A Dying Mall In America

I'd say Chesterfield Mall is on its last months, I'd expect that it will be closed by the end of the year.

I went there on Thursday... and what a depressing sight it was.

I knew the place was in foreclosure, with another company trying to buy it, but I didn't know it was that bad. In the time since I was last there, which was probably sometime in the fall, I'd venture to guess that at least 60% of the stores have closed. Store after store after store was gated off or boarded up. Even one of the anchors, Dillard's, had closed it's doors and left.

I remember how I felt the very last time I ever walked through Crestwood Mall. That mall was "my mall," the one we went to most often. The last time I went to it I felt a mix of sadness and disbelief, as in How could this suddenly get this bad? And that is the same way I felt yesterday in what might be my last time going to Chesterfield Mall. It's just so depressing.

I walked in and headed to Auntie Anne's for a pretzel. With nothing to look up at, since so many of the store signs are missing, you look down. You notice the floor tiles are cracked everywhere. Has it always been like this? The carousel creaks to life for one lonely child and parent. Everywhere you look, workers are sitting down, bored out of their minds. Store counters are unattended until someone actually wanders in the store. The cooks at restaurants sit around in booths staring at their phones.

When I got to Auntie Anne's, there was no one there; no one at the register, no one making pretzels. It kind of looked like there was a guy in the back watching TV, but by then I had decided I wasn't going to pay $4 for a pretzel that had likely been sitting there for hours. I turned around and took the escalator back up. What used to be a kids play area next to it was a barren floor, the escalator showed its age and made cranking sounds I've never really noticed before. I wandered in one store, but by then I was no longer in any mood to shop.

I can get frustrated with crowds, but I realized that part of the enjoyment (and surely part of the marketing strategy) of a mall is the hustle and bustle. When there is a good mix of people and talking and activity, it pushes you to keep walking and shopping. When you can walk across the entire mall and maybe encounter 50 people, and it's practically silent save for the loudspeaker music, it doesn't inspire you to do anything except walk right back out the door and go somewhere else that feels, I don't know... alive? And as I pointed out, you start to notice all the bad things, like the cranky escalator that would usually be drowned out by people, and the lack of people is emphasized even more.

I feel like it should have been obvious that constructing two outlet malls right down the road would be the doom of that place, but somehow other people felt differently. Outlet malls have evolved over the years, with some stores selling the same things they'd sell in a typical mall, and others selling different merchandise but still quality and nothing wrong with it. They're not quite the 'last year's trends' or 'small defects' stores with discounts beyond belief that they used to be.


It was a sad experience. I don't know that I'll go back either because... what's the point? And say what you will about consumerism, it's still sad and unfortunate when a mall has to close; jobs are lost, the potential tax revenue is gone. Now granted, this is Chesterfield, and I'm pretty confident that Chesterfield is going to be just fine, but still. Warren County lost a huge source of revenue when their outlet mall closed. I mean, when was the last time someone asked you if you wanted to go to Warrenton?

It'll be interesting to see if they're able to do something with the space, like for offices or housing or something creative, or if in the end it will get torn down like Crestwood. It's a good location for something, but what that something is remains to be seen. It won't be a mall, that's for sure.