I have written many stories on this site about my local mall.. (HERE) (HERE) (HERE) (And more here)… Well, two more stores are now leaving it..
This place is about ready to become more than a dead mall, but a really dead mall.
No more bustle.. no more shopping..
Without massive change in leadership or ownership, the days for the once great Schuylkill Mall are ending..
If you’re living in, or driving through, Northeastern Pennsylvania, don’t expect to get a dried up roast beast sandwich or curly fries.. most of the Arby’s have shut down in a Black Friday bankruptcy, so sudden that employees had no clue.
One of the stores closed was in the Schuylkill Mall, my local diving shopping center. Another retail bail .. biting the dust in Frackville. This one was not in the mall’s control, obviously.. but it’s an example and showcase of the real economic problems that this part of the state is having..
The end may be nigh for the mall up high.
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..
In your face America: The Coal Region has something that few others do. (Besides mounds of rock and leftover sulfur rivers from abandoned coal mines of course) A digital drive in! That’s right, The Schuylkill Mall in Frackville, PA, will have a digital drive in as of August 12.. There were only four of these in the United States. And we got it..
Now, some may say it will close down within weeks after people, not wanting to spend $7 a car and instead just $1, don’t attend. And others will say the hot dog prices are too cold. And some may even complain about strange radioactive digital pollution that is being placed into the brains of the subjects viewing the content on the side of the mall building, but I say, this is pretty cool while it lasts. And I hope it does last…
The area responsible for Mrs. T’s perogies and block party halushki will have what few others do: A modern 21st century digital drive in. It will be like a time machine watching people, dressed like it is 1985, going to a digital movie in the modern age.
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.
