The mall is dead.
I couldn't believe I was reading those words. But there they were in the newspaper, a quote from the developer who owns the mall in question. Apparently, the developer plans to close off much of the mall, add "open spaces" and make other changes that will allow shoppers to get in and out in a hurry.
They want to make the experience less mall-like, and more like shopping at the old stores that used to be downtown, before the malls drove them all out of business.
All I can say is, I wish they would make up their minds, especially with Christmas right around the corner.
When I was a kid, Christmas shopping meant one thing: downtown. It was a major family event. My dad would put on a suit, my mom a dress; even we kids were wrestled into our Sunday best. We'd all pile in the Ford and make the 10 minute drive downtown, followed by the 20 minute search for an open parking space.
The stroll along snowy, downtown streets was nothing short of magical. Kids choirs sang on street corners, Salvation Army quartets blatted out-of-tune Christmas carols on dented trombones and coronets, the frosted windows of stores with august names like Steketee's and Wurzburg's glimmered and glowed with the promise of Christmas presents yet to come. Yes, kiddies, it really was just like A Christmas Story or "The PolarExpress."
At some point in the evening, we'd visit Santa, ride the monorail around Herpolsheimer's basement, and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. By the time we arrived back home, we were tired, filled with the avarice only a child at Christmas can really understand, and ready to begin counting down the days until Santa's arrival.
Then, sometime around my 13th birthday, the first mall appeared. It grew like a mushroom on the outskirts of town, far from downtown, farther from our house. "It'll never fly," my old man predicted. "Nobody's going to drive all the way out there in the middle of nowhere."
But parking was free. The family could shop in December without coats, hats, mittens. It was enclosed. Warm. Comfortable. Convenient. Seductive.
Over the course of a few years, the mall's Muzak siren song lured my family--and the families of so many others--away from downtown, away from the venerable stores that had stood as bastions of consumerism for generations. Despite the best efforts of planners, pundits and politicians, downtown died a slow and tedious death, one from which it has only begun in recent years to resurrect itself.
As the decades passed and I grew older, I couldn't help but feel a melancholy nostalgia for those downtown shopping trips with the folks and siblings. But change happens with or without our permission. I grew accustomed to the malls, the crowds, the cheesy Christmas decorations that were but a poor, inexpensive imitation of downtown's former glorious offerings.
And now, now at this late date, I read that the mall is dead. That the developer wants to "de-mall-ify" what was the area's first mall. The developer wants to appeal to the "modern" shopper.
I don't know if it's too late to put in my two cents, Mr. Developer, but here's an idea: Gather all those stores and put them in separate buildings, but within a similar geographical location, someplace like--oh, I don't know--downtown, say. Give them all big, picture windows facing the sidewalk. Hire a couple children's choirs and maybe give the Salvation Army Band a place to play.
It's a radical idea, I know. But it just might work.
Mike Taylor's book Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com or in digital format from Barnes & Nobles, Amazon and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.
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