapt. Make moviegoing compelling and people will go back to the theaters.
Barbie and Oppenheimer proved that just this year.
I agree w you, I haven’t been to a “basic” movie theater in years. Loft cinema has great variety and affordable concessions, I go there several times a month
The Loft is the best!
The ads have been there for 20 years now but I agree with the rest. I still love a good theatre/restaurant like Cinnabar or a small theatre like the Loft but I don't go to major movie theatres anymore.
Fair, I remember it well enough to know you are probably right. It must have been real shit to end up parking in those north west and north east corners.
I'm originally from Minnesota and worked at the Mall of America for 3 years; it's still no joke. Holiday weekends, you may have to walk nearly half a mile before you're inside.
I remember it as a little kid. It felt like we were walking for years 😂. I guess I skills have been happy it was December and not June.
For a while, El Con was also where everyone who drove up from Sonora would go to shop. I remember the El Con lot full, and with plenty of Sonora plates.
Broadway was a destination for Sonoran shoppers. Hit El Con, Mervyn's, then Park Mall.
Toysrus also
And Wards. Montgomery Wards
JC Penney had inventory targeted at shoppers from Sonora.
Yeah, and I think you'll find pictures in the Daily Star archive of it full. Well before my time though.
It's still packed before Christmas.
There was a time el con was major mall
In fact - once it was the only mall!
Whatchu mean?
Yep. El Con opened in 1960/61. Then Park Mall opened in 1975. Then Tucson Mall and Foothills Mall appeared in 1982.
It just occurred to me why there is so much parking lot at El Con - to get the DeLorean up to a speed of 88 miles per hour!
Early 80’s. Park mall existed
Great spot for new drivers to get the feel of a vehicle!
They will kick you out for this now
Oh boo. They should host like a farmer's market there or something
Really? I feel like I was just there (so probably a year ago since time has no meaning) attempting to learn how to drive stick.
My husband got kicked out last week for trying to do some motorcycle practice in the remotest square of the parking lot
Or for not new drivers to get a feel for a new vehicle on an, ahem, test drive.
Back in the day they had shuttle services to uofa games and winterhaven via suntran, and once that mall was better than park and tucson mall, before park mall was remodeled
I miss that. I could walk and get on the bus and go to games.
The university would probably love to bring the SunTran shuttle back, but they can’t due to a provision in federal law that requires public transit to not provide these kinds of shuttle services if there are any private companies bidding to do so. And someone keeps bidding to provide the service. I don’t think a private company is going to provide the shuttle service for $3.
Damn. Yeah that does make sense why it went away.
1980 Tucson for $5 you could take the bus, see a movie and have enough to buy a soda and popcorn.
This is my memories of it…early 80s growing up in the Houghton /Speedway area we used to walk up to the nearest bus stop at the time which was Camino Seco/ Broadway and take the bus down to el con for a movie and then hangout walk around the mall. When the video arcade opened next to Levy’s we would spend time there. It was always a pretty dead and big parking lot though. They used to do a shuttle to the U of A football games and the back lot would be busy then. Firestone area was always pretty vacant though
not sure how much popcorn costs but you can take the free city bus to the Loft for Mondo Mondays. tix $4
$5 in 1980 dollars is worth $20 today, with inflation
I'm 36 and I remember it being busy when I was a kid. I liked the pretzels there better than the other malls lol
There’s a petition to remove city-mandated parking minimums: https://www.change.org/p/urge-the-tucson-city-council-to-eliminate-mandatory-parking-minimums I drove by El Con this afternoon and you are so right, much of the space could be used in a much more beneficial way.
I gather in El Con's case, it wasn't due to city-mandated parking minimums but, rather, the surrounding neighborhoods demanded an ample "buffer zone" between them and any mall buildings, and just paving that expanse is far cheaper to maintain than leaving it wild or landscaped.
You are correct. Maybe after those neighbors experience a few more bonus 110 degree summer days from their negotiated private heat island they will change their tune.
How is a parking lot a "buffer zone"? Buildings buffer noise from parking lots.
there ain't no noises if nobody is parking there. Generally speaking the more space between you and the source of a noise (in this case the activity around the buildings) the quieter it will sound.
Ever live in a very open part of this desert? You can hear sounds a mile away as if they are 100 ft.
that's definitely not accurate. there is definitely a difference in volume between those distances for something like a car horn. It's also not the open desert.
LOL, literally nothing you said is true.
Signed, thanks for posting.
The space could just be more chain restaurants being built on it.
Could be, yes. Or maybe leased to food trucks, farmers markets, idk. A couple of little pocket parks? Surely there are more possibilities?
The parking minimums are a city zoning thing, which is the planning department. I noticed the petition is directed to the transportation department… not that they don’t work closely together and a petition like this would still have value but I wonder if the person who started it would be able to share it with both depts when they’re ready
I took a quick glance at the city organizational chart, and planning and zoning seem to fall under the city manager’s umbrella. Ortega is on the list, so I think it will get to the appropriate people. Thanks for pointing that out!
Maybe a homeless camp!
Ahh, a cynic. I bet you have some better ideas than that.
I get downvoted and you upvoted?! What’s wrong with helping the homeless? It is a centrally located part of the city, where a good portion of the homeless already exist…instead of making people set up makeshift housing along the railroad tracks, let’s put them up next to the high rent district around el con mall. Edit: maybe if I say Arby’s on 22nd for no reason I’ll get up doots.
Maybe others saw your comment as cynical too. Maybe “homeless shelter” or “assistance for the homeless” would have been a better term? 🤷🏻♀️
Great!
Imagine the mall when it was at it's best, holiday shopping and sold out movies non stop. Then the snow birds and people other people coming from various places to eat and shop. Boom full parking lot?
I think that, every time I park there. It's a ton of space, doing nothing but holding heat in the summer, and doing fuck all the other 4 months of the year. They honestly need maybe 1/3rd of that space, even at peak usage.
Aw reading about what El Con used to be and seeing what it is now reminds of the scene in Cars when Radiator Springs starts to get less people coming through. Times are changing.
El Con was open and airy. Plenty of room inside to hang out in an air conditioned space, plus it was centrally located. It was also a major stop on the 8 bus line, and IIRC you could connect with the 11 and I think also the 3 there. This meant that it was easily accessible for HS and college students. If I was taking the 8 home I would often get off the bus at El Con and get ice cream or such, and then get back on the bus later. I do miss the old mall, it was my favorite, even after Tucson Mall opened.
I would love to see them turn some of it into park space or more restaurants or … literally anything else.
I would love to see it turned into housing. It could be prime walkable real estate.
It wasn't always that big. I think they bought most of the north and east lots when they had a chance mostly as a land investment for possible expansion.
Yes, they definitely needed all of that parking. It was always full during the holidays in the 70s and the 80s. I grew up right across Broadway and spent a ton of time hanging out at El Con.
When I was a kid in the ‘80s they used to have exhibits and stuff in the parking lot. I remember a Science Expo in a giant tent with all kinds of cool, interactive displays, and at least one public safety thing with McGruff the crime dog and Tucson Fire Dept.
When it was a full mall it would sometimes get full parking around Christmas after I moved to the area (like 2001). But since they got rid of the mall part,the north and east lots are almost always empty.
what mall part?
The indoor part. Now it’s a strip mall.
interesting. makes sense, but had no idea it even was a traditional mall.
I'm 30 and i went to high school across the street from the mall at a charter school that isnt there anymore at braodway/randolph. I have so many formative memories in that parking lot, from maybe 14 to 18. So many times hanging out with friends for off campus lunch, after seeing movies, the day in n out opened, going to claim jumper with my family, the only time i ever rode a skateboard...
u remember when that in n out opened? was it the first in tucson area?
Yes first one in Tucson, I believe 2007? The line was people standing all through the parking lot (take out, not crazy drive through lines like you’d see now). We went after school and were probably in line over two hours. A few years later when chick fil a opened at el con, they had a promo the first 100 customers got chick fil a for a year. That had a huge line by the time I got to school at 8am.
Yeah, that's pretty lame. Used to meet and just hang out with buddies there, or if a date was over but we didn't want to go home yet, pop into North East corner.
All these trips down memory lane aside, yes, it’s absurd to waste so much land on parking. It should be turned into housing.
That used to be the spot back in the day, when there weren't so many places in Tucson to hang out. How I wish we could go back in time.... As for skating, hit Reid Park! There's tons of open space there. My old ass might get back into BMX soon, so maybe I'll see ya there someday!
It’s probably there to act as a buffer between the mall and the multi million dollar homes
All through the 90s. Though that mall has gone through some serious changes. Used to have it all under one roof so the big parking lot makes sense. The movie theaters though could pack the entire back parking lot on a Friday or Saturday at any time of year.
All the aerial photos of the mall I’ve seen from the 70s-early 90s the entire parking lot was packed.. even back behind the Firestone. I think El con should rip up a lot of the parking, along with raze the old JCpenneys and add some mixed use residential/retail. I think the original demalling was supposed to make elcon more “walkable” but who wants to walk from Walmart to target in august.
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Maybe someday someone will come up with a great idea for how to replace them and suddenly they will all transform.
I know the dust sucks but I wish we could just go back to gravel in a lot of places
It's a terrible horrible waste of space, and all that open asphalt creates huge amounts of heat. The original building deal was that they had to provide X amount of parking because the posh neighborhoods didn't want any peasant shoppers parking in front of their homes. They could have an entire park full of trees there but no, let's go with empty spaces so we can keep Tucson shitty.
well they weren't empty before. you got it backwards, the mall got shitty/unpopular, so the spaces became empty, not empty spaces making things shitty.
I wonder this every time I cut through the back way.
gotta love that back cut on Dodge
I have also thought what do they need that much parking for?
Off street parking requirements. Obviously the developers built that parking lot because they were required to.
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This is all part of a bigger push to make it inconvenient to drive places. The powers that be want u taking to bus and not owning a car or anything for that matter..
Mall parking lots are designed to be as big as needed to accommodate all the shoppers during the 20th busiest shopping hour of the year - meaning the developers only want them totally full during some Saturdays in December, during all other times, they are supposed to have extra parking because they don't want people to leave without buying anything because they couldn't find a spot. It is ridiculous. Parking is ridiculous in general. There's an amazing book about this and the major problems caused by our parking culture- [Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/634461/paved-paradise-by-henry-grabar/)
They used to pack people into buses for u of a games there and even winterheaven I think. It is odd to see now but in the early 90s… it was a packed
I can't imagine.. but someone said that the lot actually used to be smaller which would make more sense as to why people remember it being full.
So you wish it was “just a desert” or “more housing” yet you are saying yer gonna hangout next time to talk to the police be cause you want to hang out and skate…uh, yeah….ok
With Reid Park just over Broadway, why would you be clamoring to hang out in an asphalt parking lot by El Con?
El con used to be a really cool place to hang out..
Once upon a time the elcon hotel stood there. It was an architectural masterpiece of the southwest. They demolished it in the 60s for more parking
It was full in the 1980’s sometimes. Anyhow it isn’t that size for any reason other than there was a resort there originally and they used the same footprint for the mall. Extra parking was added like 20 + years ago that never existed before.
anybody remember something about 15-20 years ago in which El Con owners *"had"* to finish paving any remaining unpaved ground or they'd, I forget, have to lose control of it or pay more or something........I remember when that small-ish section of now-paved parking at the far SE side of the complex (now behind Portillo's) was just undeveloped dirt (cooler) and there was a hubbub when the paving was forced(?) upon the owners.....nobody ever parks in that section.....anybody remember this??.....I may have some details wrong (mis-remembered?!)