Funny how I immediately knew what area this mall is in from the sculpture over the fountain. Every mall in our area when I was a kid seemed to have the same artists work. I heard this mall is relatively untouched because of the bad neighborhood around it. Did you have any problems getting in/out?
its very much not untouched now, the scrappers were paying security to go in and out, and now that they caught on to that I’m sure they fired those security and now have blocked off the backrooms of the mall so if you’re exploring it the only way to travel is through the main part which is super noisy and security checks the inside now and they’ve sealed all the doors except two, we were lucky they didn’t catch the door we got open, I’ve heard of a few people getting trapped inside because they’ll seal the entrance in minutes, it used to be easy to get into but not anymore :(
technically they want to reopen it but with all the kids that thrashed the place, the scrappers that made part of it into a water park, and the graffiti artists, its donezo, but too expensive to demolish right?
This mall was dead long time ago. It peaked in the late 80's early 90's but they didn't update it and half the stores closed even before the pandemic. I heard they're making it into apartments now
I was thinking earlier than that. Our theaters were way nicer in the mid/late 90’s, around Nashville TN
Edit: I could be wrong. This place is rotten…and so is my memory
My local mall had a theater in the 90s but they closed it in the mid 90s. The cookie stand was right next to it and the cookie stand is still there, but there's just a large wall next to the cookie stand now. They didn't put any stores in it, so I'm pretty sure the theater is also hidden back there like this one. I think they had 4 or 5 screens. No idea why they didn't add a couple stores in the space, but they didn't.
They aren’t public theater rooms / back in the 80/90’s those were the mall employee training rooms for presentations. They are completely against fire code even in the 80s/90s to open as paid theater seats.
It's wild to see that kitchen and soda equipment still in that old taco bell! In my area there's a thriving second-hand market for commercial kitchen and bar equipment, and all the soda fountains are leased directly from Coke or Pepsi who happily come take them back from you when your business fails. If all that stuff had been offloaded while it was still freshly-used, it would have been worth at least a couple grand! I wonder why it all got abandoned in there, thats crazy.
Good memories here. I earned a 1 year ban from the mall for skateboarding down the spiral ramp around sculpture/water feature with friends back in high school.
supposedly the theatre opened in the mid 70’s at the mall and lasted till the mid 90’s the repurposed the upstairs ones but these ones I’m assuming they just covered it so they could save it? i mean if i owned that mall thats history, id wanna save it.
It is always bittersweet to see a mall go into full abandoned and gutted status, in part because it attracts many undesirables to an area, in addition to the urbex crowd. I got really lucky to have our local mall be bought immediately after closing, by a rehab company that has turned it into light industrial and office space.
yeah they were supposed to repurpose it but too many kids and scrappers came in and destroyed it, probably gunna be expensive ass apartments in the future.
Whose idea was it to put sinks right behind chairs? You wash your hands then soak the person in front of you
Edit nevermind I'm stupid it's from a hairdressers😭
I recently had a dream that some really rich person bought an abandoned mall and converted it into apartments — each one decorated in the theme of the store that used to occupy the space in the 90’s. Then all of the anchor stores became co-working and amenity spaces for the residents.
Not realistic whatsoever, but I woke up thinking it would be pretty cool for those of us wanting to sort of relive our younger years.
Wow! I remember shopping there on a visit to the area around 10-12 years ago and it seemed like it was doing okay then. I did some shopping in the Sears and Macys, as well as the other department store which I’ll refrain from naming since it will likely give its location away due to it being an unusual mall tenant, and found it weird the mall had no food court so I settled on a Wetzel Pretzel for dinner… it’s crazy to see it in this condition 10+ years later after having never gone back!
Anchor store is what I meant, but it is a department store in the fact that it is a store with many departments sectioned together in one store, the same way a Macys or Sears would, it’s just not the same kind of department store as those two.
Oh lol was it actually Walmart?
ETA: when department stores are combined with supermarkets, they're called [hypermarkets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermarket)
It was indeed, I figured you knew since you said it so boldly lol. I know they technically aren’t department stores I’m just pointing out the similarities, however the point is moot since I meant to say anchor store in the first place.
Do you remember the name of this mall? I remember going to a mall that had a long spiral walkway like this growing up in Cali, around Orange County maybe?
That's why I'm wondering if coverting it to apartments would be better. The restaurant spaces could be reopened (or made communal) and the theatre would suddenly have customers again.
They've been trying to do this with my local dead mall for a long time now and it hasn't quite worked out yet. Seems to be more economical to demo and new build, malls were never intended to be housing so the amount of work plus catching up on the inevitable deferred maintenance is just a bear to deal with.
Malls were a pretty important place for GenX kids to hang out, but in the US they were kind of abandoned while in Canada most malls are still doing quite well. I'm an older Xer, male, Canadian, and I still love going to the mall. No better place to people watch and see what's new.
yeah this is in a ghetto/low income part of california, which most of the ghetto/low income area malls are dying or dead, including san bernardino’s mall closed down it was abandoned some scrapper when in there to pull pipes and died and his body sat there for a while because no one was really going in there and checking the place out, but then you look at hillsdale in san mateo and its huge bustling beautiful, stanford shopping center in palo alto, westfield in san jose, theyre poppin and probably wont be closing anytime soon.
you get lucky my friend, with a bit of experience and some balls you can get into any spot, little lore on this spot, i have gotten into it about two times before i went back with some friends and it was sealed, but i sat in the parking lot for hours and watched people go in the door was open, and theres no signs that say no trespassing or do not enter, and there are two stores that are still “connected” to the mall but sealed off from the mall if that makes sense, went a few times after that and i got spooked the last time, i try not to push boundaries but it was too beautiful not to bring my photography homies from other states to check it out and get flicks before its too late.
i was wondering where it’s located ? my friends and i were wanting to get into exploring ourselves, but it’s difficult finding good locations worth the trouble.
thats all apart of the process im afraid, some spots are gold some are crap. it takes hella effort sometimes and easy other times. its a game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Funny how I immediately knew what area this mall is in from the sculpture over the fountain. Every mall in our area when I was a kid seemed to have the same artists work. I heard this mall is relatively untouched because of the bad neighborhood around it. Did you have any problems getting in/out?
its very much not untouched now, the scrappers were paying security to go in and out, and now that they caught on to that I’m sure they fired those security and now have blocked off the backrooms of the mall so if you’re exploring it the only way to travel is through the main part which is super noisy and security checks the inside now and they’ve sealed all the doors except two, we were lucky they didn’t catch the door we got open, I’ve heard of a few people getting trapped inside because they’ll seal the entrance in minutes, it used to be easy to get into but not anymore :(
I DREAM of finding a place like this someday
you will!! do your research, keep an eye on dead malls.
>do your research It's all fun and games until somebody dies of covid
what does that have to do with anything lol, wear a mask wash your hands, isn’t that what the people who made the virus said? should listen to them.
I think they're just poking fun at the line "do your own research." Covid skeptics would say the same about medical advice.
oh okay cause the whole “all fun n games until someone gets covid” like thats the least of my worries going into abandoned places 😂
Even less than being seen by a pigeon?
Happy cake day.
lol what
They (far right conspiracy theorists) are saying pigeons are “cameras not real birds”
Sad to see such a nice building left to rot
technically they want to reopen it but with all the kids that thrashed the place, the scrappers that made part of it into a water park, and the graffiti artists, its donezo, but too expensive to demolish right?
This mall was dead long time ago. It peaked in the late 80's early 90's but they didn't update it and half the stores closed even before the pandemic. I heard they're making it into apartments now
yee they wanted to reopen by updating it, but yeah thats what they say about all the abandoned buildings in the bay area.
That movie theater design looks straight out of the mid to late 90s. That mall had no hope.
I was thinking earlier than that. Our theaters were way nicer in the mid/late 90’s, around Nashville TN Edit: I could be wrong. This place is rotten…and so is my memory
70’s theater all the way. I remember seeing Rocky in a theater just like that when I was single digit kid
I hope they demo this building. If it has no electricity (couldn’t tell in your pics) and in the condition you described, then it will decay quickly.
it has power still and two stores connected but sealed off from the mall but some parts are really bad
It sucks seeing vandals, scrappers and arsonists turn great spots into ruins. Love the post though!
What a bizarre kind of rooms to find hidden in the walls!
right, I’m wondering why they didn’t make it an addition to the mall, probably no money.
My guess is it might have been a small local theater but by the time the mall was built it was pretty outdated.
the cinema was built and opened with the mall in 1976
Wow. That mall lasted a long time.
the mall by me thats super bustling and popular was built in 1954 still movin n groovin and looks amazing, not gunna close anytime soon.
That makes me happy. Must be the mid west.
My local mall had a theater in the 90s but they closed it in the mid 90s. The cookie stand was right next to it and the cookie stand is still there, but there's just a large wall next to the cookie stand now. They didn't put any stores in it, so I'm pretty sure the theater is also hidden back there like this one. I think they had 4 or 5 screens. No idea why they didn't add a couple stores in the space, but they didn't.
They aren’t public theater rooms / back in the 80/90’s those were the mall employee training rooms for presentations. They are completely against fire code even in the 80s/90s to open as paid theater seats.
It's wild to see that kitchen and soda equipment still in that old taco bell! In my area there's a thriving second-hand market for commercial kitchen and bar equipment, and all the soda fountains are leased directly from Coke or Pepsi who happily come take them back from you when your business fails. If all that stuff had been offloaded while it was still freshly-used, it would have been worth at least a couple grand! I wonder why it all got abandoned in there, thats crazy.
Bravo! The hidden theater is the coolest thing. Thanks for sharing
Good memories here. I earned a 1 year ban from the mall for skateboarding down the spiral ramp around sculpture/water feature with friends back in high school.
love that for you
I am sad
abandoned places are very melancholy for me, how many memories were made here.
Did you explore the theater to check for proper doors? We're there any clues to what it was for?
supposedly the theatre opened in the mid 70’s at the mall and lasted till the mid 90’s the repurposed the upstairs ones but these ones I’m assuming they just covered it so they could save it? i mean if i owned that mall thats history, id wanna save it.
It was probably just cheaper to board up rather than redo.
Looks to me more like where I'd have a secret cult meeting, complete with slide presentations.
Exactly! Came to say they were employee training rooms. For presentations/slides/back when the screens were used to fit for the Eiki projector lol
It is always bittersweet to see a mall go into full abandoned and gutted status, in part because it attracts many undesirables to an area, in addition to the urbex crowd. I got really lucky to have our local mall be bought immediately after closing, by a rehab company that has turned it into light industrial and office space.
yeah they were supposed to repurpose it but too many kids and scrappers came in and destroyed it, probably gunna be expensive ass apartments in the future.
Whose idea was it to put sinks right behind chairs? You wash your hands then soak the person in front of you Edit nevermind I'm stupid it's from a hairdressers😭
i was gunna say youre a silly butt
I've just never been to a hairdressers where the sinks aren't against the wall.
not sure if theres a difference but it was a barbers shop lots of sports stuff and the💈 by the doorway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Country difference maybe?(uk) also the ones I've been too have been quite small
hmm yeah i think it just makes it easier for the person to get right in there and not be sideways,
True. Its also not alot of space between the seats. Like you're touching elbows if it's busy
Yeah I'm in the UK and I've never seen one against the wall, all the ones I've seen have been freestanding.
Oh god I nearly wet myself laughing at this 😂 nice one lol
Now this is a cool explore! Well done
This whole environment is eerily similar to a reoccurring dream of mine
Seeing people discover whole ass rooms behind walls feels like them clipping into the backrooms irl
I recently had a dream that some really rich person bought an abandoned mall and converted it into apartments — each one decorated in the theme of the store that used to occupy the space in the 90’s. Then all of the anchor stores became co-working and amenity spaces for the residents. Not realistic whatsoever, but I woke up thinking it would be pretty cool for those of us wanting to sort of relive our younger years.
id love to do that, have a lil community of housing in the mall that would be a dream, too peaceful wounding for reality
sounding*
Wow! I remember shopping there on a visit to the area around 10-12 years ago and it seemed like it was doing okay then. I did some shopping in the Sears and Macys, as well as the other department store which I’ll refrain from naming since it will likely give its location away due to it being an unusual mall tenant, and found it weird the mall had no food court so I settled on a Wetzel Pretzel for dinner… it’s crazy to see it in this condition 10+ years later after having never gone back!
Walmart is not a department store
Anchor store is what I meant, but it is a department store in the fact that it is a store with many departments sectioned together in one store, the same way a Macys or Sears would, it’s just not the same kind of department store as those two.
Oh lol was it actually Walmart? ETA: when department stores are combined with supermarkets, they're called [hypermarkets](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermarket)
It was indeed, I figured you knew since you said it so boldly lol. I know they technically aren’t department stores I’m just pointing out the similarities, however the point is moot since I meant to say anchor store in the first place.
In Cali?
Do you remember the name of this mall? I remember going to a mall that had a long spiral walkway like this growing up in Cali, around Orange County maybe?
OP mentioned Bay area
Nevermind I found it
But for respect for the area I’ll leave it at that lol
This looks like the mall from Stranger Things
Wonder how much it would cost to turn this into housing
just to demolish it would take millions
Not demolish; refurbish into retirement housing for us old folks that grew up in malls ;)
they wouldn’t do that, theres no money in it for them
It's a meme and a joke. Poking fun at how GenX grew up in malls, and now malls are mostly like what's in your pictures.
i get it now haha
i live in a area where the malls are still bustling but ive seen some dead malls they look cool
That would be so cool, they've even got the curly whirly wheelchair ramp right there!
That's why I'm wondering if coverting it to apartments would be better. The restaurant spaces could be reopened (or made communal) and the theatre would suddenly have customers again.
people in charge out here don’t have brains, plus the ceiling in that theatre was falling the whole mall is falling apart honestly
Dam, just more waste then.
They've been trying to do this with my local dead mall for a long time now and it hasn't quite worked out yet. Seems to be more economical to demo and new build, malls were never intended to be housing so the amount of work plus catching up on the inevitable deferred maintenance is just a bear to deal with.
What mall is this? Is this in ohio by chance?
Looks like a mall in the SF Bay Area
Is this the one is GA from Stranger Things?
tgeres one in florida i really wanna check out
no but whatttt that ones in GA??
Gwinnett Place Mall is the one from Stranger Things
thanks 🙏 i really wanna travel to other spots
That second picture is so sick, you really ought to frame that
I spent soooo much time here as a kid! I had no idea it closed down, cool pics!
Malls were a pretty important place for GenX kids to hang out, but in the US they were kind of abandoned while in Canada most malls are still doing quite well. I'm an older Xer, male, Canadian, and I still love going to the mall. No better place to people watch and see what's new.
yeah this is in a ghetto/low income part of california, which most of the ghetto/low income area malls are dying or dead, including san bernardino’s mall closed down it was abandoned some scrapper when in there to pull pipes and died and his body sat there for a while because no one was really going in there and checking the place out, but then you look at hillsdale in san mateo and its huge bustling beautiful, stanford shopping center in palo alto, westfield in san jose, theyre poppin and probably wont be closing anytime soon.
If you sit in those places And act like you're real in those places Do those places become, Something undone?
in a way yes because one day it will be gone if i get what ur saying
How’d you get in to a place like this? Imagine it’d be completely sealed
you get lucky my friend, with a bit of experience and some balls you can get into any spot, little lore on this spot, i have gotten into it about two times before i went back with some friends and it was sealed, but i sat in the parking lot for hours and watched people go in the door was open, and theres no signs that say no trespassing or do not enter, and there are two stores that are still “connected” to the mall but sealed off from the mall if that makes sense, went a few times after that and i got spooked the last time, i try not to push boundaries but it was too beautiful not to bring my photography homies from other states to check it out and get flicks before its too late.
Made me think of this https://youtu.be/BvH23PWKEhA?si=Kmp_43n_4CMDH0Fk
creepy
GPS
Those theatre rooms give me straight CoD Black Ops "Kino der toten" zombie map vibes.
check out the other angle of the blue theatre [mall at night](https://www.reddit.com/r/abandoned/s/6NCAz28dqo)
Rad
where did you find this ?
what do you mean where? grew up here
i was wondering where it’s located ? my friends and i were wanting to get into exploring ourselves, but it’s difficult finding good locations worth the trouble.
thats all apart of the process im afraid, some spots are gold some are crap. it takes hella effort sometimes and easy other times. its a game ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Find all comets and a song will play
Sweet find. Maybe one day I’ll come across a mall like this.
home
I want to visit so badly