patty radford’s Commentary:

I have some corrections to the commentary of this mall.  The person stated that hechts left before the other stores.  This is untrue. Both my mother and I worked at this mall.  The first anchor store to leave was caldor.  This inspired a chain of events with hechts being the reason the mall closed.

When Caldor went bankrupt they sold their building to hechts who in turn used it for storage for about 4 years.   The mal owners made numerous attempts to get hechts to lease the space.  Ultimately the lack of a lower end anchor closed the mall.

Patricia’s Commentary:

Golden Ring Mall never had a Discovery Zone in or near it. The indoor rides were simulators run by United Artists that ran the movies in three locations at the mall. I have tickets from the place and as soon as I unpack I will get the exact name of what it was called and send it to you.

The had a seated area that it gav you the feeling that you were on a roller coaster ride one was through space and another time you went through a gold or coal mine. In the main lobby they were hangliding simulators which I only tried once.

The old Wards building has been turned into an outside shopping section with stores facing the main parking lot and the highway. Wards still owns it and so theyhad to work with what they had. The building houses Office Depot, a Party store, a pet store, a game store, Sprint, and a few stores i do not remember the names to.

Rodney Atkins’s Commentary:

Just a couple of corrections:

1) The mall originally had no Caldor. A store called Hamberger's was originally there until it went out of business and the space was taken by Caldor.

2) Hecht's did not abandon the mall. They were one of the very last stores to close before the mall shut down altogether.

3) The Montgomery Ward building is now renovated and occupied by Office Depot, PetSmart, a Panera Bread, and a number of other stores.

Mark Stevens’s Commentary:

Growing up in east Baltimore city, the happening place to be in the 1980's was Golden Ring Mall. Eastpoint Mall in Essex had nothing inside of interest and White Marsh Mall was too far out of the way to access easily. Golden Ring Mall, in addition to it's great location on Rt. 40, had three anchor stores (Hutzler's, Caldor, and Wards) a multiplex movie theater with screens on both sides of the mall which featured the only local midnight Rocky Horror Picture Show screening every weekend, Farrell's ice cream, a great video arcade, several electronics stores, and a deli with the best chocolate chip cookies ever. I went here all the time, and saw many great movies in the theater.

With White Marsh Mall becoming easier to reach, a lot of county residents began going there, leaving Golden Ring open to crime. By the early 90's, Hutzlers went out of business, and the store was replaced by Hecht's. Slowly, the mall's demographics changed, and many of the higher end stores began to leave. Eventually, the movie theater became the only reason to visit the mall, and with attracting low-income customers, the theater became trashy. Since the theater was spread throughout the mall, this caused the mall to become trashy as well. In the mid 90's, the mall went through a major renovation, retiling the floors, brighting the lights, and eliminating the water fountains by the anchor stores. It also eliminated the multi-tiered center court, and replaced it with an elevator.

It was shortly thereafter, Caldor pulled out of the mall shortly before going out of business. After which, no one ever moved into their old location. In 2000, Wards went bankrupt, and the only anchor store left was the failing Hechts. With the much cleaner White Marsh Mall now only about 10 minutes away, it became pointless for anyone not looking for trouble to go to this mall. The mall closed in 2000, and in 2002, it was finally demolished.

Meanwhile, across the street, Hechinger went out of business, as well as the popular local furniture store. These were replaced by Sticks N Stuff (Where the ceiling leaked, and rats roamed about), a trashy Office Depot, and a new housing for the homeless (AKA, the old Hechingers)

Today, it is a thriving big box center housing a Walmart, Sam's Club, a new Office Depot, Home Depot, and many other smaller stores. The Sticks N Stuff and Hechinger is now demolished, and has been replaced with a brand new Best Buy and other new retail buildings.

Times are looking better for this area of town. Even though it required the death of an indoor mall, it's nice to see that big box centers can get business going again.

Bill ballantyne’s Commentary:

Caldor was not an original Golden Ring anchor - the Caldor space was originally Stewart's, a long-defunct Baltimore department store chain. (They had locations in other area dead malls like Westview on the opposite side of town).

The 3rd big box store on the site is Sam's Club - between the not-quite-a-Super Walmart and Sams Club the new retail center is a parking and traffic nightmare.

Also, the still-standing Montgomery Ward building has been converted into several stores including: Panerra, Jerry's Subs, Five Below, Office Depot, Petco, and other typical 'strip' type shops like cell phone stores, manicure services, etc. The former Montgomery Ward Auto Center is home of an Old Country Buffet and a large outlet for some used video/game chain.