For me I would say the Auburn Mall in Auburn, Maine. I used to go there a lot as a child because my grandmother lives nearby. I had a work order in Auburn yesterday and decided to go in, and see how it changed since I was a kid.
I think the front page of the website says it all. http://www.auburnmall.com/
KB Toys and Waldenkids went bankrupt long ago, and the FYE store in this mall was also closed years ago. This spring they lost another two stores when Radioshack and Deb went under.
About half of the storefronts are closed and abandoned. One of them has no label, and is jammed full of washing machines, and there is a hand-written sign in front “Washing machines $395”. I wonder what that’s about? Many of the other dead stores are filled with motorcycles because the mall owner collects them.
When I was growing up Del Amo Mallwas, for a time, the largest mall in the US. I worked at various stores during my teenage years, including a children’s clothing and furniture store, KayBee Toys, Baskin Robbins and Wet Seal. Not having been there in close to twenty years I may be talking out of my ass, but I would bet it has suffered somewhat of a decline; I cannot think of a mall that hasn’t.
I remember going to Northwest Plaza in the St. Louis 'burbs with my mom in the early-to-mid 80s. At the time, it was open air, and kind of our go-to place for special occasion shopping. I think it had the closest Famous-Barr to us. (Famous-Barr, by the way, was a regional upscale department store chain, ultimately bought by Macy’s). In the late 80s, they converted it to an indoor mall. In the 90s it got a reputation for increasing crime, and in the early 2000s it started to fall into some disrepair. Competition from a newer nearby mall finished it off by 2009. It was vacant for some time, and I think still is. It seems to be going through some redevelopment, but I’m not sure what the status of that is. So, from “place middle class people go to splurge” to “vacant shell” in about 20 years.
Right now, Rotterdam Square. They actually had their power turned off a few months ago, and right now its pretty empty. The owners hope that the new casino will help.
There’s also the Curry Road Shopping Center. It was a small strip mall with Kmart as their main tenant. Kmart moved to Rotterdam Square. Their space was claimed by two different supermarkets – Price Chopper, who subleased from Kmart, and Hannaford, who paid rent to the mall management. Price Chopper did it to keep Hannaford out (they talked about a new concept in grocery stores since they had a story a mile away, but they never tried that concept anywhere else). The legal battle went on for years, until Hannaford found a new site. By that time, there was just a gift shop and a bank. Now, it’s just the bank (which has a big sign added: “Yes, we are open”). It’s primarily used by parents teaching their kids how to drive.
Beat me to it.
Century III Mall. Back in the 1980s, it was a big enough deal that it was a destination for bus trips from smaller communities all over Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Ohio. It had some awesome specialty stores (like Cutlery World), an interesting food court, a couple different bars, a couple different arcades…it wasn’t hard to while away an entire day there. Now? One whole level is closed off, and the shops that remain are just kind of sad.
Springfield Mall with Landmark Mall a close second. I moved to the area a couple years before Landmark was remodeled as an enclosed mall, now it’s a pretty much vacant enclosed mall but I don’t think they had the crime problems like Springfield.
Seven Corners also deserves mention. Now a hillside double-deck strip mall, whenever I visited the enclosed mall in the '90s it looked stuck in the '70s.
Deadmalls.com Everything you want to know about the rise and fall of your favorite old mall, often in depressing detail.
I’ve seen several malls (listed on the DeadMalls site) that have gone so far as to close – Midtown Plaza in Rochester, Manalapan Mall in New Jersey.
Some have died and come back. Assembly Square in Somerville MA died (except for the K-mart anchor store), and I saw the whole slow decline. But it got bought and refurbished. It’s no longer an indoor mall with small stores and a food court, but van externally-connected complex of Big Box stores (including the K-mart). Ironically, they just put in an orange line subway stop nhearby that arguably could have kept it going. But the reason the stop was built at all was to service the outdoor “lifestyle center” mall nearby, so it probably wouldn’t have helped anyway.
Meadow Glen Mall nearby in Medford MA is still suffering a slow decline. It ain’t dead, and still has very active anchors and a food court, but several stores have turned over multiple times to small local businesses – never a good sign.
Port Plaza Mall in Green Bay, WI opened in '77. It was the first big indoor mall in the region, and it was built with hopes of helping to revitalize downtown Green Bay. In the 1970s and 1980s, it was, without a doubt, the retail hub in the city.
It eventually lost a lot of business (and its anchor tenants) to a competing mall in suburban Ashwaubenon, was converted to “mixed use” (both retail and office space) in 2001, and finally closed in 2006 – by that point, there were only six tenants left in the mall. It was empty for several years, until being demolished in 2012. Schreiber Foods (a cheese company – hey, it is Green Bay, after all) built their new HQ in the space formerly occupied by the mall.
While it went down a bit in the late 90s, with the closure of Monkey Wards and the UA theatres, in the last 10 years it has bounced back quite nicely. The north wing was torn down and replaced with an outdoor plaza mall thingy that is doing very well. New food court in the middle part of the mall where it crosses Carson Blvd. Heck, even Nordstrom’s is ditching the Galleria and moving in.
Hawthorne Plaza (about 8 miles up the road) on the other hand… well, even in the 80s, when it was less than 10 years old, it was a dump. It’s been an empty husk since 1999.
Highland Mall in Austin. It opened in my teen years and I spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out there. Learned a lot from the Spencer’s Gifts. Bought my first alcoholic beverage from the pub (I forgot the name). The last shop closed a couple of weeks ago. The local community college has taken over about half of it as a new campus.
Springfield Mall just got a remodel and seems to be a doing a bit better.
Landmark… yea, its pretty bad. The only thing in there worth going to is the Chick-fil-a. If you go there during a weekday lunch hour, it is not an exaggeration that probably half of the customers in the entire mall are in front of the Chick-fil-a. And that is probably about 20-25 people.
What about Jamestown Mall? That’s where I was while Bayard was hanging out at Northwest Plaza. Northwest seems to be under redevelopment - they’ve given upon Jamestown entirely.
Aw, man, that Wiki article brought back memories with its mention of Stix Baer and Fuller! Dillard’s bought Stix when I was 10ish, so I don’t remember them very well, but my mom always spoke wistfully of them.
Hawthorne Plaza? That wouldn’t be what was once called Olde Towne? I’ve been away from my fair state for far too long 
As of about 1 year ago they began tearing Northwest Plaza down. As of about 6 months ago the place is simply a large empty dirt lot. So yeah, it’s gone downhill a bit since its heyday.
That 10-ish story office building that was attached to one corner of the mall is still in full use. As is a small area of adjacent parking lot. The entire rest of the mall building and its parking lot is gone.
I saw a sign indicating they were going to build a Menard’s (Midwest big box DIY chain) on the site. But even a ginourmous Menard’s and parking lot would use barely 20% of the vacant land.
Good news for malls: The mallrats are gone.
Bad news for malls: so is everyone else.
Nothing has officially closed near us, but the writing is on the wall. The food courts in particular are shadows of their former selves.
The last time I saw Jamestown was in about 2005. It was 100% dead then. No clue what’s happened since.
When I was born, it was The Mall
When I was in high school, it was The Nice Mall
Not too long after I graduated college, it was The Scary Mall
Then it spent about 15 years as The Mall You Kept Seeing In The News before finally expiring in the last month.