OWINGS MILLS MALL: BALTIMORE, MD
Steve McIntosh's Commentary
Posted December 3, 2005 (user submitted October 25, 2005)
Not exactly a dead mall yet, but it is borderline. Intended to be an upscale
mall when built in the mid-1980s, this mall thrived for awhile. Around 1996,
the end was nearing as Saks Fifth Avenue closed their first and only Baltimore
area store. Towson Town Center, which was in a more affluent and densely
populated area, had completed a renovation just prior, and the completion of
the rail line from downtown to Owings Mills opened accessibility of the mall to
low income inner-city people. As you would expect, this also brought crime to
the area. The mall seemed to temporarily rebound when it added Sears and Lord
& Taylor as anchors in the late 90s. However, shoppers still didn't come.
Sears lasted one year, L & T lasted two, which is unfortunate since I used to
rack up deals on marked down clothes at L & T due to the lack of foot traffic.
Recently, the mall added discount furniture retailer "Stick 'n Stuff", which is
a sure sign that the mall is going to continue to decline.
Three things killed this mall:
1. Towson Towne's renovation,
2. The Metro rail: which brought crime and poor urban shoppers to the mall.
3. Baltimore is a very driveable city, and those with cars just went somewhere
else. This brought some shifting demographics. The area isn't by any means
rundown, but it isn't as affluent nor has the potential it once did.
Baltimore not being a destination for shopping, even for some locals. With
better shopping in DC close by, more affluent shoppers opt to go to DC or New
York.
Wendy Jaklitsch's Commentary
Posted September 3, 2006 (user submitted December 7, 2005)
The buzzards are really starting to circle around this one.
It's been years since Owings Mills has really thrived. Went there for the first
time in 1999 when I took a job around the corner, and even then, with Sears and
L&T still there, the mall was suffering. The food court had a lot of turnover
despite very high lunchtime traffic from the many area office parks, and the
rest of the mall just didn't seem that busy. There were still plenty of
standard-issue to upscale mall stores, but none of them seemed all that busy
even at Christmas. I knew Towson Town Center had taken a bite out of Owings
Mills' customer base, but given Owings Mills' place on the expanding
Reisterstown Road/795 corridor and the lack of comparable shopping in
neighboring Carroll County, it seemed odd that the mall's captive audience went
elsewhere.
Fast forward to now. Several high-profile crimes have happened at Owings Mills.
This is true of Towson Town Center as well, but Owings Mills suffers for being
the terminus of a subway line that runs through some of Baltimore's worst
neighborhoods. The mall's demographic thus has a distinct "thug" undercurrent
that further deters would-be shoppers from the afffluent communities in its
target area. Two of Owings Mills' anchors (Sears and Lord and Taylor) have
left, with the aforementioned Sticks 'n Stuff replacing one of them. One more
is about to leave; Owings Mills has a Hecht's and a Macy's, and the latter will
be closed when the former is rebranded. Many of the chain stores have left and
been replaced with decidedly "urban" retailers and mom-and-pop stores. There is
an H&M now, but even that is a drop in the bucket when it comes to luring back
would-be shoppers.
Perhaps more than anywhere on the East Coast, Baltimore is overmalled. It's a
relatively poor city that just can't support a mall at every exit, but the
builders keep building and the list of the dead and dying here is long. The
recently demalled Hunt Valley Mall was hit hard when Owings Mills opened and
all but died when Towson Town Center was expanded. Golden Ring Mall, on
Baltimore's east side, was a victim of declining area demographics and has
since become a big-box center. Same with Westview Mall in Catonsville, which
Owings Mills pretty much killed. White Marsh and Columbia have held steady --
the latter because of an aggressive remodeling and expansion effort, and the
former because of its incredibly strategic position and the pseudo-"main
street" Avenue at White Marsh. Many more smaller malls -- Timonium Mall, Towson
Circle, Chatham Mall -- are either dead or demalled. About the only malls that
have survived against the odds are Eastpoint Mall and Security Square. Security
Square has continually reinvented itself to be in tune with demographic
changes. The surrounding area's largely black working- to middle-class
population is served well by the combination of two solid anchors (Sears and
Hecht's), an Old Navy, a Burlington Coat Factory, and a proliferation of
independent retailers who really know their target audience. In addition, what
used to be a J.C. Penney has since become Seoul Plaza, a mall-within-a-mall
that caters to the area's burgeoning Asian population. Owings Mills really put
a big dent in Security Square's customer base back in the day. The tables have
since turned, though, and now Owings Mills is trying desperately to appeal to
the same audience with less success. Time will tell, but with three anchors
going/gone and an unshakeable reputation for crime, I think this mall will be
dead in a few years.
Photos
Owings Mills Mall photos courtesy of Wendy Jatlitsch
Have information on this mall's history, current conditions,
future plans, personal memories, corrections or general comments?
Please let us know using the contact form!
Thank you to all those who have
contributed to DeadMalls.com!
|
Deadmalls.com makes no guarantee of the completeness or accuracy of any
information provided herein. You, the reader, assume the risk of verifying
any materials used or relied on. Deadmalls.com is not liable for and does
not necessarily endorse viewpoints expressed by the authors of
content presented.
Information is presented as a historical account and may not reflect
present-day status.
All submissions become property of
DeadMalls.com and are posted at will.
By using Deadmalls DOT com in any manner you understand and agree with
these policies.
|
©2000-2010 deadmalls DOT com
unless otherwise noted, All Rights Reserved.
All company names are
property of their respective owners.
