Chapel Hill Mall: Akron, OH on DeadMalls.com

CHAPEL HILL MALL: AKRON, OH

Ted Talevski's Commentary:

(User submitted Feb 2021)

When youre a two-year old boy who was born in America but learned to speak your grandparents native tongue before you learned to speak English, the world is a very interesting place to be. Your house looks big enough by itself but the world beyond the doors of your home is even larger! No store at the time is bigger as a kid then the mall and at the time as a kid in Akron, Ohio there were three choices. Rolling Acres was the biggest and fanciest mall but with its grandeur, we always had to make special plans to head that way. Summit Mall was quite a distance since it was clear across town in the city of Fairlawn, and at the time the mall felt small and dark which made it a rather unappealing place to go. Obviously, these things said, most of our time was spent at Chapel Hill Mall comfortably in the Northeast corner of Akron and flanked by the cities of Tallmadge and Cuyahoga Falls. The mall looked and felt like it had everything, the modernization of Rolling Acres but the comfortable size of smaller malls. For me it also had family ties and lots of good memories, but before I can get into the personal things, its important to give you a history.

What became Chapel Hill Mall dates back to the Great Depression when a man named J.J. Buccholzer owned the Howers Department Store in Downtown Akron. Knowing Akron was most certain to expand north, he wanted to build another store location in that area, but he soon learned of other opportunities for something much grander than that, naturally, an indoor shopping mall! With his son Richard having found an old Indian Counsel Circle on the land that was purchased for the mall, he decided to name the mall Chapel Hill. Plans were set to go to have the mall built by 1963 as Akrons first indoor shopping mall, with local firm Forest City Enterprises as the owner, but they were beaten to the punch by the construction and opening of Summit Mall in Fairlawn by the Edward J. DeBartolo Corporation. After a few delays Chapel Hill Mall was finally opened to much fanfare in 1967 with Sears, JCPenney, and ONeils as anchors. Penneys was actually the very first thing opened having opened one year before the mall proper. At first opening the mall would also have a Woolworths, a Rite Aid, and a two-screen theater. Rolling Acres would join as Akrons third and final mall in 1971. Plans were discussed throughout the 1980s to expand the mall with a Higbees (you might recognize them from A Christmas Story) as well as a food court that would be open by fall of 1991, but after the fall of Higbees, that was never to be. In 1994 the mall did get a much-needed expansion which included the long-hyped food court as well as making the mall look more grand and bright. The theater closed for good in 1996 and an Old Navy opened in its spot. It also underwent some anchor changes when ONeils was absorbed in 1989 by Columbus-based May Company, and that in turn was taken by Kaufmanns in 1993. In 1997 Rite Aid left and Woolworths closed down for the final time being replaced by The Gap. By 1992 I had entered the picture but it was right after this renovation where my personal experience began.

As a child, the mall as we simply called it seemed like quite a place. Very loud, very big, and very busy! No other store around ever looked like it had so much activity! There was also no other store quite like the mall. Sears would take you out into a big concourse flanked on both sides by dozens of stores. First thing outside is a big coffer right in the ceiling with a painting that looks like a sky. The first store on the right side first thing upon exiting Sears was Petland, who always had puppies in the window that were a huge attraction to everyone. A bit further down, Old Navy was on the left and a Rite-Aid was on the right. A bit further down on the right is where Woolworths was located. Shortly after that you would finally reach the center court of the mall right outside Penneys. The center court was home to the fountain where kids like me enjoyed throwing in a penny (after all the big sign above the fountain said Penneys) and it has a similar coffer that was an oval shape, with the water rippling in the fountain making the ceiling look like it had rippling water. Past the center court was the way to Kaufmanns. We never much shopped at that store. Everyone in my family said it was too expensive. Indeed most of my familys time was at Sears. My aunt had gotten a job there as a sales associate for appliances fresh out of high school when the store first opened in 1967 and she made it her lifes career! She enjoyed her job and was very good at it. In 1990 she helped stock our newly-built house with Kenmore Appliances all from that store. She would retire in 2012 but not before she continued to assist us with any new appliance bought for our home. JCPenney also gives a fair share of memories. In 1997 I got my very first pair of glasses at the optical located on the second floor. My mother had also gotten a job at the JCPenney in the nearby Tri-County Plaza in Lakemore, so she began to buy most of our clothes there to make use of those employee discounts.

On a good day we would eat at the mall food court for lunch. I remember being mesmerized by the size of the pizza slices at Sbarros and my first time trying Auntie Annes was one Ill never forget. I was also just age three the first time I rode the food court carousel. On other good days we would step very briefly into the Chapel Hill Sports store right outside Kaufmanns which for me was one of those store where you cant touch anything, but that stores collection of items for Clevelands major sports teams was next to none! I still have a collection of special baseballs from the Cleveland Indians 1997 World Series appearance from that store to this day. As a kid I also had a fascination with escalators despite also having a fear. At a very young age I saw an episode of the TV show Rescue 911 where a child sitting on a down escalator got his sleeve caught in the machine and was nearly suffocated. For a few years afterward my mother or grandfather would have to pick me up and place me onto the down escalator at Penneys. Surprisingly I found the escalators at Penneys to be more of a fear than the ones at Kauffmanns even though the ones at Penneys were criss-crossed and inside a closed corridor whereas the ones at Kauffmanns were right next to each other and located in an open atrium. Later on I found a less-scary way to get onto an escalator by just lifting my feet off the ground by pushing myself up with the handrails and then just dropping my feet as soon as they were above a step. My fear soon gone I grew to love escalators. And its a passion I have to this day!

Christmas time was quite a place at Chapel Hill Mall. The mall had a giant snowman outside Penneys named Archie. Archie was a first messenger for Santa and kids who may have been afraid of Santa could tell Archie what they wanted for Christmas. Archie stood at 12 feet tall and had glowing eyes that flashed to the sound of his booming voice. He also knew the name of every kid that spoke to him. In reality a mall employee hidden inside a small house on Archies display was talking into a microphone. Archie was there every Christmas since the mall had first opened up until 2004 when new management discontinued Archie. In 2011 a social media campaign was launched to revive Archie but the mall was none too enthused at the thought of bringing him back. The campaign was a success though and it brought a new generation Archie to Downtown Akron for the first time in 2012.

As a teen, my memories of the mall hang on. We continued to buy most of our clothes from either Sears or Penneys. In 2003 I got into video games for the first time when I got a Gameboy Advance at Christmas. That same year a GameStop had opened up and it became where I started buying all of my games from. This was about the same time I had noticed that Rolling Acres Mall had emptied out and pretty much died. In 2005 the long-vacated Rite Aid became home to Steve & Barrys sportswear. In 2006, Kaufmanns went under Macys who I knew only as the Thanksgiving Day Parade people. In 2007 an employee at Petland drowned two newborn bunnies in the store and posted a picture holding their carcasses on social media. The person confessed that they did so at the direction of their boss. That was the immediate end of the pet shop and the last time the puppies would be seen in the windows outside the store! At the same time, rumors were rampant that the same people that caused the downfall of Rolling Acres Mall were now at Chapel Hill to cause similar trouble. The mall combated by enacting a new conduct policy for youth and teens and stepping up security. Sadly what they could not stop was the exodus of name-brand stores for reasons other than troubling youth. You may not be able to rightfully call them an anchor but Steve & Barrys shut down in 2009 when the chain went bust. In 2010, high school graduation and the newfound adult freedom that came with it brought more good times. Places I would beg us to walk into such as GameStop and FYE became every-time stops and GameStop was my one-stop for all my games. Restaurants like Auntie Annes, Sbarros and a new Charlies Grilled Steaks became sure stops as well. The rest of my family was also still finding interest in new things, like my mother falling in love with a family-run Chinese massage parlor that opened near Macys. Fast-forward to the modern age and Amazon is taking over shopping-mall shopping at a record pace! Name-brand store chains found in malls go bust one-by-one. Mom & pop businesses come in as replacements but with security far more lax then anything name-brand there is not as much deterrence to troublemaking teens. At the same time, management is getting harder and harder to deal with which leads more stores to pull the plug in frustration. The first big blow comes in fall of 2015 when Macys announces that the store at Chapel Hill is among several closing nationwide due to falling sales. Management immediately goes into damage control mode to stop a repeat of Rolling Acres, which includes bringing Archie back to Chapel Hill Mall for Christmas of 2015 and opening a Party City as an anchor. Other stores also began moving in including Shoe Dept. Encore which took up what was Steve & Barrys.

Sadly the damage is done by this point. Macys becomes the first anchor to close its doors for good in March, 2016. At that same time, Old Navy closed its doors for good. Second verse was same as the first when Sears announced in January 2017 that the Chapel Hill store would be among several closing nationwide. By the end of March, 2017 it too closed its doors for good. In two years, Chapel Hill Mall was down that number of anchors and only JCPenney was left. Afterwards the mall was sold to the Barton realty group, who dont have the best track record of keeping good management of its properties. The mall since then has faced four disconnection threats and a lawsuit from the local utility companies over not paying its bills as well as foreclosure for not paying its taxes. The constant bickering and the threat of business loss have made even the mom and pops pull out for good. In 2020 and the turn of the new decade, only about ten businesses are still operating in the mall, including Charleys Grilled Subs (the only food business left), Party City, Shoe Dept Encore, Finish Line, and Bath & Body Works as well as an independent hair salon and an independent video game store. Archie and Santa still appear every Christmas but are very bored with no kids appearing to visit. I see in 2020 a scene exactly like Rolling Acres Mall circa 2007 where music over the intercom echoes through mostly empty hallways and the still running fountain outside of Penneys sounds more like Niagara Falls. Upkeep of the mall has stopped with leaks in the ceiling and security not really caring what people are up to (except for a short-lived zero-tolerance on photographing the malls interior). The longest anchor to hold on was Penneys but they too confirmed that they would be closing in January of 2020. Two months after that Penneys temporarily closed all their stores because of the Coronavirus, giving me doubts as to whether or not the Chapel Hill store would re-open. It actually would re-open and finish liquidation closing its doors for good in July 2020. The mall is now fully devoid of anchors and its lack of public visitation has meant the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic has really made no difference in the malls operation. After all there is no need for social distancing when nobody is around. In the time since then, Macys building has been reused as a self-storage facility, and there is talk of a local kitchen cabinet maker wanting to buy the Sears building to use it as a factory. Party City and Shoe Dept Encore continue to run as de-facto anchors but only time will tell if they too decide to take their operations somewhere else. Only time will tell if the utility companies and city landbank win their battle and decide to shut off the lights and padlock the mall just like they did with Rolling Acres.

So what exactly went wrong? In my opinion it was just one thing: poor management in later years! After rumors grew heavy of teen troublemakers congregating from Rolling Acres, management did nothing to quell the rumors and ensure everybody that the mall would be a safe place to shop. Management at the time was far too busy arguing with store tenants over business operation which left disgruntled businesses looking for a different place to run. At the same time, they did nothing to keep the mall up-to-date with changing times and the growth of online shopping like Amazon. Meanwhile Akrons last working mall Summit Mall has made lots of smart changes! The mall is in an upscale neighborhood that is devoid of serious crime, caters right to the upscale crowds with high-end store like Hollister and an Apple Store, includes many non-traditional businesses like an e-sports center and a Goodyear Auto Service. You also cant go more than a few steps without some kind of security personnel watching out for you. Summit Mall serves as a testament to what Chapel Hill could have been had management done a better job over the past ten years. So thats my story, from start to end! Sorry if I may have bored you with its length but having Aspergers Syndrome with a very vivid memory has meant I just had a lot to say! Five-page college essays are all I know how to write! I hope you have gotten a good idea of what Chapel Hill Mall was like in its heyday and the kind of place it was for me to experience. Its an experience I am humbled to share with anybody that may read this.