I grew up in Upper Marlboro, MD during the 80's (high school graduating class of 1992 for reference) and Landover Mall was THE mall of the area and the time.
Mom would often drag me to the Lane Bryant and Sears locations at the mall. To me, the young kind I was at the time, Landover Mall was a huge, almost magical place and a little scary. In its heyday, Landover Mall housed some interesting fixtures and retailers. My most vivid memory is what I can only dub: The Disco Rubik's Cube. This illuminated oddity was a 25+ foot cube which was suspended from the ceiling in the main mall area in front of Sears and Lane Bryant. As a kid, I was facinated by its ever-flashing, multi-colored, 1-foot wide, light globes which flickered and danced before me and kept me entertained while Mom was trying on new skirts. (Later in life I was puzzled by its sheer existance.) Also in the mall at the time was a Chinese restaurant with an open-pit grill in the middle of the seating area, a movie theater with its own set of escalators (a somehow mind-blowing concept to me as a kid), a really cool video arcade with all the high-tech games of the time and in the middle of the whole mall, beneath a giant, mulit-paned skylight was a magnificent water fountain based on the logo for the mall .
As years went on, and I got my driver's license I would frequent the mall, now with a different perspective. Time had taken its toll on the retail landscape of the mall. The aforementioned Chinese restaurant became a Dollar Store (BIG indication the mall was headed for trouble.) The arcade had left and was replaced by some anonymous, insignificant store. What used to be a trendy (for the time) boutique was now a store to buy various hair-weave supplies. The Disco Rubik's Cube ultimately had it's energy-sucking plug pulled, and for awhile thereafter hung darkly and ominously above the sparsly populated mall.
Many of the well-known chain stores began to pull out. Eventually all of the anchor stores left and the few business which did remain were Mom-N-Pop stores, a "$10-Dollar Clothing Store" (another sign a mall is headed for disaster) and several empty storefronts. Through it all, Sears remained and when time came for Landover Mall to be Shuttered, Sears simply sealed off its mall entrance, used its exterior entries and remained open for business. And toward the end, the Disco Rubik's cube was removed from the retail wasteland of Landover Mall altogether.
I left Maryland in 1997 and moved to San Francisco. A couple years later, when I returned for a family visit, I discovered Landover Mall had been shuttered. I knew when I left the mall was in bad shape, but I was shocked and saddened that it had actually been closed for good. Seeing the hulking shell of the once-premier shopping mall hit me hard for some reason; much akin to losing a loved-one, for which, inexplicably, Landover Mall was to me.
Landover Mall was one of the biggest enclosed malls in the DC area. Located in Landover, Md., it had a at least 4 anchor stores that I can remember. There was the national chain, Sears and then 3 local department stores, Woodworth & Lothrop (Woodies), Hecht's (owned by May Co.) and Garfinckles. There was also a Raleigh's which was another local chain - one could get top quality suits for men and women there. I only remember going there a few times - it was one county over (in Prince George's County) and we had a ton of malls in Montgomery County where I grew up. My main memory of Landover was how dimly lit it appeared. It created a mood, I guess, but I feel it needed more light.
The competition in the neighboring counties is part of why the mall failed, I believe. There was always a perception (real and imagined) that crime was higher in P.G. County. In the Washington, DC area, the "feeling" has always been that crime is "higher" inside the Capital Beltway and "lower" outside the Beltway. I don't buy it, but the retailers were scared off from the mall because it was just inside the Beltway. The mall started to go down hill when Woodies and Garfinkles went out of business. I remember that JC Penney took over a lot of the vacant Woodies stores in the area, but I can't recall if they came to Landover or not. But, over the years, as tenants left, new ones didn't fill the space.
I remember when the mall was nearing "death" there were local protests held every so often. There was anger from the local community that the chains at Landover carried sub-standard selection than their other locations. The perception was that shoplifting occurred more frequently here, so retailers didn't carry the high end items. Some people who lived or worked near Landover were very loyal to the mall and hated the idea that they needed to go to other malls to get quality merchandise. The community also felt Lerner (the mall owner) was ignoring Landover while focusing only on mall properties in more affluent neighboring counties.
In 1997 the Washington Redskins built their new stadium (FedEx Field) across the street from the mall and the mall was used for overflow parking - that was the busiest I remember seeing the parking lot in years!
The end came in early 2002 when the Bowie Town Center opened (on the other side of the Beltway) about 15 minutes away. Hecht's had opened a store in Bowie, so they shut down their Landover location.
The mall itself is now shuttered (some of the last tenants to leave were "mom & pop" type clothing stores and the Motor Vehicle Administration). While the mall is shuttered, the last anchor, Sears, does remain open. They own their property and even though they too moved to Bowie, they decided to keep the Landover store open.
The owner of the property, Lerner, hasn't indicated what they plan to do with the mall. Ironically, if you go to Lerner's website for Landover Mall, http://www.lernerenterprises.com/retail/landover.html, you can see a dark picture from its heyday and find that Lerner is living in a dream world.(the site says, "Opened in 1972, Landover Mall has thrived due to its convenient location in steadily expanding Prince George's County."). I guess they need to update their site!
Demolition Photos posted by DC Grocery
LernerEnterprises.com outdated site
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/15/AR2006051501517.html article from 5/15/06 Washington Post
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