I personally think the mall will be closed before summer. One of it's major downfalls is it's limited access, compared to other malls (Quail, Penn Square, Sooner), it's not very easy to get to, especially from I-240, the exit at Pole Road can be dangereous.

I had a dream a couple of weeks ago... It was that this mall was renovated and looked very nice. I hope that dream comes true finally.

If they turn this into another factory or something, then what else does this city have? One nice plaza on southside, with one store closing. No bookstore, no Gamestop, no Chic-Fil-A, no big name clothing stores like American Eagle, Pennys, Dillards (which we already lost.)

I'm tired of the metro becoming nothing but carlots and factories, while the good stuff moves to places like Moore, and NW Expressway, which are 10-15 minute drives.

I hope the guy who represents the mall is telling the truth, and a buyer would want to buy to renovate. Simon malls probably has tons of money to pour into this mall.

Anything to keep it alive.

Here's hoping my dream comes true. A mall with light forest green marble and white marble flooring, as well as marble walls, and lots of stores I never seen before.

I hate to say this -- especially since I have lots of fond memories for having worked there all through college -- but I'm extremely pessimistic.

1) No mall can come close to surviving without anchors and all the big stores are contracting, not epanding; and 2) now that the mall is officially in financial trouble the remaining tenants will start leaving in droves.

I suspect the place will go the route of Shepherd Mall and be converted into some sort of other use.

I hate to say this -- especially since I have lots of fond memories for having worked there all through college -- but I'm extremely pessimistic.

1) No mall can come close to surviving without anchors and all the big stores are contracting, not epanding; and 2) now that the mall is officially in financial trouble the remaining tenants will start leaving in droves.

I suspect the place will go the route of Shepherd Mall and be converted into some sort of other use.

I agree... I cannot see someone like Simon buying the mall with no anchors. Not to mention many of the small store chains are leaving or at least planning to leave if sales or foot traffic drop below a certain number.

Maybe we might get lucky and the Mills people might buy for a cheap price and renovate it. Honestly, If I had the money of billionaire I would buy it, close it, renovate border to border top to bottom and bring better anchors to the mall. My first project would be a ten twenty foot natural barrier to the east.

My best bet is either a mix use facility, community college, a senior living community or maybe somebody like INTEGRIS will convert it to a medical facility.
Here is an article that I posted up a link for last month in this thread, seems appropriate to bring it back up now. It even mentions the "Town Center" concept and The Domain here in Austin, which is where my office is located.


HousingWire.com - Malls, the Future of Housing? (http://www.housingwire.com/2008/12/29/malls-the-future-of-housing/)
By LISA SELIN DAVIS
December 29, 2008

The mall as we know it today is a mistake.

The lonely box of concrete plopped in the suburban diaspora, outdated and, in many cases, dying, isn’t quite what Victor Gruen, the Austrian-born Holocaust survivor largely credited with inventing it, envisioned. Instead, the regional enclosed shopping mall was supposed to be a community center—a little bit of downtown and a car-free haven that would include day care facilities, offices, and, perhaps most importantly, residential living components a stone’s throw from the building; the mall was always supposed to have housing nearby.

Perhaps today Gruen would finally be satisfied, because in its newest incarnation, the mall has finally become not just a place to shop, but to live. The mortgage meltdown, shifting demographics and a growing antipathy toward suburban sprawl have caused developers to see malls not as retail dinosaurs but as giant land banks, where going vertical can appease environmentalists, potential buyers and stockholders alike.

It’s happening slowly, but it’s happening all over America, and industry experts expect the trend to grow. If inner cities are starting to see condo projects go rental or remain unsold, and some new suburban subdivisions are settling into modern ghost towns as the foreclosure crisis deepens, the one bright spot in the housing market might just be here: at the mall.

“This is not just a fad,” says Anita Kramer, senior director for retail development at the Urban Land Institute. “This is the wave of the future.”

More than 2, 000 malls currently stand in America. Back in 2001, when PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Congress for the New Urbanism conducted a nationwide survey of shopping malls, 19 percent of them could be classified as “greyfields”—so called for acres of undeveloped parking lots and piles of underutilized concrete— or vulnerable to becoming them; some of us know these spaces as dead malls.

Despite the obsessive chronicling of such structures on Web sites like Dead Malls (deadmalls DOT com (http://www.deadmalls.com)), we still don’t know their exact number, but we do know this: some of those greyfields are potential goldmines, and the industry knows it. “There are more renovation/expansions than new malls being built now,” says Malachy Kavanagh, vice president of communications for the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group for mall makers.

Starting with a destination
Somewhere in the last two decades, enclosed shopping malls started falling out of favor. Department stores were consolidating, making anchor tenants scarcer, and suburban sprawl was becoming the scourge of the environmental world, blamed for traffic, pollution and a kind of suburban malaise. Malls needed to be more than just places to shop, if they were going to survive. They needed to become destinations, dressed up for a new century, with all the architectural and commercial diversity of real towns.

We saw such creations in places like Canada’s West Edmonton Mall, which opened in 1982 and includes an ice-skating rink and an indoor bungee jump. Minnesota’s The Mall of America includes three roller coasters and a hotel. But those malls were intended to be centers of tourism, not models for your standard regional mall.

So a new style of mall has made its way to the market in the last decade or so, known as the “lifestyle center,” a smaller, more upscale grouping of stores hovering around what looks like an actual city street, with sit-down restaurants and theaters, maybe even park benches and streetlights—very much like old-fashioned downtowns, and built near residential areas. Since 2005, only three enclosed shopping malls have been built, and only one, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is on the docket for 2009. Yet thirty open-air lifestyle centers have risen. Many of these are redeveloped properties—old, enclosed malls either torn down or added to, both for financial and environmental reasons. After all, there just aren’t that many 100,000-plus acres of virgin land in good locations to go around anymore.

But adding housing to an enclosed mall—as well as to these re-imagined, mixed-use facilities—is still a relatively novel concept, because malls were originally built far from residential areas, near highway interchanges. There, they’d be accessible from many different suburban communities, in their own commercial-only zones.

“Many of the shopping centers built in last 25 years were built on low cost land at the fringe,” says the Urban Land Institute’s Michael Beyard, senior fellow for retail and entertainment development. “Now, land is quite expensive, and many of these malls are no longer at the fringe.”

Thanks to encroaching residential and commercial development, many of those malls are even now in prime locations, near major roads, housing subdivisions and sometimes even public transit. Suddenly, location, location, location applies to the mall as much as it traditionally has to residential real estate.

Deconstructing the mall, literally
The most common way for a mall to take advantage of its newly desirable locale and become residential is to “de-mall,” in the language of the industry: raze the existing structure and start anew as a mixed-use mall.

That’s what happened at Belmar, in Lakewood, Colorado, in 2003. On the site of an ailing 1.4 million square-foot mall known as Villa Italia on the outskirts of Denver, developers created a 106-acre lifestyle center with various kinds of housing attached. There are 1,300 rental apartments, 200 condos and single-family home units, and 760,000 square feet of office space hovering around them. Currently they have around 60 condominiums in active listings (they have been continually adding housing since units were first placed on the market), ranging from the mid-$200,000s to over $1 million.

According to an article earlier this year in The Atlantic, Belmar’s housing “commands a 60 percent premium per square foot over the single-family homes in the neighborhoods around it.”

“There’s a strong desire for this type of project,” says Belmar’s director of marketing, Stephanie Jackson. “It’s urban, but it feels like the country. There’s a real sense of synergy here.”

The project has been lauded by industry groups and held up as a model for how to turn old malls into vibrant, complete neighborhoods. This doesn’t mean Belmar is immune, however, from the unraveling of the economy by any means. Jackson says sales have been healthy, but like just about everywhere else in the American housing market, they’re starting to feel the pinch. “They’re doing okay,” she says. “There’s been some slow down in traffic.”

General Growth, the second largest mall owner, with over 200 holdings, has undertaken similar projects lately, re-evaluating the health and potential of some of their older, ailing properties and deciding that ascribing many of the principles of New Urbanism—walkability, a mix of uses, a variety of housing types—can bring them back to life. In Holladay, Utah, for instance, the old Cottonwood Mall had fallen on hard times, largely edged out by competition from a newer, flashier mall named Fashion Place in nearby Salt Lake City.

“[Cottonwood] really is the community center of that town, but it was dated and not as popular in recent years,” says Aaron Bartels, senior director of development for another General Growth project. Earlier this year, they razed every inch of Cottonwood but the Macy’s to create “an inviting residential community within a convenient neighborhood setting. The 57-acre plan aligns the streets and a central square with the vistas of the mountains to the east, creating symmetry with the natural beauty of Mount Olympus and the Wasatch Front,” reads a project description.

In addition to a new mall, the project includes condos, townhouses, cottages and single-family homes, each of them above or adjacent to the shopping component. The project is expected to reopen in 2011.

Rethinking community
If razing and rebuilding seems a little less that environmentally friendly, there’s another model of life at the mall. At General Growth’s suburban Boston property, Natick Mall, they chose to create what the Congress for New Urbanism calls Mall-plus: an adaptive reuse project that takes a traditional enclosed shopping center and adds new components right inside it.

Natick Mall, in an area known as MetroWest, was built in 1966, and got a massive overhaul in 1994. But that makeover occurred while enclosed malls were still in favor, and didn’t bring it up to 21st century standards. So last year, after acquiring an adjacent parcel of land once occupied by a Wonder Bread factory, General Growth decided to give the mall a $370 million makeover. Along with the addition of anchor stores like Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom that helped reinvent the mall as a luxury destination called the Natick Collection, they grafted 12 stories of condominiums onto the side of the building, created a 1.2-acre park with wandering, leafy paths on the mall’s roof, and added a private club with features like a piano lounge and screening room.

“We’ve made it more of a community asset than a retail asset,” says Bartels. The condominiums, called Nouvelle at Natick, have their own private entrances into the mall, and they’ve attracted empty nesters and young couples, mall lovers and mall-neutral buyers alike.

Sales of the 215 condos, ranging from $425,000 to $1.7 million and 800 square-feet to more than 2,000 square-feet, began in Sept. 2007. So far, says Bartels, 40 have closed, which may not seem like a home run compared to the speed with which some city condo projects sold during the height of the building boom, but Bartels seems pleased. They’re confident about the project due to its location and price point.

“We’re priced 50 percent below a comparable product in Boston, about $600 a square foot,” says Bartels. “In MetroWest, we’re probably 50 percent above a comparable property, and there’s nothing else around here with that level of amenities.”

Nouvelle at Natick is unique in many ways, and not just because it’s the first case of an enclosed shopping mall getting condos directly inside it. Most such condominium projects, offering goodies like swimming pools and wine rooms, are found in the inner city, but this project sits in an older, inner ring suburb (as opposed to new mixed-use mall properties like Time Warner Center, in New York City, where people have long been used to residing above retail). This is urban life for folks who prefer the suburbs, which, according to the U.S. Census, is the majority of us: some 47 percent live in suburbs, and 40 million of the 58 million housing units there are detached.

Some call this debut creature the new suburbia or “metroburbia,” a vertical suburbia that can appease the desire for the best parts of both urban and suburban life. “For the last hundred years that kind of lifestyle”—walkable, dense—“was only available in dense urban environments,” says Bartels. “A lot of people are hoping to get out of the cul-de-sac and get into more integrated lifestyle.”

The mall, says urbanist Joel Kotkin, presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, “is the logical place to do this. You build a town center where there wasn’t one.”

‘You’d almost never know you’re in the mall’
Such a new town center model can be seen at Coconut Point, in Estero, Florida, where the old residential-above-retain model so common in older urban centers is laid out in their newfangled “city streets.” Rows of condos stand above stores like Bebe and the Apple store, with freestanding models surrounding them.

“It’s almost like living in the city, where you’re above a storefront,” says Diane Ivey, director of mall marketing. “You’d almost never know that you’re in the mall.” Yet the homes hover both above and around 1.2 million square feet of retail space and 32,000 square feet of office condominiums. Some 200 out of 270 units have been sold since they went on the market in 2005. Clearly, though, not all who buy at Coconut Point crave the fully urban experience. As Ivey points out, “The first homes that were bought were not on the main street.”

Coconut Point is the offspring of Simon Property Group, the world’s largest owner of malls, with 323 holdings. They’ve been slow to add residential to the mix, as hopeful as they are for the model; only about six of their new open-air centers have residential, and none of their enclosed shopping centers have tried General Growth’s tack, adding condominiums to the mix.

In addition to Coconut Point, Simon’s life-at-the-mall properties include Firewheel Town Center, outside Dallas; South Park, in Charlotte, N.C., and The Domain in Austin, Texas, with 390 rental units ranging from $1,025 to $2,300, stacked above retail. It has a wine bar, a couple of steakhouses, a spa and a fancy chocolate shop, among many other stores, with more to come as they finish the next phase. Open for less than two years, the property is 95 percent rented.

Though they would not release demographic information about the residents, they did point out this: The Domain is less than 10 miles from the University of Texas, Austin; chances are, it’s reaching a very different market than the Natick Collection or Coconut Point. This actually bodes well for the future of the model. Even the luxury real estate sector has been taking a hit as of late. To reinvent the mall as a series of domiciles, many styles, sizes and price points of housing must be available there.

Changing perceptions of home
We know that adding residential is the logical next step for the mall, and that there’s a desire for it on the market. A study by Jonathan Levine of the University of Michigan and Lawrence Frank of the University of British Columbia of suburban Atlanta and Boston residents revealed that at least a third of them would rather have mixed-use and walkable neighborhoods than big houses on large lots—as long as they were affordable—and another third were at least open to such a shift in lifestyle. Many want to live like they’re in a city—emotionally, if not geographically.

We have only a few data to go by about the fiscal health of these projects. At Reston Town Center, for instance, a D.C.-suburb lifestyle center that opened in 1990, Reston’s products—apartments, condominiums, and office and retail spaces—commanded as much as 50 percent more rent than nearby condos, malls or office parks, according to a 2006 study by the Brookings Institution. “The anecdotal information is that they are very successful, they are able to get higher rents on all sides, there’s a premium for living and doing business in these establishments,” says Urban Land Institute’s Kramer. And mixed use is clearly a smarter direction for developers now; if one sector takes a serious hit, chances are, the health of the others will help a mixed-use development rebound; it’s time to spread the risk around.

Whether it will revive ailing malls and help realize the vision Victor Gruen presented some 50 years ago remains to be seen. Malls have seen their vacancies rise perilously in the last few months. The sample of residential experiments is just too small to know if the trend will prove profitable in the long run, and help insulate the mall from the growing financial crisis. Clearly, though, suburbia is going to need some kind of injection to keep it relevant and repair the mortgage meltdown trauma. Many suburban areas have suffered more than their urban counterparts in recent months. Cleveland, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., for example, saw higher rates of foreclosure in suburbs versus the inner city.

Mall makers are moving in this direction, but very slowly, and slower now that our economy is shaky. Mall makers don’t blame it on the malls themselves—it’s the economy. “That’s not a reflection on the product type,” says General Growth’s Bartels. “That’s a reflection on the mortgage market.”

Editor’s note: Lisa Selin Davis writes for a variety of publications about real estate—though she doesn’t own any yet—and is managing editor of Brownstoner.com. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Well I just emailed Simon malls giving them a suggestion that they should buy the mall and renovate it where lazy people wouldn't.

Simon + 1.4 million square feet = one heck of a fancy mall.

That or the owners of Quail Springs...

I can't fathom everyone mentioning living quarters, or medical or school buildings, as then this city will go straight down the crapper with its lack of stores.

This city would probably next lose Best Buy and the nearest ones to those of us in the metro would be 10 minutes in each direction. Make that 10-20 in any given direction. No bookstore for at least 10-20 minutes in each direction, coupled with the fact the best movie theatres are the same distance, and what does this city have? Some fast food joints, tons of car lots, factories, and a couple of clothing stores not worth shopping at (I'm a Buckle, Hollister, AE, A&F, Dillards kind of guy.)

I would be driving to areas outside the city where money would flow and help those areas flourish while this city goes to waste with nothing that matters.

Ever wonder why Moore is up and coming? They got great schools, good housing additions, and now the best stores flocking there.

This city deserves better then to drool over a new highway, that will only help people drive through our city more convienantly getting from west to east coast and vise versa.

I'm to passionate about this city and what it loses, to think that we need more medical buildings, and community colleges, where people make their life and then move to better pastures where they have the convienance of good shopping everywhere near them...

This city cannot afford to lose places like Best Buy, all the while not having places like Borders or Barnes and Noble, or even a NICE movie theatre.

Makes me want to move to Moore or northside, or off of Memorial where life is flourishing.

Man I want this city to rise from the ashes and stop losing more then it's receiving.

How about a facility for government agencies at state, federal and local level?

All of the agencies where regular people have to conduct business could be in one location.

IRS, Oklahoma Tax Commission, Social Security, Oklahoma Det of Public Safety (driver's license testing, etc), Some county courthouse services - marriage licenses, records search (satellite office), State Corporation Commission - there are many more that aren't coming to mind I'm sure.

The space would be easier to secure because line of sight is good. Limit the access to the public and have them go through security scanners as they enter. Government vehicles could be stored in the ample parking lots and the public as well as workers would not have to pay for parking. More bus routes could be added as the needs were identified.

Add services and fast food courts - have a dry cleaners, Walgreen's, C-store, "sit-down" restaurants with fast service, Kinkos-Fed-Ex, USPS branch, book store/newsstand.

The rent paid by government agencies would likely be less than downtown rates to come, plus the safety and security for public and workers could be easier to manage with fewer stories and the large open areas around the mall.

Win-win?

The idea of having all service agencies utilized by the public in one central location makes sense in several way's, being that it makes sense, it will never happren.

I agree with the state service facility, But like Danielf1935 said,it makes sense and probably won't happen. Why does OKC continually shoot itself in the foot?

Is 20/20 still there?

Huh?

use one of the anchor store fora large indoor kids area downstairs have bumper cars, go-carts, bowling alley, upstairs lazer tag, arcade, restaurant. one of the anchor stores will do nicely... somethng year round.. the only problem is that it needs to be secure and rules set in place, not like the arcade that was inside crossroads, it turned into a place where drugs where exchanged and sold.

You know, given the economic climate right now, chances are somewhere between slim and none that they'll find a buyer with the pockets necessary to satisfy whatever debt is outstanding. It'll be a matter of taking whatever offers, if any, come up.

That said, it seems to me whoever "holds the note" to Crossroads might well be amenable to some "out of the box" ideas to reinvigorate the mall as something useful and practical that might have a longshot at becoming profitable and generating revenue. That is, if there's a theoretical $10 million due (not intended to represent the actual number), but no buyer is gonna give them more than $10K at a fire sale, doing something that brings in anything might be worth that longshot chance.. At that point, someone with an idea that is remotely cogent might get the ear of a banker who is willing to take a chance.

The kinds of updates and fixups discussed earlier in this thread are the kinds of things the owners of the mall needed to do probably two or three times *over* during the life of the mall, but never did...arguably once, I suppose, but it was hardly an overwhelming facelift. (They had a water fountain from day 1, but it was taken out about two years ago because it was leaking under the foundation and becoming a horrendous maintenance headache. Tearing it out was the cheapest solution, sadly).

Some sort of indoor amusement park might be an interesting idea, lasertag (as someone mentioned) or rockwall climbing...who knows.

I'm mostly frustrated and sad...just a great piece of growing up in OKC is just dying a lousy death it didn't really deserve.

You know, given the economic climate right now, chances are somewhere between slim and none that they'll find a buyer with the pockets necessary to satisfy whatever debt is outstanding. It'll be a matter of taking whatever offers, if any, come up.

That said, it seems to me whoever "holds the note" to Crossroads might well be amenable to some "out of the box" ideas to reinvigorate the mall as something useful and practical that might have a longshot at becoming profitable and generating revenue. That is, if there's a theoretical $10 million due (not intended to represent the actual number), but no buyer is gonna give them more than $10K at a fire sale, doing something that brings in anything might be worth that longshot chance.. At that point, someone with an idea that is remotely cogent might get the ear of a banker who is willing to take a chance.

The kinds of updates and fixups discussed earlier in this thread are the kinds of things the owners of the mall needed to do probably two or three times *over* during the life of the mall, but never did...arguably once, I suppose, but it was hardly an overwhelming facelift. (They had a water fountain from day 1, but it was taken out about two years ago because it was leaking under the foundation and becoming a horrendous maintenance headache. Tearing it out was the cheapest solution, sadly).

Some sort of indoor amusement park might be an interesting idea, lasertag (as someone mentioned) or rockwall climbing...who knows.

I'm mostly frustrated and sad...just a great piece of growing up in OKC is just dying a lousy death it didn't really deserve.

Midwest Mall Properties (most recent owner) paid over $60 million for the mall. I don't know much about how commercial real estate loans (especially for a property like Crossroads) work but I am going to guess that the lender will lose quite a substantial amount of money on the property, seeing as they'll be lucky to get a fraction of what was paid for it a few years back before all of the tenants left. They supposedly bought a couple of other malls as well...I wonder what will happen to those?

I really hope they can find a buyer that will be able to find a way to use the existing mall structure in some way or another. I know that Crossroads isn't the most architecturally valuable building, but it would be a shame to see such a building that probably has quite a bit of life left in it get torn down. They're certainly long past the point of using it for retail uses, but I think that there are plenty of other potential uses for the mall. One would be the idea of using the building for government/public uses, which would be great if they can get past all the red tape. I think a more realistic model would be to use it for mixed uses...including offices, government/public uses, service businesses, and maybe a little bit of retail. This is pretty much what the owner of Eastland Mall in Tulsa is doing, and I think that Crossroads would be even better suited for such a use considering it has an advantage in its location compared to Eastland. See Eastgate Metroplex - Reinventing a Tulsa Icon (http://www.eastgatemetroplex.com/)

There's no doubt that with an uncertain future, tenants will start leaving the mall fast unless something happens very soon (unlikely). Methinks that unless someone buys Crossroads and ends up putting together a plan for it, the mall could very easily end up shutting down entirely before the end of 2009: they'll end up losing money just to keep it open...you have to consider utility costs + maintenance + staff/management + etc.

I wonder if the local management at Crossroads ("...but we still have over 100 stores!") knew this was coming all along?

They should build a canal in it. It worked for Bricktown.

I think the remaining tenants should tough it out and stay there. They'll benefit more traffic if Social Security Administration moves into that building among other federal agencies.

They should build a canal in it. It worked for Bricktown.

You mean like this one?

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http://newsok.com/oklahoma-city-mall-is-at-a-crossroads/article/3340103

It is really sad to see such a landmark of south oklahoma city is leaving.

I hate to say it guys, but we ALL played a part in Crossroads demise. I live in Portland, OR now, but lived in okc until 2006. I also worked for Waldenbooks for 5 years in almost all of their OKC locations. What's saddest about Crossroads is that the Waldenbooks in that mall was the largest and highest volume in the entire state. For years it had double the traffic and profit that any of our other stores had. Now its gone. We went from having 5 metro area stores to just 2 now.

Lots of things contributed to the death of Crossroads; the work on I-35 that cut off access to the mall, bad management, gang activity, and most of all declining demographics. But the death of Crossroads, Heritage Park, and what I believe will be the death of Quail Springs comes down to one thing.

Most shoppers don't care about nice places to shop until they're gone. My experience with shoppers was that they wanted to come to the mall to browse, to mall walk, to see movies, etc., and then actually buy their merchandise at Walmart or online. My experience with Waldenbooks was that people would come in and browse magazines for free to wait for their movie to start, or come in and browse the books they wanted and then go home and buy them on Amazon.

I'm not castigating anyone for wanting a good deal. I know a lot of you might be on a budget and have no choice but to buy things at the cheapest price. But you have to understand that running a store in a mall was EXPENSIVE (rents were high and your utilities were high because you were basically heating and cooling the outside area too). I got so much attitude off of people because they thought we were ripping them off, when in reality the prices had to be higher because the over head was more expensive.

This is why most malls will eventually die. People prioritize a good deal and a cheap price over convenience and atmosphere. They always will. The only reason Penn Square will survive is because it went upscale and caters to the Nichols Hills crowd.

So there you have it. For every time you went into or go into a mall just to browse and then turn around to buy stuff cheaper at Walmart, you're contributing to a point in time where there will only be bargain basement stores and Walmart left.

This mall needed their stores to be profitable to stay in business. For the stores to be profitable, you needed to shop there. You didn't. You walked around looking at how pretty everything was. A lot of you are wading knee-deep in nostalgia without acknowledging that you didn't really spend a lot of money there.

If you were one of the people who cared more about getting things at the cheapest price, you can't complain that malls are dying. It's just the way of the world.

Mark my words...Quail has about 5 years left.

did a mall in tulsa close recently? what happened to it?

nurfe, no offense but I think your view of OKC and OKC Malls is a little skewed. Penn Square caters to FAR more people than the small "Nichols Hills crowd." The "NH crowd" could not keep the mall in business alone. Most NH crowd shop in Nichols Hills Plaza or out of state. As you stated Penn Square seeks higher end tenants and for the most part they are the only store in the metro or even the state. For this reason alone, people from all over the metro and state will continue to frequent Penn for the unique selection of stores otherwise they would have to drive to Dallas or Kansas City to get to. Penn has a waiting list of even more exclusive tenants waiting to get in. Quail is not going anywhere soon, especially with the death of Crossroads. Quail while not as nice as Penn will always have a place in the ever sprawling Memorial Rd. corridor. Especially if the Quail Springs Village directly north of the mall gets completed as proposed, it will only anchor the area as a destination point. If you are not familiar with that project, I encourage you to check out the Quail Springs Village thread.

Scratch Chick Fil A from the list it was closed down also sign down off the wall and everything. Taco Mayo was gone as well everything ripped out but the Coke Fountain was still sitting on the counter(it didnt work ) Orange Julius was still there but looked nasty and smelled like old cigaretts when we walked by the counter.

I went to Crossroads Friday and Chick Fil A is still open.

I agree with the state service facility, But like Danielf1935 said,it makes sense and probably won't happen. Why does OKC continually shoot itself in the foot? One thing about converting the mall to a state service facility, It would probably solve the gangs and thug problem.

i for bath and body works say they are closing , then i will head out there for the closing sales.

I hate to say it guys, but we ALL played a part in Crossroads demise. I live in Portland, OR now, but lived in okc until 2006. I also worked for Waldenbooks for 5 years in almost all of their OKC locations. What's saddest about Crossroads is that the Waldenbooks in that mall was the largest and highest volume in the entire state. For years it had double the traffic and profit that any of our other stores had. Now its gone. We went from having 5 metro area stores to just 2 now.

Lots of things contributed to the death of Crossroads; the work on I-35 that cut off access to the mall, bad management, gang activity, and most of all declining demographics. But the death of Crossroads, Heritage Park, and what I believe will be the death of Quail Springs comes down to one thing.

Most shoppers don't care about nice places to shop until they're gone. My experience with shoppers was that they wanted to come to the mall to browse, to mall walk, to see movies, etc., and then actually buy their merchandise at Walmart or online. My experience with Waldenbooks was that people would come in and browse magazines for free to wait for their movie to start, or come in and browse the books they wanted and then go home and buy them on Amazon.

I'm not castigating anyone for wanting a good deal. I know a lot of you might be on a budget and have no choice but to buy things at the cheapest price. But you have to understand that running a store in a mall was EXPENSIVE (rents were high and your utilities were high because you were basically heating and cooling the outside area too). I got so much attitude off of people because they thought we were ripping them off, when in reality the prices had to be higher because the over head was more expensive.

This is why most malls will eventually die. People prioritize a good deal and a cheap price over convenience and atmosphere. They always will. The only reason Penn Square will survive is because it went upscale and caters to the Nichols Hills crowd.

So there you have it. For every time you went into or go into a mall just to browse and then turn around to buy stuff cheaper at Walmart, you're contributing to a point in time where there will only be bargain basement stores and Walmart left.

This mall needed their stores to be profitable to stay in business. For the stores to be profitable, you needed to shop there. You didn't. You walked around looking at how pretty everything was. A lot of you are wading knee-deep in nostalgia without acknowledging that you didn't really spend a lot of money there.

If you were one of the people who cared more about getting things at the cheapest price, you can't complain that malls are dying. It's just the way of the world.

Mark my words...Quail has about 5 years left.

With all due respect, I believe your analysis of using Waldenbooks to try and prove your theory about Crossroads' demise is flawed and incomplete.

First of all, you did not mention why the non-mall store at NW Expressway and Market Place in Warr Acres closed in the late 90s. That store did not have to pay for "heating the outside air," yet it bit the dust too. You also singled out Wal-Mart and Amazon.com for taking business due to price, but didn't mention a single thing about the intrusion of Barnes and Noble and Border's into the OKC market beginning in the late 90s.

The reason Waldenbooks has declined is because they have failed to compete with the larger and nicer stores that B&N and Borders provide...not because of evil mall walkers or freeloaders waiting to see a movie. Do you really think that a B&N or Borders location has less overhead than a Waldenbooks located inside a mall? You've got the cost of the property, cost of construction of a larger building, the property taxes, more employees, higher insurance cost, etc. Waldenbooks simply charged more for the exact same book you could get elsewhere and provided no amenities (Such as the coffee shops, etc.) that made people want to shop there. Not to mention the dinky little mall stores have nowhere near the book selection these other places have. And ask yourself this...when was the last time you saw a Waldenbooks advertisment either on television or in print? Hmmm.

In the 80s, I would agree that Waldenbooks was a premiere book store. But in this market, they've been outdone by their competitors and haven't kept up with the changes. Why anyone today would actually go to a Waldenbooks inside a mall to pay more for a book is mind boggling.

Isn't Waldenbooks owned by Borders?

I can't remember a time when I could go into Waldenbooks and order a cup of coffee, sandwich and maybe a cookie and chill out to easy listening music on a couch with a book. This is what keeps me going back to B&N and Borders. I give them my business because they treat me better.

Isn't Waldenbooks owned by Borders?

Waldenbooks is a subsidary of Borders. Borders is phasing out many stores due to underperformance. Here's some more info from Yahoo's biz site...


"Walden Book Company targets mall shoppers through some 295 Waldenbooks storefronts in all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, most located in malls. The company steps up its retail efforts during the retail high season, using other venues such as mall kiosks to sell specialty gifts items. The chains also sells books at airports. Waldenbooks accounts for 15% of parent Borders Group's sales. Borders has been dramatically shrinking the size of the unit, shuttering nearly 200 locations in the first half of 2008, as mall traffic slows. The Waldenbooks e-commerce site is operated through a partnership with Amazon.com, which will likely change when Borders ends its relationship with Amazon in 2008."

Again...why go to the mall and shop at Waldenbooks when you can just go to the much larger and nicer Borders?

First of all, you did not mention why the non-mall store at NW Expressway and Market Place in Warr Acres closed in the late 90s. That store did not have to pay for "heating the outside air," yet it bit the dust too. You also singled out Wal-Mart and Amazon.com for taking business due to price, but didn't mention a single thing about the intrusion of Barnes and Noble and Border's into the OKC market beginning in the late 90s.

That strip mall is practically completely vacant, aside from Hemispheres and Hideaway Pizza that recently opened there. Even the sign from the Service Merchandise that closed years and years ago is still there.


did a mall in tulsa close recently? what happened to it?

Yes...Eastland Mall closed after it lost pretty much every store in the mall. It still exists and the new owners are leasing it out as (mostly) office/government space. Dead Malls dot Com: Feature: Eastland Mall: Tulsa, Oklahoma (http://deadmalls.com/malls/eastland_mall_ok.html)

Penn has a waiting list of even more exclusive tenants waiting to get in.
i guess exclusive tenants does not mean fast food joints. nobody has rented the taco bell spot after they left the food court.

I can't remember a time when I could go into Waldenbooks and order a cup of coffee, sandwich and maybe a cookie and chill out to easy listening music on a couch with a book. This is what keeps me going back to B&N and Borders. I give them my business because they treat me better.

I heard B&N is one of those places for Larry Craig type activities.

IMO I think when you move a hop and shop convienence store into a mall it was a sign of a death sentence then for the mall

The is a c-store in Penn...

little oklahoma mall bodegas, lol

Are all the stores in crossroads on a month by month lease ?

Are all the stores in crossroads on a month by month lease ?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Absolutely not......I wanted to put a store in that mall ..... the leases were so ridiculous and the rent was beyond your wildest
dream.....

not sure if somebody already posted this... but found this ad in the 3/11/1973 oklahoman. -M

http://www.magnvs.de/pics/crossroads19730311.jpg

Cool! Thanks for sharing!

cool post M BRINGS BACK FONDER TIMES

so whats going on with the mall, is it being bought? saved ? anymore shops closing, opening?

Expert: Crossroads Mall foreclosure in OKC may not spell doom for | Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City) | Find Articles at BNET (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4182/is_20090126/ai_n31294532)

I heard the Mall has shut down completly. Is that true?

called bath and body works at crossroads, i asked them if they are still opened and she asked why i asked that so i told her there was a rumor the mall closed, she said as far as she knows, the mall is not closing its doors right away or rushing it, so the mall is still open

I'm sure we would know if the mall is closed, the local media would be all over it.

i haven't seen this for myself, but i've heard that coleman outdoor products is opening a store in the former steve & barry's location. not sure if it's an outlet store or what, but i've heard that there is a 'coming soon' type of sign on the entrance.

anyone else know anything about this? -M

^ Intresting news.

Coleman Outdoor Products have lost their minds..........

Could it be? Crossroads being revived? LOL

I am I the only one picturing gang bangers buying camping gear?

I think its wrong to label Crossroads as the common gangs hangout. There are bad people everywhere! In all my years of going to Crossroads, I've never once seen a group of gangs terrorizing shoppers. The more people continue talking bad bout Crossroads like this, the more people are afraid to shop there thus the fault of the people for doing their part in Crossroads' failure.

I went there and it was safe and did not feel threatend , -I never even seen the GANGBANGERS around, crossroads has just had a few bad apples scare everyone off and it was isolated incidents...I will go back.

coleman outdoor products

that would be awsome

I think its wrong to label Crossroads as the common gangs hangout. There are bad people everywhere! In all my years of going to Crossroads, I've never once seen a group of gangs terrorizing shoppers. The more people continue talking bad bout Crossroads like this, the more people are afraid to shop there thus the fault of the people for doing their part in Crossroads' failure.

This

i haven't seen this for myself, but i've heard that coleman outdoor products is opening a store in the former steve & barry's location. not sure if it's an outlet store or what, but i've heard that there is a 'coming soon' type of sign on the entrance.

anyone else know anything about this? -M

Has anyone driven by to verify this yet?

maybe northpole city could buy one of the old anchor store buildings for there new location..

Wouldn't that make them South Side North Pole?

I suspect they can find better rent to space ratios elsewhere.

the building if im not wrong is for sale not for rent at crossroads

the building if im not wrong is for sale not for rent at crossroads

Which building?

Jesseda, I may be the one istaken. I'm under the impression, again perhaps mistaken, that the S&B space is not separately owned. But I was mistaken about the Easter bunny in my youth as well. When I grew up I learned he wasn't really color blind, he just had no sense of asthetics. 8^)

maybe it was the macys building, but one of those empty anchor buildings hasa for sale sign on the building