Richmond Town Square - Raw & Real Retail
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- This is our walkthrough of the Richmond Town Square mall in Richmond Heights, OH from December 27, 2019. This is a very dead mall that has been renovated to the point of being rather uninteresting. Besides the very cool (sadly empty) food court, the rest of the mall is blanded drop ceiling and empty inlines. While looking around for some history, old pictures show a second floor that no longer exists, seemingly removed in favor of a drop ceiling and well hidden clerestory windows.
Songs used in this video (in order):
Hot Fudge - Wash the Room
Orchestra Cometa - Obstinacy
Steve Gray - Wonder Groove
Steve Gray - Reach Out
Here is a quite well written article about this mall by Sara Dorn from Cleveland.com (edited slightly for brevity):
www.cleveland....
Councilman Frank Lentine was graduating high school when Richmond Town Square opened in 1966 and remembers watching Jimi Hendrix and Woodstock concerts at the movie theater, playing arcade games and grabbing Cokes and burgers there with his classmates.
He remembers Edward DeBartolo, a Youngstown businessman who became one of the first developers to build enclosed shopping malls in the suburbs, landing his helicopter on the construction site that would become the mall, and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey visiting in 1968.
The DeBartolo Corp. was the undisputed leader in the shopping mall industry then, owning almost a tenth of all mall space in the United States at one point. "The mall was a big deal for Richmond Heights; it really was," Lentine said. "They had a big fountain in the center and people thought that was really great. You used to walk the mall, and the whole family would go at Christmas time and see the decorations and Santa Claus." The mall was part of a growth period for Richmond Heights, founded in 1917 as the village of Claribel. Between 1950 and 1960, the village grew from fewer than 900 residents to more than 5,000. Then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey called the mall "magnificent" when he visited in 1968. "It was a place to go and be," he said. "You don't make a day of it anymore."
"Obviously, the mall right now is dead," Alan Carr, CEO of Shaker Heights firm Retail Strategies told the Plain Dealer in 1997. "If you can put $70 million into it an get something back, it might be worthwhile. They've got a tough road to hoe, they really do." Then, the mall still hosted Winkelman's women's clothing store. "It used to be an elegant mall," Winkelman's employee Marilyn Lazzara told the newspaper. "In the '80s we got carpeting and more skylights, and it really brightened up the place. But stores are going out left and right." Winkelman's closed less than a year later, and DeBartolo, which had merged with Simon by that time, announced plans for an expansion, estimated to cost $75-100 million.
The mall changed its name to Richmond Town Square and came back to life with much-anticipated renovations in November 1998 to a frenzy of shoppers. The corridors were reconfigured with 90 new stores, including Bath & Body Works, Victoria's Secret and Champs Sports. Kaufmann's department store moved from Euclid Square Mall to the space Macy's vacated a few years ago. Skylights and fresh entryways were added. So was a 500-seat, eight-unit food court and Barnes & Noble, now occupied by Planet Fitness. The movie theater more than doubled in size.
Since 2009, the mall has lost Steve & Barry's discount clothing, Old Navy and Barnes & Noble, and myriad of smaller stores.
While city officials try to attract new tenants, four national chain stores closed earlier this year, and Portrait Perfection owner Matt Greminger said he moved to Great Northern mall June 1. Best Buy Mobile is also gone, and Milano's Menswear plans to leave, Greminger said.
"There's no traffic," Greminger said. "We couldn't stay alive. I lost everything in Richmond Mall."
Traffic declined even in the past 1 1/2 years Portrait Perfection was in the mall, Greminger said, and the kiosk next to his was robbed in the middle of the day.
"The mall was so dead," he said. "You have more security in a mall where there's people around nobody's going to rob you with 500 people around."
**UPDATE: Since the writing of this article, the mall has fallen very hard to the point of being a ghost town. There are no anchors open, Macy's closed in March of 2015, Sears closed March of 2017, and JCPenney closed July of 2017.
From wikipedia:
On July 2, 2018, DealPoint Merrill announced they would spend $69 million to bring apartments, a hotel, and a park to the north end of the mall where the vacant Sears building and parking lot are located.
On May 1, 2019 DealPoint Merrill revealed early site plans for their proposed luxury apartments. The development is named Belle Oaks at Richmond.
It went from Halloween to Christmas in less than 24 hours from my video to yours. Lol 😜😆
That's the magic of youtube 🙄🤯
@@RawRealRetail LOL
It’s gone now…
Bland-Ola 😞
It's a total shame, they really blanded this one pretty badly. An Ed DeBartolo original, it is completely unrecognizable from its original form. And it won't get any better now that it's in Kohan's hands.
You should do Greenville Mall in Greenville NC
I agree!
Raw & Real Retail I went there on Friday and filmed it for myself. Nice place with great shops
In March 2020, a $265,000,000 re development will break ground turning the property into a pinecrest/crocker park type facility, that will bring the area back to life when it's completed by 2022!!
not much happening in there