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..

More ‘death of the mall’ updates

Two teen clothing stores in Lackawanna county closing..

The Cressona Mall in Cressona, PA, facing foreclosure.. 

And the Schuylkill Mall, one I have been talking about on this site for some time, is most likely going to be having some numbered days with anchor stores abandoning it..

As for the coal region, one quote from the WNEP story worth reading:

“‘It seems like it’s happening to all the malls around here, they’re all closing, the Schuylkill Mall, there’s pretty much going to be nothing left,” said Mandy Galdi of Pottsville.
With more money issues and less shopping options, Gladi said there’s only one thing to do: “move, I’m moving.”

Another one bites the dust

The Schuylkill Mall is being hit with another store closing.. Kmart liquidation will be this year..

80 employees out of a job..another anchor store shuddred.. another day closer to the now very likely demise of the once great mall on the hill..

Another one bites the dust

A little treasure found in a pawn shop in the Schuylkill Mall in Frackville PA.. Feels like the 80s again when I see these for sale. Of course minus the boxes and comic inserts..

Oh, and stores and shoppers.

When I was 3 and a half, I was featured in a book. There was a full-spread page with a photo of me leaning up against a borehole in the town of Centralia, smoke was billowing from the background and a group of teenagers were running from the camera–one may have been my brother. The shot looked more like a scene from a third world nation .. But at that point, a mine fire had infected the underground nearest my home and the situation was getting dire.

The book was SLOW BURN.   You can see that image here from photographer Renee Jacobs..

Yesterday there was a haunting moment when I saw my own past come back for a split second in vivid detail.. the black and white photo of my from 1983 suddenly was in color, standing on front of me.. My son Ayden, incidentally the same age as me when I was featured in SLOW BURN, was standing on front of empty SEARS store shelving in the Schuylkill Mall, Frackville PA.. Sears of closing after the corporate decision to make Frackville one of the many locations that would shudder in 2015.  There were only a handful of items left, all marked with an ‘all sales final’ warning under the 70% off all merchandise signs. Business was brisk–people were even rudely clamoring for more money off.. Even the store shelves were being purchased. All things must go. Including history.

When Ayden was in front, I said “look at me and smile!” and snapped the photo with my iPhone. Instead of a smile, I caught him sort of in a wide-mouthed surprised look at what he was seeing. I think he realized that this store, once filled with items to the point where you could hardly walk, was vanishing. Now it’s becoming a giant open field of tiled floors..

As I watched Ayden walk around the soon to be closed Sears at the mall today I realized the importance of this simple photo. When he is 30 or so, retail will be a distant memory. The way we buy everything will have changed.. This picture captured a moment, just one moment, when it was in its final phase..

While he may not remember the day or time this picture was taken, the evidence of it will allow Ayden will impress his own children with tales of malls and how he once, as a child, walked in stores to buy products instead of purchasing them in his body chip implant and have same day drone delivery..

Of course Ayden’s picture is not being published in a book. But it is on his father’s website. And that’s the way things are now.. until something else comes around and makes websites so 2000 and late.

A moment in time.. As life shifts.

Two More Stores Leaving The Schuylkill Mall

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..

Two More Stores Leaving The Schuylkill Mall

Retail bail: A new book photo journals dead malls. Mine, and yours, may be next

I have fond memories of my local mall.

The Schuylkill Mall in Frackville has been around since two years prior to my birth. It was once a location for endless supplies of elderly smoking cigars–amazing to think of how popular the fateful choice of indoor smoking was before it was outlawed across the land.

For those who have never been there, it’s like a giant vast kingdom on top of an enormous mountain.. roads circle around it like you’re entire a palace. The facade, when you finally reach the pinnacle of the moutain, is brown in color .. It looks a bit like a prison. Or a big school. But the signs for SEARS and KMART illustrate you’re about to enter a shopping paradise..

Well… it was a shopping paradise.

Those fond memories of my mall have vanished over the years.
The place where I’d go to get HE-MAN action figures at a toy store are no more.. the book store is gone.. the restaurants are gone, all that remains is a pizza place–with amazing pizza by the way– and a new SUBWAY—seriously, like any human being needs another SUBWAY ..

The Schuylkill Mall seems to be teetering on the brink of something. Logic would dictate the obvious: A building so large in stature cannot sustain the lack of stores to pay it rent. And stores cannot continue operating without patrons. And patrons aren’t there–neither are kids on weekends, they are probably busy living their virtual teenager years cyber bullying someone on Twitter. But then again, the mall is still operating–years after DEADMALLS.COM declared the Frackville mall ‘dead’ ..  That’s saying something, at least, right?

I have a few notions of what could succeed–maybe drop rent prices for a year and tell anyone who wants to open a store to try it.. now’s the time, real estate abounds. Or maybe a giant organic farm market would work.  However, things seem to be too far gone to try such new and often costly things–I hope I am wrong. I want my son to enjoy the sound of retail at Christmas at a local mall.. but it just looks bleak.
Especially when anchor stores that remain are SEARS and BON TON–stores that nationally are desperate for any light at the end of their very financially dark tunnels, respectively.

So what will happen at the Frackville mall should something dire take place.  A book from a photographer Seph Lawless called BLACK FRIDAY-THE COLLAPSE OF THE AMERICAN MALL may give hints.  Lawless traveled the country for years to find forgotten treasures and the ghost of retail past. He documented decay in buildings that used to house the sounds of laughter, talking, and cash registers printing. There’s pictures with broken glass.. crumbling walls..

Most of the pictures were taken in Michigan and Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.. These seem to be the locations where most of the malls are dying–and it could be a symptom of the bigger problem.. the fever from the flu of an economic failure on the rust belt and other locations where populations relied on manufacturing. Jobs were sent away.. they ain’t comin’ back. And neither are the malls where Lawless traveled to.

According to Lawless, he cannot easily gain access to closed malls. So instead, he breaks in–and has had arrest warrants issued for him for that very action. Imagine–breaking and entering into dilapidated structures.. I can only imagine the immense feeling of loss within them.

I  have been busy reading up on this book and checking out some of the photos that actually have been published online. It’s a tempting book to purchase if ever get an extra infusion of cash to do so.. But I think it may be a monumentally upsetting book, too.

Malls were built on the dreams and aspirations of a generation. The Wikipedia page for the Schuylkill Mall is actually filled with some good history ..

But memories aside, realities prevail.

I fear that as malls die, it will also take the Schuylkill Mall.
Vacant stores are eating up the inside.. Lots of very bored employees flip through their iPhones or laptops looking for something to do, as customers aren’t there busting down doors..

While this article has focused on my own personal surroundings, it’s not just the Steamtown Mall in Scranton, or the Schuylkill Mall in Frackville, and everywhere in between, suffering.  Atlantic City is going bust, too, as casinos are shuttered and thousands are losing jobs. Ironically, the Jersey Shore was the prime vacation spot for coal regioners for generations.. Maybe we cursed it.

There is a bigger picture to why malls are declining. It’s not just malls. And it’s not just that people are buying online (though the online purchases are a major factor) .. there’s something else at play, I fear. At least for my own area. Since I have been a kid, I have seen every school with the exception of my college close down. I have seen my local hospital shut down only two years ago.. Car dealerships, grocery stores, local stores, restaurants.. closed. And when that property goes vacant, it gets lifeless. Almost immediately and overgrowth of vines and shrubs take over.. What was once a center of life is now one of decline. The coal region of Pennsylvania is finished. Over. Sadly there is so much potential for it to be amazing–look no further than Jim Thorpe, PA, to see how it should be done.  Every little town in this area would have the potential to be the next Jim Thorpe. Missing from the equation: People to make it happen. This area has a lack of positive feelings, and instead, an underbelly of poverty and grief.. The youth move out and the elderly are dying out.. A new population has moved in that never saw the area when it was amazing. There’s no connection to the past, or to history.  And quite frankly, there’s no one who has taken up the mantle of creating something amazing again.

And that is why I fear the Seth Lawless photos will soon be taken at a mall near me..

Jobs aren’t coming back.
Neither are stores.
Neither are malls.

Unless there’s an American miracle, this same story and song and dance will play out not only in a town near me, but one near you, too..

Arby's Employees React to Sudden Store Closures

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. 

Arby's Employees React to Sudden Store Closures

A story of local note

Here in Schuylkill County, where the trees even look sad lately, there is an aura of depression.. an aura of sadness, perhaps the raping of the land by coal barons has finally hit, now that the generations are changing .. 

The Schuylkill Mall in Frackville, PA, is a symbol of this.. It stands nearly vacant, a few stores peppered about and maybe a handful of people shopping. A new movie theater with an awesome bar has livened things up. And just when you thought there was hope that the giant mall could survive to die another day, this news comes: A SUBWAY is coming to the mall.

How I loathe Subway and its processed meat.. how I despise that smell of the restaurant, which somehow can stick on your clothing for days.. How i disdain their bread—though they removed the rubber, I suppose.

Subway?

Seriously? This is the best that a dying mall can do? 

My idea for this mall—and any other mall across this nation where shopping is going down hill in favor of online retail: Let the people have their malls back. 

Rent is too damn high—yes a candidate for office in New York said that, but when it comes to malls, he was right. The rent in malls in too high.. it’s impossible to sustain your dream of having your own business when you get little traffic in a dying mall but still pay through the roof to have it. 

So why not this: Lower rent for a year—maybe even do rent-free for six months. Advertise to ANY PERSON IN THE AREA who has a dream about owning their own store and their own business. How about getting a farmer’s market of fresh food once a week? A grand experiment to buy local—imagine the idea of NO BIG CHAIN STORES, and no big chain restaurants ?? Instead fresh and locally made, locally sold, and locally grown.. It would be amazing and cool.

And perhaps reinvigorate malls.. Not only in Frackville PA but everywhere else a dying mall threatens to blight the landscape with a giant vacant shell.. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbo7UKb-Ckc?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=374]

For any Schuylkill Countians out there, this is a blast from the past.. The Schuylkill Mall’s TV ad from the 1990s.. all of these stars except a few are gone.. and the mall is almost vacant.. Sad how the mighty mall on the hill has fallen.

(Keep in mind that when this ad was made, around 1995, the mall had already suffered a mini-exodus of stores. But nothing like what has happened since 2008)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

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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..

The coal region gets a black eye for lack of things to do .. but this new thing to do is pretty cool

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. 

Pity the once great mall

It’s a tough job these days holding up a mall.

Wayback in time to last century, when main street was killed by the way of shopping, with floors shiny and new and fountains rolling fresh water for background news. Yes, indeed, those were the days. Food courts… stores as far as the eye could see.. Even small kiosks selling things you’ve never buy but sure were happy to laugh at as you walked by..

The great American mall. The shopping experience of your lifetime, whenever you wanted it.

Fast forward to the new age… Walmart has everything you need.. No matter where it was made and how good or bad the quality may be.. And what’s not there can be found online. No need for bookstores when you have Amazon, or even your Kindle. No need for food courts when you have McDonalds and drive throughs..
We seemingly have chosen less quality simply because with it comes convenience.

These days, though, the great American mall is struggling to stick around.. Some think they have overstayed their welcome.. others feel they’ll be missed.

My local mall is no different.. Three stores there have closed within the last month alone. Walking the halls of the immense Schuylkill Mall has turned into a pretty lonely venture. 

But it’s not just the abandoned coal mines of Pennsylvania facing the prospect of a future without a central shopping location.. it’s nationwide: A simply Google news search will bring back results from all over the nation of malls and stores closing in rapid style.. Even more: Go for a Google image search of mall closings from all over.

All of that, along with continuing weak numbers in the retail salescategory, is spelling out trouble for the near future. Specifically speaking: Do you know WHY retail sales are up? … and if you look deep into the numbers, PURCHASES ARE DOWN. The disconnection is easy to understand: Inflation has caused a surge in prices. So while there are more dollars coming in there aren’t really more products going out..

The nation’s economy is crumbling.. Infrastructure is at its most horrendous in many areas of the United States.. Inflation is rearing its ugly head. Gas prices are dangerously high. Food prices are extremely dangerous too.. And all the way, people are deciding: No shopping, no books, no jewelry. 

Hence the death of the mall.

.I remember a time, early in my life last century, when a family visit to the mall was exciting. I’d be allowed to buy a He-Man action figure.. my sister would shop in those hip stores where most clothing looked like Madonna wore it.. And after all was over, we’d eat at one of the many choices for food.

Now.. the mall is a quick experience. People do go, but only for what they really need. And when they get there, sometimes they are surprised to see the store they were going to closed down with a sign on not to trespass..