Traci Moore’s Commentary:

Southland Mall opened as an open-air center court shopping center in the 1950's. Similar shopping centers were Hills and Dales in Moraine Ohio (now demolished) and Forset Park north of Dayton (half demolished). The concept was to have a cental courtyard around which the stores stood. Small roofs covered equally small sidewalks which connected the stores, with grass, trees, and various landscaping in the center. The plantings helped to force people to walk in a circle and view all storefronts, not zig-zag back and forth. The original mall featured Sear's, Penny's, Uhler's (a local department store chain), a grocery, a pharmacy and other smaller stores. When built this shopping center was at the edge of town, surrounded by farms. The shopping center was "upgraded" to a mall
in the 1970's by building a cover over the central court. If you look closely, you can see that the cover is supported by seperate columns and is mechanically isolated from the store fronts. You also might notice the roadway type sewers with cast iron manhole covers in the floor of the walkway part of the mall. These covers were designed for outdoor use and are not in themselves airtight, so sewer gasses can escape which are concentrated by the now indoor location. You also might notice the hodge podge of building styles visible from the outside and which a uniform coat of paint fails to totally hide. These are characteristic of very old shopping centers where each store wanted to maintain it's own identity, and often built their own buildings on leased lots which shared only the parking lot facilities.

lynne titchell’s Commentary:

The "residents" of Southland Mall have been told the Mall "will be closing its doors" effective 1/1/2007. Just thought you might want to check it out.

Blake Hutchison’s Commentary:

This used to be one of my favorite malls growing up. There is a great wide-open space, almost feeling like a town square. The mall was built in 1969 and I'm told by my mother that it was enclosed in the early 1980's, about 1982 or 1983. In any event, I was too young to remember the open-air portion, but apparently, the mall was enclosed because people didn't like shopping in the cold winter weather.

Columbus originally had four directionally-named malls - Northland, Westland, Eastland, and Southland (not to be confused with Southland Mall in Marion, OH - there is also a Southland in Columbus that is now a "bazaar mall".)

Westland was originally occupied by Sears, which still stands, Lazarus, which became Macy's earlier this year, and JCPenney, which closed in 1997 and was never replaced. I'm told it is occasionally used for community events near the mall.

This is the one dying mall in Columbus that neither Polaris Towne Center (which is already missing an anchor after being open only 4 years) nor Easton had a hand in killing.

Westland Mall is not in one of the greatest neighborhoods of Columbus. Crime has been known to occur right in the parking lot.

The Mall at Tuttle Crossing opened in 1997 with four anchors - Sears, Lazarus (now Macy's), Marshall Field's (which later closed, and was replaced by Kaufmann's), and JCPenney, which moved out of Westland to occupy Tuttle Crossing.

Macy's and Sears probably aren't going anywhere soon. Both locations seem to be popular destinations for bargain hunters - the merchandise at the Westland store seems to be the same stuff that was at the Tuttle, Polaris, and Easton stores a few months ago. The General Cinema on an outparcel, which closed around 2000, has reopened under the "Dollar Cinema" name.

It is also worth noting that the mall is less than half a mile from the former village of New Rome, which at one time was hailed the Traffic Ticket Capital of the USA by one of the national tabloids. Not that this had anything to do with the mall's demise, though...

I doubt that the JCPenney anchor will ever be a department store again, and I seriously doubt that the mall will ever be a major contender again, as there is now a Wal-Mart Supercenter about a mile away, which is more appealing to the budgets of local shoppers. However, as long as the other two anchors continue to do good business, Westland Mall will probably remain the ideal dead mall museum for years to come...if you're in Columbus, and want to see a good sample of a dead mall that is still completely open, it's at I-270 and US 40 (Exit 7.)

Blake Hutchison’s Commentary:

I forgot to mention that Steve and Barry's located in the former JCPenney location, just to clarify...I only mentioned that they had a store in the mall, not where they located...sorry.

Blake Hutchison’s Commentary:

Another case where losing the anchors isn't the problem with the mall. The interior stores are leaving in droves, however. Every time I visit this mall, there's a new labelscar where a store once stood.

I believe this mall was built around 1965-1970, when Marion still had enough people to support a mall. As far as I know, it was originally anchored by Sears, JCPenney, and Elder Beerman. JCPenney pulled out in 2002.

The following factors have probably contributed to Southland Mall's demise:

1. Poor freeway access. To get to it from the nearest freeway (US 23) you either have to drive six miles south of Marion to Bethlehem Road, and find your way to State Route 423, then drive four or five miles back into Marion, or you have to fight Marion traffic crossing town on State Route 95 or 309 to get to State Route 423 (Marion's street system is also one of the WORST mazes of one-way streets and continuous-flow ramps in the country.)
2. One has to question the management's competence when much of the mall smells like mold, in some areas it's worse than Southtown Mall in Fort Wayne!
3. Marion has been shrinking in population steadily for the last 30 years. There are really no other sizable cities nearby to support the mall. Shoppers in Delaware, Ohio (the next county south of Marion) are far too trendy to shop here, and they are closer to Columbus than they are to Marion anyway.
4. Old Navy has pulled out of the mall completely. And they didn't build a replacement store.
5. The mall is clearly hurt by Meijer and by Wal-Mart Supercenter, both of which are within a quarter mile of US 23.
6. Few of the chain stores have modern logos - as if they don't want to invest the money on a mall they're probably going to pull out of soon. Waldenbooks, usually one of the last stores to leave a mall in Ohio, still has an old logo from the 1980's, before they changed it.

Steve and Barry's and Sears may survive for a while, and with Elder Beerman, who knows? But I would say the rest of the mall is likely to be shuttered, or at least completely barren, in the next five years.

Blake Hutchison’s Commentary:

According to the North Towne Commons page, Frenchtown Square was built in 1989 in Monroe, Michigan. (Actually, it's about two miles outside the corporation limit.

This mall is nowhere near dead (except perhaps for the closed Office Max that is attached but had no access to the mall), but very different from your typical mall.

It is anchored by Target (which you can actually enter from inside the mall), Sears, Elder Beerman, an Elder Beerman home store (I have the feeling this was anchored by something else at one time), an Old Navy which ONLY has access from inside the mall, and a Steve and Barry's University Sportswear, (which looks an awful lot like an old JCPenney facade - they actually converted a JCPenney to a Steve and Barry's at Southland Mall in Marion, Ohio.), and Dunham's Sports. If you count Elder Beerman as two anchors (they have two stores here), and count Dunham's and Old Navy as anchors (they are pretty big stores, so I did), that's seven anchors. How long can Monroe (maybe 30,000 people) support a mall big enough to hold that many anchors? I get the feeling this mall gets a lot of business from the southern outer suburbs of Detroit, which aren't too far away...

Most of the interior stores are mom-and-pop stores, and the interior is probably about 80% occupied, not counting the anchors. Actually, there are very few chain stores besides the anchors, but there is an Aeropostale, an American Eagle, and a Regal cinema that seems to be doing okay.

I get the idea that the Sears store here sells the merchandise they couldn't sell in Toledo or Detroit. Something is ALWAYS on clearance there.

The Elder Beerman home store looks like it may have been something else at one time. I used to do a lot of shopping in the malls around Dayton, Ohio, and usually the Elder Beermans there don't have a separate home store - everything is in one store. Frankly, I'm surprised Elder Beerman is still in business. They always seem to be in financial trouble.

I don't think Frenchtown Square is in any instant danger of becoming a dead mall. But one has to wonder if it is perhaps too different from the typical mall to survive over the next 10-20 years. I will be curious to see what happens...