Crossroads Mall

[SoonerDave]

The sad thing is that I don't think many people realize just how big a deal Crossroads was for its time. It was a *huge* (and, I guess, for that matter it still is) mall, and you coudn't turn on the radio or TV without hearing their original jingle..."Come to Crossroards, Come to Crossroads, Come out to Crossroads Mall..It's the latest, greatest, up-to-datest, shopping center of all..."

KWTV used to do the MDA telethon from Crossroads' center court, and ol' Ronald McDonald would host the "fishbowl" for people bringing donations in during the night or Labor Day. Heck, that was back when Chik-Fil-A was on the west end of the mall next to the erstwhile Wards location. That history blog doesn't note the fact that Juilus actually closed for a time several years ago, then reopened.

There used to be a Baskin Robbins 31 flavors next door to OJ; there was also a Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour upstairs where Eyemart is now. Geez, I'm remembering a lot of them now - Emmer Brothers occupied two floors on the west wing, Napoleon Nash was on the south wing going into Dillard's, and the north anchor was John A. Brown's....and the only toy shop was Toys By Roy. And they had some COOL toys in there, too!

Sorry, sorry for the waxing-nostalgic. My mom lamented the demise of the ol Capitol Hill shopping district, most of which ironically enough vacated that area for Crossroads. I guess history is just repeating itself.

I think its kind of ridiculous that ODOT is essentially putting (re)development of that entire area on hold for the next decade while it counts the lint crumbs in its bureaucratic navel. Crossroads had enough troubles to deal with before the I-35 rebuild a few years ago, and I guess in hindsight it's a miracle the place survived that. Lots of business didn't. The pitiful thing is that the defunct Burger King on the west entrance just off I-35 is a desperate hovel for transients and drunks (to be generous), with an accumulation of (at best) random trash, broken beer bottles, and heaven knows what else (I try not to think about it). That place ought to be razed, even if nothing else happens there for a decade.

-sd

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

My 3rd birthday party was at Farrell's...It's one of my earliest memories. That air-raid siren that they spooled up for birthdays scared the bejiggers out of me. It's a good thing that they let me sit at the player piano for a few minutes or I'd have cried a lot longer

*sniff*

[Karried]

I had my birthday party at Farrells too! It was in San Jose CA. I'll never forget it.. I was much older - 11 0r 12 but we were pretty poor ( single mom) and my neighbors must have felt sorry for me and took me for my first party there ...

That was so special. I'll never forget that.

Have any more room at the piano?

*whhhaaaaaa!*

[jbrown84]

Living on the far northwest side, we rarely visited crossroads, but I used to love the hobby shop that was on the first floor I believe next to JC Penney.

[SoonerDave]

That hobby shop shut down only a year or so ago. Amazingly, it lasted a long time - only closed down about a year ago or so...it was a long-timer.

Anyone remember Video Concepts? It tookover the downstairs space previously occupied by Emmer Brothers. It was a high-end electronics store just a bit before the "contemporary" video age really hit. VHS movies were $100 each. They sold this new video thing RCA had just called SelectAVision, which were large platters contained in a disk that made it look like a giant version of an ole 3" floppy disk. If I'm not mistaken, the media wasn't optical; it was in the vein of a vinyl record with picture info etched into the surface. They were always running the first Star Trek movie on one of their big projection big screens to demo it.

There was also an AWESOME-smelling bakery on the first floor, just to the right as you exited JC Penney's. I can't for the life of me remember the name. Sadly, I remember it pretty much went down the tubes after a local TV station ran an expose about it having failed a city health inspection, or something similar to that. It never recovered. Seems like it had a British theme to it, but don't recall for sure.

And who can forget the bumper cars at the original LeMans?? By the time I was tall/old enough to ride them, they had shut them down permanently.

[windowphobe]

Ah, yes, the Capacitance Electronic Disc. Some of us smartasses called it "Needlevision," and yes, it had a 12-inch vinyl platter played by a stylus shaped sort of like a sleigh runner. The plastic case was to keep the dust off it: if you've ever heard what a clod of dirt can do to a phonograph record, you don't want to see what it can do to video. (I had about 75 of the discs at one point; the latter-day discs had blue cases instead of off-white, which indicated - yes! - actual stereo sound. Video resolution was not appreciably higher than VHS, but colors seemed better.) RCA lost half a billion bucks on this venture and abandoned it within two or three years.

[Cid]

I worked in that hobby shop, aptly named The Hobby Shop, for YEARS. It shut down years ago, not one year ago. The owner and his wife opened another shop up in the Village called M&S Hobby Shop about two years ago and it has since closed down. I know that she still sells the models and game inventory on eBay.

I also worked in their Penn Square Mall location that used to be across the hall from the movie theater. We had tons o' fun super-gluing quarters to the steps and watching people in line trying to pick them up. By the time we stopped doing that, maintenance had put several chip marks in the tile from using a screwdriver and hammer to get them up over the course of several weeks.

[PUGalicious]

We had tons o' fun super-gluing quarters to the steps and watching people in line trying to pick them up. By the time we stopped doing that, maintenance had put several chip marks in the tile from using a screwdriver and hammer to get them up over the course of several weeks.

Ha, ha, ha... that's funny... damaging property resulting in unnecessary costs to the property owners, passed on to the mall tenants and ultimately passed on to the consumer... that's "tons o' fun" — for juvenile delinquents... bravo for being another burden on society.

[Cid]

Ha, ha, ha... that's funny... damaging property resulting in unnecessary costs to the property owners, passed on to the mall tenants and ultimately passed on to the consumer... that's "tons o' fun" — for juvenile delinquents... bravo for being another burden on society.

Wa, wa, wa... far too many crybabies that take themselves too seriously. Bravo for being a debbie downer for society.

[redland]

I also worked in their Penn Square Mall location that used to be across the hall from the movie theater. We had tons o' fun super-gluing quarters to the steps and watching people in line trying to pick them up. By the time we stopped doing that, maintenance had put several chip marks in the tile from using a screwdriver and hammer to get them up over the course of several weeks.

You must be very proud.

(Oh sure, I'm a "cry baby" too.)

[SoonerDave]

Wa, wa, wa... far too many crybabies that take themselves too seriously. Bravo for being a debbie downer for society.

You've got to be kidding me - you're defending that kind of nonsense? Someone who calls you out for defacing someone else's property is a crybaby?

I'll admit, it takes a certain kind of cojones to be proud of vandalism so much that they'll brag about it in a public forum like this, and then defend it when someone (rightly) calls them out for it. Unbelievable. Good thing you didn't work for me, because I'd have fired your sorry butt for it if you had so much free time that you could pull of crap like this. The repairs you laugh at end up coming out of the pockets of the people who pay the rent and, in turn, those of us who buy the merchandise.

We get to the point where we're all supposed to be conditioned to think every kind of behavior is acceptable, so I guess this is not surprising. I'm glad someone called you out for it.

[oneforone]

This is an old trick, Fire Station 1 in New Orleans has a Mardi Gras Doubloon glued down to the sidewalk in front of the truck doors as a joke.

I am not a fan of damaging property, but it sounds like to me that the mall maintence crew was not the brightest bulbs on the tree.

A logical thinking person would have never used a screwdriver on a polished surface in the first place. Using a screwdriver makes as much sence as using a razor blade to clean bird poop off of your car.

The quarters could have been left on there until the next time the floor was stripped and buffed. The floor stripper chemical would have removed the glue. If they wanted to remove it right then, all the had do is stop in one of the many salons to borrow nail polish remover. I have yet to see any adhesive that does not come off with nail polish remover.

[Taggart]

This is all because Wiggie's left!!!

[CuatrodeMayo]

lighten up, people.

[oneforone]

This is all because Wiggie's left!!!

I take it Wiggies was not all that great after all because there place in Edmond is now closed.

[JWil]

A common misconception, perpetuated in that article, is that 73170 is a "Moore" zip code, and that's flatly wrong. It also includes a large portion of SW Oklahoma City. I have corrected people at mail order houses and other outlets that incorrectly assume the 73170 is a Moore zip code.

The Oklahoman ran a piece in their business section just a few years ago giving considerable details regarding this specific part of south Oklahoma City, highlighting the income per capita and some of the misconceptions that still exist.

As even some of the responses in this thread show, there's a long, uphill battle in overcoming multiple years of misunderstood or improperly assumed information about SW Okahoma City.

-SoonerDave

The area of South OKC you're talking about I don't even consider the "South side." When I (an uppity NW OKC boy who thinks there's no reason to go south of the river) mention the "South Side" in conversations, the area I'm talking about is this: North to South from I-40 to I-240; West to East from I-44 to I-35. Basically, a zone I also call the "Interstate box." THAT is the hellhole part of OKC and I dare someone else to find me a worse part of town. Not even east OKC is as bad. Crossroads is a victim of its location now. I realize it wasn't always that way but it is now. Think about what Crossroads is surrounded by: A city DUMP to its east, a tiny hamlet specializing in strip joints and speeding tickets to its north, I-35 and that bad zone I was talking about to its west and some sorta industrial deal and I-240 to its south.

Basically, that area is bad bad bad now. The good parts of the South Side have migrated south of SW 74th and to Moore and Norman. That leaves the old South Side corridor on I-240 to kinda rot. The area you're talking about, Dave, is FANTASTIC and I see why people want to live there, though it's too close to Norman for my liking. But that area is more linked to Moore and stuff south. Even if it is considered OKC, it feels more like Moore because it's cleaner and nicer and, not like the stuff along I-240 or north of there.

To get the talk back to (see you at the) Crossroads (roads roads roads roads roads), I made the mistake of going there earlier this week. Wow, it's even a bigger pit now than it was a few years ago. I went there because RadioShack.com said the store at Crossroads had a PDA in stock that I couldn't find in other stores so I went there to check it out. What was I greeted with upon walking in? A group of questionable-looking types that looked like they were standing outside an unemployment agency. When I got in? The previously-mentioned people and open lots. I walked around and didn't like the vibe I got. Everything just seemed uncomfortable and off inside. In short, I immediately regretted my decision to go out of my way home after work. Anyway, I walk into the RadioShack and they didn't even have that phone there. Argh. I went to a POS mall on a bad side of town to look at a phone that wasn't even there. Whatever.

I'll close by saying this: I used to go out of my way to Crossroads when I lived in Bethany in high school in the late 90s. Even went there some in the early 00s. But now? NO chance. None. Not anymore. Penn Square is the greatest mall in The City in one of the best parts of town. Quail I like too but is high school hangout central on weekends. Let's face it: Crossroads is at a TERRIBLE location and there's little chance to improve that because of the dump, the freeways and the crap to the north. THAT is what is killing Crossroads. That, and the questionable types that hang out there will be the death knells of that place. It'd be great to see it saved somehow, but losing JCPenney was huge and the vacancy rate is amazingly bad.

Stuff like this is why the "new" South Side is south of 74th. the old South Side (the new mid-south?) is horrible and a disaster for OKC. Why do you think they focus so much on Bricktown and NW OKC? The center of town is really Penn and that Second Downtown area. Crossroads might as well be on the moon for 80 percent of OKCers. Just too far and distant and remote and whatnot.

[Cid]

You must be very proud.

(Oh sure, I'm a "cry baby" too.)

And...

You've got to be kidding me - you're defending that kind of nonsense? Someone who calls you out for defacing someone else's property is a crybaby?

I'll admit, it takes a certain kind of cojones to be proud of vandalism so much that they'll brag about it in a public forum like this, and then defend it when someone (rightly) calls them out for it. Unbelievable. Good thing you didn't work for me, because I'd have fired your sorry butt for it if you had so much free time that you could pull of crap like this. The repairs you laugh at end up coming out of the pockets of the people who pay the rent and, in turn, those of us who buy the merchandise.

We get to the point where we're all supposed to be conditioned to think every kind of behavior is acceptable, so I guess this is not surprising. I'm glad someone called you out for it.

I'm going to TRY not to argue with you folks, after all this is the Internet. All I really have to say is that if anyone can go through life and say they've never done ANYTHING as bad as gluing quarters to the floor in a mall then they are obviously a much better person than me. I guess I'm supposed to be ashamed.

*shrug*

I do have to wonder what kind of people get inflamed over a silly little story like this. Is this what this forum has become?

Seriously folks... LIGHTEN UP.

[okclee]

I thought it was a funny story / prank.

[Easy180]

Sounds pretty funny to me as well

Sat near a guy with a red glowstick on a string at a music fest back in May...Sad to say I laughed everytime he yanked it away from each idiot stopping and grabbing for it...Pretty hilarious watching a bunch of drunk and shroomed out people trying to figure out how the glowstick disappeared

But then again it doesn't take much to entertain me

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

Sounds pretty funny to me as well

Sat near a guy with a red glowstick on a string at a music fest back in May...Sad to say I laughed everytime he yanked it away from each idiot stopping and grabbing for it...Pretty hilarious watching a bunch of drunk and shroomed out people trying to figure out how the glowstick disappeared

But then again it doesn't take much to entertain me

I'd probably pay money to see that.

[metro]

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Information & Latest News

4/24/13: To be redeveloped as Plaza Mayor
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The end in sight for Crossroads Mall?

[Jesseda]

I expected this would happen, I just dont understand why crossroads will not look into the outlet mall type, it could bea big thing, changing itfrom a regular mall to a outlet mall, I would much rather shop in a outlet mall for bargains

[jbrown84]

We are already getting an outlet mall, so I don't see that happening.

[Thunder]

They need to put in entire new floorings, upgrade everywhere to modern designs, and much more. Yeah, they need to replace rails (the ones on 2nd floor to prevent falling to doom) and maybe add a mini roller coaster and ferris wheel. Maybe they can bid to have the new oil derrick to be built right in the center of the mall and people enter the mall to see the base and pay to enter the ride to the top.

[venture]

I think we can easily compare Crossroads to other malls that have gone down similar paths. The signs are there...anchors leaving, the type of crowd it attracts, and the fleeing of the smaller fill in retailers.

Crossroads will likely be dead with in 5 years...but if people are smart, they will keep it from being a slow death. All that will do is cause property values to drop more, raise crime, and just be overall bad for that part of town.

Ideally, the mall needs to begin a plan to shut down and dismantle. Tear the mall down and then redevelop the area as 50% office space, 30% residential and 20% retail. A Sheperd Mall redevelopment probably won't happen - utilizing the existing space. The best thing though is to tear it all down and start over with new construction. Otherwise blight will just skyrocket in that area of town and we don't need that.