Missouri company snags the Schuylkill Mall!

The mall has been sold!
New management!
Out with the old!
...in with the new... But what is the future?

This is a press release to persons within the mall ..

The winning bidder was Northpoint Development LLC for $2.1 million and the assumption of the leases for A&A Auto Parts, Total Renal Care, Big Lots, McDonald’s, Holiday Inn Express and Cracker Barrel. Northpoint will also maintain Bon Ton’s rights under their ground lease agreement. They will allow rejection of all leases by the trustee pursuant to the bankruptcy code.
This bid is subject to a hearing and approval by the United States Bankruptcy Court For the Middle District of Pennsylvania, which is scheduled a hearing tomorrow. If approved by the court, closing is to take place by February 24.

The death of the mall? Or a new birth.. time will tell..

But for now, we can tell this about the new ownership of the mall from their own website..

We believe we have an obligation to give back to the community through charitable efforts and, as a token of our appreciation to those who have helped us succeed, we will pay it forward.

The relationships with our customers, employees, and investors are our most valuable assets. We will strive to always take care of each other and to operate our business so that we maintain our culture of appreciation, respect, transparency, and we shall avoid office politics.

We also know this about Northpoint.. the development company has also recently purchased Highridge properties in Minersville.. They spent $28 mil, as a matter of fact, on two parcels in Highridge late 2015..

In January 2017, just days ago, it was reported that chew.com company based in Dania Beach, Fla., will lease an 800,000-square-foot distribution center that NorthPoint is developing on a 172-acre site in Hanover Township near Wilkes-Barre.. NorthPoint acquired the site, which was remediated after being scarred by coal mining, for $15 million in September.
In 2014, the Kansas City Missouri went nation when it launched big industrial and apartment projects..

The company also made national headlines in 2016 when it considered a $32 million facility in Indiana ..

 

Just a few days ago, Kansas City BUSINESS JOURNAL reported that the company's developments were 'taking off like rockets' ..

Northpoint apparently has 'found a friend in Pennsylvania.'   And now the future of the Schuylkill Mall is in their hands..

A foggy night as a mall dies in the distance

This was taken of me and my son after a movie at the Schuylkill Mall last night.. the fog was immense and thick.. and while we were laughing it would appear we were heading into a foreboding jungle of horror..

And on that note, this coming week, the potential final chapter of the mall arrives.

The auction is on Tuesday.

A Pittsburgh mall just told for a mere $100 bucks. No telling what will happen Tuesday..

Which is Worse: A Bath Salt Epidemic or a Zombie Outbreak?

This Florida online paper perfectly sums up the horror that is drugs, particularly bath salts, in the once great coal region of Pennsylvania ..This is a great article, written from looking in from the outside. Dennis Maley, the author,  grew up in Schuylkill County PA, or as residents term it the “skook” .. He penned this article about a trip back and a sad view of how bath salts and other hardcore drugs have destroyed the last remaining goodness that was the county.

A few points from Maley:

I grew up in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, or the Skook as it’s affectionately known. It is an area that has suffered through a long history of problems with pervasive drug addiction. In that way, it’s no different than a lot of small, economically-depressed places that have fared poorly in the post-industrial economy. The stories are the same, but for some reason, the drugs are often different, perhaps reflecting the particular brand of desperation most prevalent in any particular geographical region.

He goes on..

I’d been hearing the tales for a long time, but by that last trip home the scope had become unthinkable. One after another, I heard dozens of stories about the ranks of friends and acquaintances who’d jumped to the dark side and become a “salter.” It wasn’t just the usual suspects either. Smart people with good jobs and intact families saw their lives quickly circle the drain before nose-diving down the pipe and into oblivion. 

I myself have known people, or known of people, who suddenly lost their way and changed their entire personality due to drugs.. It’s a horrible thing, too. The zombie look that the face gets is frightening.. 

Another point from the author:

All of it felt surreal. I was without a frame of reference. This many people couldn’t be off the grid, living some underground life as fiends with an insatiable craving for some drug you bought in a head shop with cartoon pictures on the box. Then it happened … I saw one.

She was a formerly gorgeous girl, five years my junior and daughter of a family friend. Her face was hollowed out so deep that it called to mind the Skeletor character from the horrible live-action movie, based on the He-Man cartoon. Her once full lips were now pencil thin and scabbed over on at least half of their surface area. The doe-eyed baby blues I remembered as her most striking feature had narrowed into slits, leaving her with only a permanent expression that seemed to drip with cynicism. Then there was the assortment of scabs and open cuts dotting her face. Her teeth looked like they’d begun rotting in place and her once-curvy body had thinned to the point that I might have missed her, had she been standing sideways rather than facing me straight on. 

I have seen the people he is describing.. I have seen beautiful young and hopeful people become destroyed because they made a choice to do some hardcore horrid things.  

While you see the coal region close up every day, looking at it from a new perspective always gives you a fresh look.. Reading an account from someone who left before the bath salt and meth fad began here is striking.. Everything that was is gone. Things that were stable are not..

As the Coal Speaker has followed for years, you never know where you’ll find a meth lab in the area..  The Coal Speaker has also began documenting what I feel will be the ultimate demise of the area: Closed malls, schools, hospitals, and hope. Deep down, beyond all the facts and headlines, there is something else happening.

When I was a high schooler at the now defunct Cardinal Brennan High School in the roaring 90s, life was fine. Kids did bush parties—late night beer fests in the middle of corn fields or in hideouts in the woods. That was the test of a teenager… beer. Miller or Coors.. toxic sure… but things changed.

These days drugs are rampant.. And if you think the cops are immune you’re pretty naive to how things work.

There seems to be a disconnect—county leaders don’t realize just how fast and how much the area changed.. They don’t get the immense change that happened. And most don’t realize how much bath salts, meth, and other hard core drugs are responsible.  War has come to our towns.. The drug war. And sobriety is losing.

Don’t get me wrong. The drug was has failed. But let’s not forget how it was meant to fail—the CIA has been busy beavers.. 

I feel like I am digressing.
Back to this article..

Despite your belief about drugs and whether we should jail people for them…there is something very rotten at the core of Schuylkill County. 

And I fear the when Krocodil makes its debut in the region.. Then the real zombie look will be en vogue.. 

Which is Worse: A Bath Salt Epidemic or a Zombie Outbreak?

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These are three telling headlines in today’s POTTSVILLE REPUBLICAN AND HERALD.. A factory closing, a school having issues, and yet another store in the Frackville Schuylkill Mall shutting doors.. 

There was an old adage about the coal region of Pennsylvania: There’s a church and bar on every street corner. These days the churches have shuddered and even some bars too—it’s the bars closing that may bring pause…

A major hospital with 100+ years of history in Ashland Pennsylvania is now an empty vessel. The silhouette at night of the empty structure is a frightening sight.. 

Schools have closed and merged, leaving buildings to become dilapidated. This year, an old Catholic School Immaculate Heart in Girardville was taken down after days of heavy machinery chipping away at the heart of the building..

The people of the coal region, though often mocked for poor grammar, are good people. This was a good area.. But it’s fast becoming a land of no return, a place where no industry thrives.. A place where malls teeter on the brink of closure, where schools struggle not with grades but with meth and bath salts.. Where police dismantle their oath to protect and serve and instead sever ties with morality. This is an area where coal mines are abandoned, housing histories of millionaires.. but those millionaires’ homes just waste away into desolation.

There was once a close knit society in the region. When I grew up, things weren’t perfect, but they were fine. There were businesses, factories, churches, restaurants. Now there’s not. There’s little here.. There’s so little.

Are there still good people? Amazingly people.
Does the area still have a chance? That is a tougher question.

I have long believed that every town in the coal region could be the next Jim Thorpe. It could happen.. but it would take a lot. 

And with industry constantly leaving, and more ‘things’ constantly closing, that is becoming a much harder prospect to fathom..

Right now, February 13, 2014, there’s a monster snowstorm hitting the coal region and other states along the East Coast.. The snow is covering the pollution and litter, the pothole filled roads, and the empty buildings. But when it melts, it will all be there again. 

I am beginning to feel, strongly, that the coal region is not the place to raise my three-year-old son. He will not be growing up in the same place I was .. 

That close knit society is losing thread. 
The empty buildings have nothing to offer.
A vacant hospital two miles away can’t help.
And a mall without stores is the loneliest place in the world.

What is best.. trying to create a better place to live, or realizing that things are far beyond repair and going somewhere that is already a decent place to be?

That is the question.. 

And over the next year or two my wife and I will be debating that question..

You’ll never know where you’ll find a meth lad these days!

It could be.. your backyard.. It could be a restaurant that has a hotel over top—a restaurant with a cute little grandmother figure standing outside watching for danger. This one, unfortunately, passed granny by.


The site: Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania; Frackville. Granny’s Motel: Cops swooped in and busted a meth lab in room 18.

The business has been around for ages.. it is a motel/bed and breakfast.. And now, after strong odors were reported, it is the latest scene of the depressed world of meth labs—something that seemingly is becoming as common in the coal region as coal mines themselves. The most repugnant of drugs .. cooking in a bed and breakfast.

..and if a place called Granny’s isn’t safe from the smell of cooking meth labs, I’d suppose no where will be.