River Falls Mall: Clarksville, IN on DeadMalls.com

RIVER FALLS MALL: CLARKSVILLE, IN

Chris Rothbauer's Commentary:

(user submitted December 7, 2022)

River Falls Mall in Clarksville, Indiana is an interesting case of what to do with a dead mall. It is still standing today and not technically dead, but it's more of a strip mall than a shopping mall.

River Falls Mall was opened in 1990 directly across the street from the Greentree Mall. It seemed really weird at the time that they were located next to an existing, very successful mall, but I have it on good authority from an insider that the development company tried really hard to lure Sears and JC Penny to be anchor stores. When that didn't work, they were left with an interesting quandary: who do they even bring in?

Well, this just happened to be the big era of expansion for Wal-Mart and they really wanted to enter the Clarksville market so, as incredible as it now seems, Wal-Mart became the River Falls Mall's big anchor store and one of the big attractions. They also lured Bacon's over from a dying strip mall in nearby Jeffersonville, and opened a Toys R Us and a Biggs Foods.

But the big attraction for kids in the 1990s was RiverFair, an indoor amusement park and arcade complete with rides, games, a cinema, and the latest coin operated video games. Located upstairs and adjacent to the food court, it was, for a time, the place to go, but I don't think it was a money maker. The hope of the mall was to get us kids to bug our parents to go to the mall and then the parents, in turn, would shop in the stores downstairs.

The problem is that River Falls Mall never really developed an identity outside of RiverFair. Indeed, many stores in River Falls Mall were duplicated in the Greentree Mall, including Radio Shack, Waldenbooks, and, after they acquired Bacons, Dillard's. For many, there just wasn't a reason to go to River Falls Mall if all you wanted to do was shop. They had a pretty high vacancy rate their entire existence, with stores going out of existence pretty frequently. I'm not sure they were ever completely full.

Things came to a head in the mid-2000s. The Dillard's had closed and RiverFair had long since gone out of existence as well. It was not uncommon to go into the mall and feel like you were the only person there. The death blow was when Wal-Mart decided to relocate to a larger stand-alone building in the new Veteran's Parkway shopping district. The mall was suddenly left with Toys R Us and a Dicks Sporting Goods as their sole remaining anchor stores.

I think most people figured the situation would soon come to a head, and it did when Bass Pro Shops approached the mall owners about leasing out a good portion of the mall, including the old RiverFair and food court. This would mean that some of the few remaining stores would be forced to relocate, effectively ending the mall's existence as a mall. Officially, River Falls Mall ceased to exist in 2006.

Today, the shell of the mall still exists as a Bass Pro Shop, and I think they're doing better business now than they ever did as a mall. They're essentially a strip mall today, though, and you can't go into the old mall but only to the anchor stores. Toys R Us remained opened until the company ceased to exist, and the sole remaining store from when it was a mall is Dick's Sporting Goods, which just keep holding on.

Bass Pro Shop has been really good for the building, giving it a reason to exist again, so much so that a new state of the art movie theater was built in the parking lot a few years ago. On top of it all, Bass Pro connected the old mall to the nearby Veteran's Parkway shopping district, meaning that it is extremely easy to get to from multiple parts of Clarksville.

You will still see signage for posterity calling it River Falls (no Mall), but no one really calls it that anymore, just referring to either Bass Pro Shop, Dick's Sporting Goods, or Louisville Athletic Club (LAC), the only three tenants in the building, by name. It's an interesting case study, though: unlike so many malls left to rot and decay, River Falls Mall is a case study in successful repurposing of a dead mall. I'm not sure this would work everywhere since it depended upon a brand such as Bass Pro Shop being willing to make it happen, but it's interesting that the mall has found new purpose.