SOUTHTOWN MALL: FORT WAYNE, IN
Robert Gaul's Commentary:
March 15, 2005 (user submitted August 19, 2004)
The wrecking ball was placed to the mall this past Tuesday (17 August, 2004). The article in the local paper link is:
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/editorial/9431503.htm
As for "redevelopment", Menards has agreed to build on the site (by late 2005), with several other "unamed" stores to follow. The (former) Sears site will house a new police / fire training facility.
All former traces of the mall will be gone, with new access roads from rte. 27 into "Southtown Centre".
It's just a shame that the city allowed this mall to go under. Not to mention that Hayward Witchard held onto the property after purchasing it, allowing continued deterioration until it was uninhabitable, then trying to sue for more money when the city took it away from him.
We can only hope that the crime in this part of town wil not be a stumbling block to future development, as this part of the city needs revitalization badly.
Michael Woehnker's Commentary:
March 15, 2005 (user submitted December 27, 2004)
Here's some original history on Southtown Mall. I grew within a few miles of that shopping center and it became a regular destination for me.
Southtown Mall opened in 1969 with 2 anchor department stores: Wolf & Dessauer (a local store) and Montgomery Wards. Both stores were only 1 floor. It also included a large family clothing store, Patterson-Fletcher (divn of Hart, Shaffner & Marx) and a 60,000 sq ft G C Murphy.
About 2 years later, Penneys opened in the center court, where a former plywood barrier had stood. They relocated from a strip center store of 42,000 sq ft less than 2 miles down the road to a modern 2-story 180,000 sq ft dept store with restaurant and freestanding auto center.
L S Ayres purchased Wolf & Dessauer and converted it to one of their stores; howver, the merchandising of this 108,000 sq ft store was never up to par with the 3-level 215,000 sq foot store at the premier mall, Glenbrook Square (north side).
G C Murphy's closed and that space became the new entrance to a new wing anchored by Sears. Montgomery Ward's closed their store and Kohl's occupied a large portion of that space. A local jeans retailor, Spiece, took over the remaing square footage.
The "new" Sears wing also included a Service-Merchandise and food court. HOwever, this wing was NEVER fully occupied. This brought the 600,000 sq ft mall up to 950,000 sq ft.
The rest is history.
Ross's Commentary:
My first visit to Fort Wayne yielded this mall in June, 2001. I had scoped out that Fort Wayne had two malls, one for each side of town. I knew Glenbrook Sq, the mall for the north side was big and prosperous, but had heard nothing about the respectable 800,000 square-foot mall for the south side. Thinking nothing of it, I went to Glenbrook. It was the super-regional mall it promised to be, yet with cool design and decor. Then, I passed through town and on the south side noticed it a bit more run-down. Coming near the mall I noticed little to no strip at all. I think there was one center, that was about 20-30 years old and across from the mall and not doing so well.
Well, the mall is a disaster. An article I found later in a Fort Wayne newspaper basically described it as a blight on the town, and for good reason. The mall is very large, and set up in a T-Shaped design. It's not completely dead. No, in fact, it's completely open. It's missing all of its anchors but one - Sears. LS Ayres left in 1996, Kohls in 1999 (they built a prototype store in a nearby shopping center), JCPenney, and also Service Merchandise. Losing all these anchors left the mall in despair. In fact, it seems as though the mall declined so fast the management company didn't even have time to board up the dead stores.
Their storefronts are almost completely intact. I noticed an original wooden western-style Casual Corner, an old Deb facade with the hanging racks, and much more. The mall even had dead facades in the food court. The only open food destination was "Connie's", a very local very one-horse thing that looked like it only made nachos and hot dogs. The few stores remaining
were clustered between the food court and Sears, on the bottom part of the T. Also present was an original Orange Julius stand, with the plastic oranges lined up in the glass case in front and the brown facade. This mall was clearly never renovated from inception. I'm very surprised it's still open and/or they don't consolidate and demolish/board off, but hats off to the people trying to make a go of their businesses in the mall. My favorite part of the mall was the crux of the T where the ceilings were wooden and vaulted very high, classic early 80s styling. It's definitely worth it as far as dead malls go.
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Scott’s Commentary:
User submitted Dec 2007I have many fond memories of Southtown Mall. When I was young, I would visit it almost every single week with my family. I remember so much about it. I remember the early years, when the major anchors were JCPenney, LS Ayres, Montgomery Ward, and GC Murphy. Every week, we would eat at one of the restaurants--MCL Cafeteria, Walgreen's, or Azar's. Even JCPenney had a restaurant, as did Murphy's. I remember one of my favorite stores being Musicland--when it was across from MCL. JCPenney was a lot different in their merchandise selection than they are today. I remember their huge candy counter and their massive catalog pick-up center. I recall, even, how packed with people the mall would get at Christmas time. You could hardly walk throu
gh it.
Several years later, in college, I had received my first job at the mall. It was in 1982 just as the new wing opened. The mall had become huge, and I applied for a job at a new store, World Bazaar. It was a competitor with Pier One, specializing in imported gift items and furnishings. I worked at that store from the day opened to the day it closed--the last few years as its store manager. The first several years that I worked there, the mall was a bustling, active place. Business was strong. The mall was my life, almost!
By 1990, the decline was apparent. World Bazaar closed, and I transferred with that company to one of its stores in Indianapolis. That store closing was more a reflection of the problems with the company than with the mall, but it really was the beginning of the exodous of stores from the mall.
I recall visiting the mall in the next few years and witnessing the amazing decline. The pictures of the mall on this sight bring back a lot of memories for me, and I wish I had pictures of the mall when it was at its prime. The difference between the pictures and my memories is vast.
As stated above, the mall was torn down a couple years ago. In its place now sits a Wal-Mart and a Menard's. It is great to see revitalization in the area, but it remains to be seen if this re-energy will sustain. Much of the retail activity in the area has moved to the Southwest side of town, which ironically is where I now am employed.
Southtown Mall is a great part of my past. I loved it as a child, and I made many great friends in my time working there.
Christa Dillman’s Commentary:
User submitted Jul 2007Hey guys!
I just found this site a couple of days ago and have read most of its content. As a certified "mall rat" of the 1980s, seeing so many dead malls both saddened and intrigued me.
I have a correction regarding Southtown Mall in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In the batch of pictures featured on the site, numbers 26 - 33 are NOT of Southtown. These particular pictures feature Keosippe Mall. I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you might want to remove that particular portion of those photos from the Southtown site.
In addition, I have some other information about Southtown concerning the aftermath (when it was torn down, what's there now). This information is from the City of Fort Wayne website. Is this information suitable and do I just send you to the links to this site?
Keep up the great work!
Christa A. Dillman
Fort Wayne, Indiana
Chris Wells’s Commentary:
User submitted Mar 2007I worked at Southtown Mall from April 1989 to June 1998. I worked for Simon's who were the original retail owners of the mall. I spent my nine years there working in the maintenance department, and probably knew the mall about as good as anyone could. From 1989 to early 1994 Southtown was actually quite prosperous. The Christmas seasons of 1992 and 1993 were so busy every parking space was used and people were parking in a large undeveloped grassy area on the
S.W. side of the mall. The mall started having real problems in 1994 when several large corporations began filing for bankruptsy. The problem was that several of these corporate entities owned several stores apiece that were all in the mall. You'd go into work one day and five stores would all close on that day at once. Malls all over the country were going through a hard time in 1994.
For the next couple of years this continued. We all knew that to survive the mall needed a makeover. Especially since Glenbrook Square Mall on the North side of town started a renovation in 1995. In 1996 there were rumors that Simons (then Simon Debartlow) were considering a massive renovation for the mall. Representatives from Simon supposedly came to Fort Wayne and met with then Mayor Paul Helmke. What I was told was that what it came down to was that Simon Debarlow said they were willing to put big money into Southtown Mall, but they wouldn't do it unless the city was willing to meet them half-way, with concessions like tax breaks and improvements to the areas infrastructure. Supposedly they were told by the Mayor that Fort Wayne had no interest in doing anything major on the South side of town for the next ten years!
Two years later, the mall was sold to Hayward Witchard and the rest is history...literally, as the mall no longer stands. I left the mall the day it sold, and as it stood at that time, it needed work, but was a prime candidate for remodeling. Perhaps if the city had met the owners of the mall half-way, Southtown Mall would still be a thriving center of commerce as it used to be.
Eric Zerkle’s Commentary:
User submitted Feb 2006Hello. I really, really, enjoy your webpage on Deadmalls. Especially the Southtown mall page. That mall was one of my faves outside of the ever trendy and cool Glenbook Mall in Fort Wayne. I still cannot believe Southtown is gone now! Now its being developed into a crappy, boring, outdoor big box mall with Home Depot and a few other stores.. I wish them luck as the area is pretty much dead anyways as far as stores go. I had a lot of fun at Southtown when I was younger, but it started its decline back in about the late 1980s when the whole area went into a decline demographically. I can remember going with my dad to Southtown Sears in about 1995 after he couldnt find his size in shoes at the Glenbrook store and remembering the whole Sears store was almost dead as far as customers. IIRC we were the only ones in the WHOLE store at that time of day and it was a Saturday afternoon around Xmastime!!!!! The final nail in the coffin for this mall came in the late 1990s early 2000s
when the US 27/30/33/24 bypass was built around Fort Wayne removing almost all through traffic from the road that goes by the mall. Funny thing is this relatively new bypass also led to a slight decline in some of Glenbrook malls traffic as well right after it was built, but recently Glenbrook has seen a resurgance. Ironically the old, original, 1950s era US 27/30/33 bypass went right in front of Glenbrook mall.
Ive ran across another potential dead mall in Indiana. The "Pierre Moran Mall" in Elkhart. I dont know much about this mall other than it was built in the mid to late 1950s and was one of the older malls in northern Indiana. Reportedly its now closed and is supposedly going to be turned into a outdoor pedestrian mall (yuck). Back in 2000 or 2001 my family and I went to a 1950s era themed diner (also now closed and long gone) that was in this mall and at that time the mall was in decline. I remember it had its anchors, Target and Krogers, and what was left of what i assumed was a food court, but there were several empty stores in the mall and the whole mall had a feeling of decline and tiredness. If i can ill try to find more info on this now dead mall..
I noticed on your blog you mentioned one of your interests is radio wave propagation. Are you a lisensed ham op. by chance?
Eric Zerkle