i remember coming here when i was younger. the rocky rococo's was still open and ravenworks as well. i remember a little asian restaurant with incredible nutella buns. my brother loved the little fossil store that used to be there. seeing this really makes me nostalgic and i always wondered if this mall was going to make it onto a dead mall series. thank you!
Any time I went to a mall as a kid (and still now) was West Towne, never set foot in Westgate until 2017 when i got back into collecting baseball cards. I was barely alive in the 90s so i couldn't tell you what it was like back then, but when i first walked around in here and the card store i got hit with a level of nostalgia I've never experienced before or since! Felt like a time machine
As a Wisconsinite, I found this video very entertaining and interesting. I didn't know that Westgate mall existed, I've known about and been to West Towne before. The logo and architecture of the mall seems oddly familiar, especially the logo. I feel like I must of been there when i was really young and forgot everything except the overall feel of the architecture and logo. I give this video a like!
Took karate lessons and hung out here a lot as a little kid. Always loved running up and down these halls and playing on the divider railings, little stair-sets and ramps. I can still remember the way the Baseball Card Shoppe smelled. My cousin took karate lessons there, too, and eventually became an instructor. That's his career now.
In the late 70s, there was a "Speakeasy" style pub here, where the entrance was a "phone booth" complete with ridiculous graffiti and a fake phone. I only ever peeked in there. Also memorable was the kids shoe store, which featured a resident live parrot. 1812 Overture also was an amazing discount/cutout record store where I obtained more than one KISS record. B. Dalton Booksellers, TILT, and CJs Fine Dining, the Marcus theater (saw the original Keaton Batman there opening night!), Saturday morning hitting the short-order counter at Rennebohm's Drug Store for pancakes then camping out at Uncle Paul's Toy Store next door to it while parents shopped elsewhere. RIP Westgate
Westgate opened in 1960 with Montgomery Ward , JCPENNEY, SSKRESGE, MANCHESTERS DEPT STORE AND a Piggly Wiggly supermarket as its anchors. Wards closed and the space was incorperated into Manchesters.(craft market space). When JCP moved to West towne in 1970 the space was turned into what is now the center court / theater. Kresges closed with the opening of Kmart nearby. That space eventually became TJMaxx . A quarter of the mall was torn down for Hyvee. The whitney square was originally a Topps Discount store later changed into a Copps Discount store. Later It was subdivided. Copps later returned as a Grocery store in the early 90s
I’m so glad someone documented this place! I went here often as a kid and it used to be a busy mall but it got to the point where only a nail salon and TJ Max was left. I think a High Vee is on the property now.
The HyVee had been there at one end of the mall before the demolition. I used to sit in the food court and do my homework and I'd usually walk over to the HyVee to get some snacks.
@@jordanseay216 I always thought the fireplace was awesome, and the food smelled really good. Same with the sandwich place across the hall. I bought my wife's engagement ring at the fossil shop and made her a set of matching earrings with supplies from the craft store. ☺️
I ate at the Rocky's about every other week for ten years until I came back from a vacation and it was closed which was a major loss in my life! I got to see the mall die bit by bit. It was pretty busy back in the 80's and I saw a ton of movies there and it had an arcade right by the theater that we would play in before and after the movies. It had a Daltons book store and lot of cool specialty shops that had unique gifts for christmas, etc. (even had a small DMV office there that was really convenient) .
The final straw was the flooding back in 2018. The occupancy rate was really low for the past decade but there was an exterior breezeway section that was pretty healthy with 75% occupancy compared the 30% in the rest of the mall. There was a veterinary clinic, a baseball card shop, and a barber shop. But Madison had about 7 inches of rain in a single week and half the mall was flooded. The worst part was the breezeway which was under about 4ft of water. All those stores moved out after the flooding and I think that was when the owners decided to pull the plug and for the remaining stores out so they can redevelop.
Yeah that was around the time I got back into card collecting, for two years before that flood I would sporadically go in and buy stuff. Then one day soon after the flooding I went over there and found the store closed and in very bad shape, but there was a sign in the window showing dates for the final selling day of inventory that wasn't damaged. My last day being at Westgate was a very short visit, the owner sold almost everything before his last day there (which was that day) so then I said goodbye to him and he gave me a Curtis Joseph rookie card. Haven't heard of him since, I don't even if he's still alive because I know he was in poor health.
I just found a receipt in a box from 2012 - Hancock Fabrics was still open. And I remember Rocky's was open when I was there, as was a small bead shop. Sad to see it's gone but this video gave me a look inside - just as I remembered it!
I remember this mall and will miss it. I was there recently and it's now just a pile of rubble. They had another hobby shop long ago I used to frequent. I also enjoyed that Rocky Rococco's. At one point the theater closed then it re-opened as a specialty theater showing foreign and off-Hollywood films. I think I saw one film at the specialty theater before it closed again.
Seeing the demolished remains of this mall the other day was so unexpectedly upsetting. To ME, anyway. I grew up nearby, I saw The Crow there first (then again. And again. And yet AGAIN!), Pulp Fiction, Ghost Dog. Strange Days, Interview with the Vampire, American Psycho, Johnny Nemonic, and any number of Japanese gangster flicks too. I took dorky karate classes and went to overnight Karate lock in's at Karate America. I convinced my dad to get me cheap model airplane and rocket kits for and the Hobby store that we both knew would get lost long before completion when I was six. I took many a date to Westgate cinema, pumped an ungodly number of quarters into video games at Tilt in an honest to God arcade back when arcades were a thing still. ALL gone now. Not long ago, just in the last three or four months, the ENTIRE thing was demolished entirely. 😲 😳 🥺 😔 🔥🏢💥🏫💥🏢🔥 😲 😳 🥺 😔
I moved to Madison, WI in 2012 and have been living here since. I've been to the Hyvee plenty of times but i never stepped foot into this mall. the parking lot was always eerily empty. they finally destroyed most of the complex and are building construction there now. The Five Below, Sierra, and Office Depot that were mentioned early in the video are all fully built and open across the street
I believe Wisconsin Craft Market has closed now. They had a clearance sale just as places were being closed due to Covid 19. So possibly only one store remains in this mall. Even as recently as a few years ago the Milios Sandwiches and rocky rococos were open. The loss of TjMax really killed the trickle of foot traffic into this mall.
Its crazy looking at this. I grew up in Madison in the 90s and remember going here when it was a busy place with lots of stores. Even when I was in my late teens and early 20s some 15 years ago I remember going to the Rocky Rococo pizza and the mall was still semi full then. Hadn't been inside since probably 2015 and now its gone for good.
Long before its recent facelifts, The far end was a Manchester's Department Store...My little friend and I got in a little bit of trouble riding up and down the two-story elevator in the late 60s. There was also Uncle Paul's Toy Store. It is almost unrecognizable here. There was no movie theater way back then. Oh my gosh, there was a record store there called 1812 Overture in the 70s- 80s Johnny Cash was there, signing autographs before his show. I walked in and there he stood, not 20 feet away!
Wow I haven’t been in Westgate in at least a decade. I’m 30 years old, and I remember the Rocky Rococco’s and the little movie theater, but I honestly don’t ever remember this mall being jam packed with people. Still sad to hear it will be demolished.
Madison has a glut of commercial space because of city zoning regulations. The Madison market is booming in terms of residential development as a lot of people are moving into the city, but the city requires a certain percent of any new residential development project be commercial space. But this percent doesn't reflect in anyway the actual market need for new commercial space. So brand new spaces are being built each year even though a lot of perfectly good places like Westgate sit empty. The city is considering either giving specific exemptions to this requirement in some new developments, or changing the regulations completely because the amount of empty shops in the city is not a good look. It's gotten to a point where a lot of brand new spaces sit empty for years because the developer cannot find a company to rent it, but is making enough money from residential rents that it doesn't matter.
We lived in Madison in the early 80s before moving back to Chicago and Westgate was crowded as hell back then and had nice red carpeting. Cannot believe what has happened to it since. Loved the Jokers Wild shop I think it was called that was like a Spencers back then
@@PRHILL9696 , I am thinking there was a Ruby Tuesday next to the Tilt and the Movie Theater and a Wisconsin Optical across the court on the Left and a Wisconsin Badgers Cloths store in the center🤔I got My Ear pieced in the Hallway there at the ear piercing booth back in the 80's, it got infected😳LoL
I remember coming here early 2010s with my mom, as she shopped in tj max I would go explore the semi abandoned mall, I always got a dark gloomy feeling as a kid, not that it was creepy it just felt like a back room. I wish I got to experience it in its prime, I hear there was an arcade, movie theatre, multiple shops, it sounds like it’d be a lot of fun to experience that.
Re: The Theater - I wanna say it was a 4 plex ( mighty been 6). It was run by Marcus Cinemas ( who owns 90% of the theaters in WI). In the early 00s when I moved to town, it was unofficially an Art Haus, all the good foreign flix and anime played there, and usually nowhere else in town. I saw 2 Miyazaki films there, took my friends kids. This was before Sundance 608 and before digital ( You actually had to thread the films physically, you couldn't just flip to another program, can you tell I used to be an usher?) Anyway, I think the Imax 12/14 plex over in Fitchburg killed this, if Sundance 608 didn't. ( could be wrong, but if you want touchstone to look it up, there you are.) It also might have been the first Marcus theater in town to have a beer/wine license because of the 'art haus' vibe. Can't remember if that was a kerfuffle or not. The liquor license board here has an iron grip.
Even in the late 90s/early 00s this place was pretty dead when we went to it; lot of stores, but very little foot traffic. West Town Mall being so close didn't help.
I remmener going to Westgate as a kid. My brother took karate lessons there around 2004/2005. The movie theater closed around 2005. The last movie I saw there was Ice-Age. There used to be a card store on the side of the mall that my brother used to go to. It used to have a really cool toy store. I plan on making a video on it before they destroy it
It's sad that this mall is a shadow over looking the two other larger malls. It's ironic nobody knows about this mall very well except it was the 1st mall there in Madison.
We lived in Madison in the early 80s before moving back to Chicago and Westgate was crowded as hell back then and had nice red carpeting. Cannot believe what has happened to it since
When the mall first opened it had a Montgomery Ward, Kresge’s, JC Penney (before it moved to the later built West Towne), and a Piggley Wiggley (later Eagle Foods)- as well as many other specialty stores. In the 1980s and 1990s there was B. Dalton Books, Hallmark, a music store, a nice restaurant, arcade, hobby shop, beauty salon, beauty school, karate school, cinema, Famous Footwear, clothing shops, gem shop, bead shop, Wisconsin Craft Market, ski shop, woodworking shop, dry cleaners-just a wide variety of stores and businesses over the years...and then Hy-Vee came in.
I live a few miles from here. HyVee and or their investors acquired the property with the land they built the newer HyVee store next to it on. It was said they were not not renewing any leases with plans to demolish and redevelop. The historic flood of 2018 destroyed the Sports Card shop. Tom Daniels said it was about $300,000 of his retail lost in 200 garbage bags of soggy ruined cards. He had flood insurance for 35 years but their insurer discontinued it just a year earlier.
Horzzo is correct-Hy-Vee bought the property in order to build on at the end as they wanted. Problem was, they didn’t want to be landlords so there was no basic upkeep, no leases were renewed and they made little effort to try to sell the mall. The short-lived Sundance Theater helped put the Westgate cinema out of business. Stores started leaving as leases ran out-which is what happened with TJMaxx. After the flood in 2018, both the Baseball Card Shoppe and Ravenworks left due to losing the bulk of their inventory to flood water. Tom, owner of the BBCS had some inventory stored elsewhere that he was going to sell online. Ravenworks moved back to her home, open by appointment only. The Wisconsin Craft Market fared a bit better, as there wasn’t much merchandise sitting on or touching the floor. Most of what we lost was in storage in the empty store space between us and the BBCS-his shelves were pushed through two walls by the flood water. Also, unlike Ravenworks, we had glass doors instead of an iron grill that helped keep most of the water out. The owner of WCM intended to stick it out, but we were informed at the end of 2019 that they wanted us out as a developer was interested in razing the mall and redeveloping the property. We were in the midst of a clearance sale when we were forced to close early due to the pandemic.
@@UrbexAPeakInside ah, I remember when raven works was still there and rocky Racco's was there as well Last time I was there tj max and the craft mall was still there
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i remember coming here when i was younger. the rocky rococo's was still open and ravenworks as well. i remember a little asian restaurant with incredible nutella buns. my brother loved the little fossil store that used to be there. seeing this really makes me nostalgic and i always wondered if this mall was going to make it onto a dead mall series. thank you!
You just named everything I remember from Westgate. It was never the most “hopping,” but I have some good memories there.
Ty for posting this! They demolished this mall recently, and I have many fond memories.
That's too bad it was still a great place to explore.
I grew up here and it’s so sad since so many people will go here not knowing the deep history! So glad you could document it while it stood
Any time I went to a mall as a kid (and still now) was West Towne, never set foot in Westgate until 2017 when i got back into collecting baseball cards. I was barely alive in the 90s so i couldn't tell you what it was like back then, but when i first walked around in here and the card store i got hit with a level of nostalgia I've never experienced before or since! Felt like a time machine
As a Wisconsinite, I found this video very entertaining and interesting. I didn't know that Westgate mall existed, I've known about and been to West Towne before. The logo and architecture of the mall seems oddly familiar, especially the logo. I feel like I must of been there when i was really young and forgot everything except the overall feel of the architecture and logo. I give this video a like!
Took karate lessons and hung out here a lot as a little kid. Always loved running up and down these halls and playing on the divider railings, little stair-sets and ramps. I can still remember the way the Baseball Card Shoppe smelled. My cousin took karate lessons there, too, and eventually became an instructor. That's his career now.
LoL, Ken's Card Corner. He started out in his Apartment, Me and My Friends would always go there and hang out with Ken.
Good thing you were able to document this place. What a waste, I am sad to hear about its demise.
So sad about this mall it was such a sterile mall when visiting try to visit at for the last time at the last minute.
In the late 70s, there was a "Speakeasy" style pub here, where the entrance was a "phone booth" complete with ridiculous graffiti and a fake phone. I only ever peeked in there. Also memorable was the kids shoe store, which featured a resident live parrot. 1812 Overture also was an amazing discount/cutout record store where I obtained more than one KISS record. B. Dalton Booksellers, TILT, and CJs Fine Dining, the Marcus theater (saw the original Keaton Batman there opening night!), Saturday morning hitting the short-order counter at Rennebohm's Drug Store for pancakes then camping out at Uncle Paul's Toy Store next door to it while parents shopped elsewhere. RIP Westgate
Westgate opened in 1960 with Montgomery Ward , JCPENNEY, SSKRESGE, MANCHESTERS DEPT STORE AND a Piggly Wiggly supermarket as its anchors. Wards closed and the space was incorperated into Manchesters.(craft market space). When JCP moved to West towne in 1970 the space was turned into what is now the center court / theater. Kresges closed with the opening of Kmart nearby. That space eventually became TJMaxx . A quarter of the mall was torn down for Hyvee. The whitney square was originally a Topps Discount store later changed into a Copps Discount store. Later It was subdivided. Copps later returned as a Grocery store in the early 90s
I’m so glad someone documented this place! I went here often as a kid and it used to be a busy mall but it got to the point where only a nail salon and TJ Max was left. I think a High Vee is on the property now.
The HyVee had been there at one end of the mall before the demolition. I used to sit in the food court and do my homework and I'd usually walk over to the HyVee to get some snacks.
@@drewzero1 nice! I remember the old Rocky Rococo’s Pizza that used to be there. Such a cool location with a real wood fireplace and everything
@@jordanseay216 I always thought the fireplace was awesome, and the food smelled really good. Same with the sandwich place across the hall. I bought my wife's engagement ring at the fossil shop and made her a set of matching earrings with supplies from the craft store. ☺️
@@drewzero1 that’s so cool! It’s all just memories now sadly…
I ate at the Rocky's about every other week for ten years until I came back from a vacation and it was closed which was a major loss in my life! I got to see the mall die bit by bit. It was pretty busy back in the 80's and I saw a ton of movies there and it had an arcade right by the theater that we would play in before and after the movies. It had a Daltons book store and lot of cool specialty shops that had unique gifts for christmas, etc. (even had a small DMV office there that was really convenient) .
The final straw was the flooding back in 2018.
The occupancy rate was really low for the past decade but there was an exterior breezeway section that was pretty healthy with 75% occupancy compared the 30% in the rest of the mall.
There was a veterinary clinic, a baseball card shop, and a barber shop.
But Madison had about 7 inches of rain in a single week and half the mall was flooded. The worst part was the breezeway which was under about 4ft of water.
All those stores moved out after the flooding and I think that was when the owners decided to pull the plug and for the remaining stores out so they can redevelop.
Yeah that was around the time I got back into card collecting, for two years before that flood I would sporadically go in and buy stuff. Then one day soon after the flooding I went over there and found the store closed and in very bad shape, but there was a sign in the window showing dates for the final selling day of inventory that wasn't damaged. My last day being at Westgate was a very short visit, the owner sold almost everything before his last day there (which was that day) so then I said goodbye to him and he gave me a Curtis Joseph rookie card. Haven't heard of him since, I don't even if he's still alive because I know he was in poor health.
I just found a receipt in a box from 2012 - Hancock Fabrics was still open. And I remember Rocky's was open when I was there, as was a small bead shop. Sad to see it's gone but this video gave me a look inside - just as I remembered it!
I remember this mall and will miss it. I was there recently and it's now just a pile of rubble. They had another hobby shop long ago I used to frequent. I also enjoyed that Rocky Rococco's.
At one point the theater closed then it re-opened as a specialty theater showing foreign and off-Hollywood films. I think I saw one film at the specialty theater before it closed again.
Seeing the demolished remains of this mall the other day was so unexpectedly upsetting. To ME, anyway. I grew up nearby, I saw The Crow there first (then again. And again. And yet AGAIN!), Pulp Fiction, Ghost Dog. Strange Days, Interview with the Vampire, American Psycho, Johnny Nemonic, and any number of Japanese gangster flicks too. I took dorky karate classes and went to overnight Karate lock in's at Karate America. I convinced my dad to get me cheap model airplane and rocket kits for and the Hobby store that we both knew would get lost long before completion when I was six. I took many a date to Westgate cinema, pumped an ungodly number of quarters into video games at Tilt in an honest to God arcade back when arcades were a thing still. ALL gone now. Not long ago, just in the last three or four months, the ENTIRE thing was demolished entirely.
😲 😳 🥺 😔
🔥🏢💥🏫💥🏢🔥
😲 😳 🥺 😔
Geeks Mania is close by, it's an old school arcade
I moved to Madison, WI in 2012 and have been living here since. I've been to the Hyvee plenty of times but i never stepped foot into this mall. the parking lot was always eerily empty.
they finally destroyed most of the complex and are building construction there now. The Five Below, Sierra, and Office Depot that were mentioned early in the video are all fully built and open across the street
I believe Wisconsin Craft Market has closed now. They had a clearance sale just as places were being closed due to Covid 19. So possibly only one store remains in this mall. Even as recently as a few years ago the Milios Sandwiches and rocky rococos were open. The loss of TjMax really killed the trickle of foot traffic into this mall.
The entire mall was demolished. 🥺
i loved wisconsin craft market!! i’m really sad the mall’s gone now :(
Its crazy looking at this. I grew up in Madison in the 90s and remember going here when it was a busy place with lots of stores. Even when I was in my late teens and early 20s some 15 years ago I remember going to the Rocky Rococo pizza and the mall was still semi full then. Hadn't been inside since probably 2015 and now its gone for good.
Long before its recent facelifts, The far end was a Manchester's Department Store...My little friend and I got in a little bit of trouble riding up and down the two-story elevator in the late 60s. There was also Uncle Paul's Toy Store. It is almost unrecognizable here. There was no movie theater way back then.
Oh my gosh, there was a record store there called 1812 Overture in the 70s- 80s Johnny Cash was there, signing autographs before his show. I walked in and there he stood, not 20 feet away!
Wow I haven’t been in Westgate in at least a decade. I’m 30 years old, and I remember the Rocky Rococco’s and the little movie theater, but I honestly don’t ever remember this mall being jam packed with people. Still sad to hear it will be demolished.
Madison has a glut of commercial space because of city zoning regulations. The Madison market is booming in terms of residential development as a lot of people are moving into the city, but the city requires a certain percent of any new residential development project be commercial space. But this percent doesn't reflect in anyway the actual market need for new commercial space. So brand new spaces are being built each year even though a lot of perfectly good places like Westgate sit empty.
The city is considering either giving specific exemptions to this requirement in some new developments, or changing the regulations completely because the amount of empty shops in the city is not a good look. It's gotten to a point where a lot of brand new spaces sit empty for years because the developer cannot find a company to rent it, but is making enough money from residential rents that it doesn't matter.
Thanks so much for this video! I recorded walking through it in the evening and didn’t really get good footage. So nostalgic.
We lived in Madison in the early 80s before moving back to Chicago and Westgate was crowded as hell back then and had nice red carpeting. Cannot believe what has happened to it since. Loved the Jokers Wild shop I think it was called that was like a Spencers back then
wow, yep, I remember the Red Carpeting and the Court had a lot of Food and Snack Shops and people would socialize there before and after movies.
@@arctictimberwolf Yep exactly
@@PRHILL9696 , I am thinking there was a Ruby Tuesday next to the Tilt and the Movie Theater and a Wisconsin Optical across the court on the Left and a Wisconsin Badgers Cloths store in the center🤔I got My Ear pieced in the Hallway there at the ear piercing booth back in the 80's, it got infected😳LoL
@@arctictimberwolf lol could be. I cant remember too much about those days it was SO long ago
I remember coming here early 2010s with my mom, as she shopped in tj max I would go explore the semi abandoned mall, I always got a dark gloomy feeling as a kid, not that it was creepy it just felt like a back room. I wish I got to experience it in its prime, I hear there was an arcade, movie theatre, multiple shops, it sounds like it’d be a lot of fun to experience that.
Re: The Theater - I wanna say it was a 4 plex ( mighty been 6). It was run by Marcus Cinemas ( who owns 90% of the theaters in WI). In the early 00s when I moved to town, it was unofficially an Art Haus, all the good foreign flix and anime played there, and usually nowhere else in town. I saw 2 Miyazaki films there, took my friends kids.
This was before Sundance 608 and before digital ( You actually had to thread the films physically, you couldn't just flip to another program, can you tell I used to be an usher?)
Anyway, I think the Imax 12/14 plex over in Fitchburg killed this, if Sundance 608 didn't. ( could be wrong, but if you want touchstone to look it up, there you are.)
It also might have been the first Marcus theater in town to have a beer/wine license because of the 'art haus' vibe. Can't remember if that was a kerfuffle or not. The liquor license board here has an iron grip.
Even in the late 90s/early 00s this place was pretty dead when we went to it; lot of stores, but very little foot traffic. West Town Mall being so close didn't help.
WI Craft Market was the best, I'm so sad they closed.
I saw a lot of Movies at that Theater and some of My friends worked at "The Tilt" Arcade next door to the Theater.
I remmener going to Westgate as a kid. My brother took karate lessons there around 2004/2005. The movie theater closed around 2005. The last movie I saw there was Ice-Age. There used to be a card store on the side of the mall that my brother used to go to. It used to have a really cool toy store. I plan on making a video on it before they destroy it
@RebugOnDex The building is locked and fenced off ready for Don’t
I thought the only malls Madison ever had were East Towne and West Towne.
It's sad that this mall is a shadow over looking the two other larger malls. It's ironic nobody knows about this mall very well except it was the 1st mall there in Madison.
We lived in Madison in the early 80s before moving back to Chicago and Westgate was crowded as hell back then and had nice red carpeting. Cannot believe what has happened to it since
There was a South town mall and there's a Hilldale mall also
@@jerkyboy8897 where was the south town mall?
When I was a small child in the 80s I went to Karate America there, and would spend hours in the TILT arcade before getting some Rocky's.
Would make a cool police training ground or paintball arena.
That be the day.
I lived in Madison 10 years ago and would go to the dmv here
Great video 👍
Thanks bro.
been forever since i've had rocky rococo's!
Sad that most are disappearing.
@@UrbexAPeakInside They are even in the Milwaukee area they are more few and far between.
What kinda stores did the that mall have back then
When the mall first opened it had a Montgomery Ward, Kresge’s, JC Penney (before it moved to the later built West Towne), and a Piggley Wiggley (later Eagle Foods)- as well as many other specialty stores.
In the 1980s and 1990s there was B. Dalton Books, Hallmark, a music store, a nice restaurant, arcade, hobby shop, beauty salon, beauty school, karate school, cinema, Famous Footwear, clothing shops, gem shop, bead shop, Wisconsin Craft Market, ski shop, woodworking shop, dry cleaners-just a wide variety of stores and businesses over the years...and then Hy-Vee came in.
I live a few miles from here. HyVee and or their investors acquired the property with the land they built the newer HyVee store next to it on. It was said they were not not renewing any leases with plans to demolish and redevelop. The historic flood of 2018 destroyed the Sports Card shop. Tom Daniels said it was about $300,000 of his retail lost in 200 garbage bags of soggy ruined cards. He had flood insurance for 35 years but their insurer discontinued it just a year earlier.
Horzzo is correct-Hy-Vee bought the property in order to build on at the end as they wanted. Problem was, they didn’t want to be landlords so there was no basic upkeep, no leases were renewed and they made little effort to try to sell the mall.
The short-lived Sundance Theater helped put the Westgate cinema out of business. Stores started leaving as leases ran out-which is what happened with TJMaxx. After the flood in 2018, both the Baseball Card Shoppe and Ravenworks left due to losing the bulk of their inventory to flood water. Tom, owner of the BBCS had some inventory stored elsewhere that he was going to sell online. Ravenworks moved back to her home, open by appointment only.
The Wisconsin Craft Market fared a bit better, as there wasn’t much merchandise sitting on or touching the floor. Most of what we lost was in storage in the empty store space between us and the BBCS-his shelves were pushed through two walls by the flood water. Also, unlike Ravenworks, we had glass doors instead of an iron grill that helped keep most of the water out. The owner of WCM intended to stick it out, but we were informed at the end of 2019 that they wanted us out as a developer was interested in razing the mall and redeveloping the property. We were in the midst of a clearance sale when we were forced to close early due to the pandemic.
Good video. Thanks.
Thanks Nancy.
They need to turn some of these dead malls into apartments
Plans are in place to demolish and do mixed use. Appts. shopping etc.
i used to visit santa at uncle paul's toyshop in the 60s
Didn't know they had events for Christmas. Hard to believe there was more foot traffic in the past but that seems to be the trend.
I thought westgate was offical closed to the public after the craftmall and tj max moved out
As of 2020 I got this mall at the beginning of the year
@@UrbexAPeakInside ah, I remember when raven works was still there and rocky Racco's was there as well
Last time I was there tj max and the craft mall was still there
It was just a matter of time after TJ Max pulled out and moved accross the street
No kidding. They probably felt being in the shadow of a dead mall is a bad omen.