Rainbow Centre Mall - Niagara Falls, NY | Abandoned & Sister to Baltimore's Harborplace | ExLog 105
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- Опубликовано: 30 апр 2022
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Thank you all for checking out ExLog 105! This covers the abandoned Rainbow Centre, which has been vacant since 2005. @AcesAdventures1 and I take a video tour of this amazing location, and I show you the past and present. Let me know if you all have any awesome memories here!
#deadmall #dmodfam #salguido
I'm convinced that the Love Canal disaster brought this mall into existence. Just one tragedy after another here. Subscribe or more malls will close. Love you all.
I got your love canal
Thank you.. the NF tourism project started in early 70s winter garden open 77. Before love canal summit park mall was build for love canal resident expansion..
Thanks for the info!
@@sal thank you... I lived there every summer since the 60s I was there when the fall were turned off I even worked at the old maple leaf village park for a short time.., I knew the guy who made the other video from Niagara University.
There were allegations that the school board new the property was a toxic dump when they bought the land and fought to buy it. Supposedly $$ passed hands from Hooker to be able to dump the land and get the hold harmless in the deed.
The security guards were very accommodating and appeared to be interested in the history as well. Fortunate that they were happy to give access to various locations.
They were SO cool. Ace and I were super appreciative.
@@sal So you have 2 new subs now? Did they get to see the video you made? :-)
I'm a Canadian and as a child the festival of lights was a yearly tradition. The convention centre used to have a room of singing teddy ruxpins! I also have vague memories of the mall, especially the winter garden, the toy store and burger King (the crazy things you remember as a kid) this place always seem soooooooo cool even as a child
Thank you so much for sharing that…I used to go to the falls for the festival too, and my mom even has a picture of the singing Teddy Ruxpins! That always dazzled me like you wouldn’t believe…if I recall they got rid of that for a few years but then randomly they brought it back for a season. They were always changing the displays so it was always a different experience, which made it so wonderful.
We lived in St. Catharines on the Canadian side. In the early 90's when the Cdn$ was high we'd cross over to go shopping. It was the Factory Oulet Centre then and we could get some very good buys. It was common knowledge that some Cdn shoppers would wear old clothes and change into their new purchases to escape paying duty on their purchases crossing back. The garbage cans and the Rainbow Centre and Parking Lot would be full of old clothes.
That was true around Western New York. I grew up in Buffalo. Cars with Ontario license plates were everywhere. At the Thruway Plaza in Cheektowaga, trash bins in the parking lot were filled with old shoes from Canadians who bought new shoes in the US at bargain prices and wore them home. Canadian customs was on to their schemes. At the bridge back to Canada, the line of cars with Canadian plates was way longer than US plates. The Canadians were being inspected by their own police to find new shoes that owed duty to the Canadian tax collector!
What a nice surprise to get a mall explorer from that time period! I wonder if he knows how big that kind of documentation has become. A man ahead of his time.
This just about brought me to tears…some of my absolute fondest memories as a child were going to this mall during the Festival of Lights…and I’m loving that so many people have similar memories, sometimes it feels like I dreamed this place up! We’d go to the mall in between looking at the light displays, and we always ate at the Burger King. I vaguely remember a KB toy store which until recently I thought I dreamed up, as I remember going there maybe once, but never seeing it again so it closed very early. As people have expressed the winter garden was gorgeous, broke my heart when they dismantled that. There were these metal walkways above the floor so you could see the plants from higher up…but my mom would never go because she hated heights! Also there was always these people selling these lighted roses, I used to get one every year. My favorite part was walking through there to get to the falls, seeing the giant lighted stars and dove that was usually on display at Christmas…oh and the fountain within the mall! People used to sit there just waiting for the next water show, as it did something every 10-20 minutes I think? It just spat the water out in cool patterns, it was simple but people were mesmerized by that.
I still think of this mall EVERY Christmas, and I haven’t been there since 2001, when they stopped having the festival on the American side. I think I can honestly say, thought there’s a LOT of things long gone that I got to experience in my 40 years…this mall and the festival is the thing I miss the most.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for talking about and filming it, for the longest time RUclips had little to Nothing on this mall…which was tragic as it truly was a magical place.
That footage and commentary from the unknown person is an absolute gem! What an amazing video to have after all these years and endless changes.
Oh man, I was waiting for you to do this place.
My mother, father and I would treat the Rainbow Centre and the Winter Garden as the penultimate destination for our yearly cross-border shopping extravaganzas in the early-mid 90's. Some years we'd even go over my winter holidays from school to do the Festival of Lights.
Every year though, just like with Main Place Mall in Buffalo, we'd notice things were changing. More of the storefronts were vacant. More of the food court restaurants were closed. At Rainbow Centre especially, I noticed the OTB getting slowly larger and larger...Before or after my parents' usual holiday blow-out fight, we'd get a couple of orders of Chester Fried Chicken and eat in the Winter Garden, surrounded by luscious greenery, the cold snow of winter just outside. I'd distract myself from the pre- (or post-) tension of their big fights by dreaming of whatever aircraft plastic models or RC cars I could find at the KB Toys in the Rainbow Centre.
The last time I was there, the Burlington Coat Factory was in its death throes; coats and jackets that looked like they were right out of the early 80s were haphazardly packed on circular racks underneath "Everything Must Go" signs, and fixtures were being sold off. At that part of the mall, most of the lighting looked like it had failed or was starting to fail; combined with the peeling paint and water damage, it made that space feel particularly foreboding.
What I'll never forget though was the place just nearby: the Falls Street Faire, a massive abandoned structure that looked it once upon a time had been a bustling artisans market. It was a complete mystery to me at the time.
Thank you so much for sharing these memories!
The Falls Street Faire, this place is very mysterious and there isn't very much documentation on it if any. Holy crap I just found out this place only lasted 6 months before it closed, no wonder it was so mysterious, this has to be record time for an amusement park to close! It opened July 1st 1991 and closed January 6th 1992. I don't have any documentation of it at all. I believe the building sat dormant for a very very long time after it closed. I can tell you that it was an indoor amusement park, and was slightly comparable to the Skylon Tower amusement park in the basement of the Skylon Tower on the other side but it was nowhere near as large or impressive as that, it was more like something that was shoehorned into a dark warehouse like building. If you visited the skylon tower basement in the late 90's up till about the end of 1998 it would have looked a bit like that with the darkness and the concrete floor. I only went there once as a kid, and it wasn't very exciting. They didn't have very many rides, there were some vendors, food and typical carnival things. There were carnival games. Basically like a small indoor carnival. The only direct things I remember is they had an Allan herschell helicopter ride that was painted in camo and they had a vendor that would put your face or other image on a t-shirt. I think there were only 2 adult rides, one of them may have been a trabant or a wipeout and there may have been a ferris wheel. There were not a lot of people in there, when there should have been a lot of people. I think they spent a lot of money on this one, and I am going to assume because it was so short lived that it never turned a profit and operated in the negative until it closed, aka it never made money, and it was a total loss. I hope my memory has not faded on this one. Every year around new years, there was also a carnival that was held in the Niagara Falls Convention center this was in the mid 90's, so do not confuse this with Falls Street Faire, this was much more exciting and well run, and they actually had a ton of rides in there, it was great to have something to do as a kid in the winter time.
Great description ! Thanks for sharing!
How sad.I’m from Lockport,NY and I remember shopping at the Rainbow Mall. It was only 20 minutes away. My last day to shop there was in the beginning of April,1986 one day before I moved to Seattle. You do need to call Urban Renewal by it’s correct name: Urban Removal.They came into our city and removed all the beautiful old buildings and gave us parking lots instead. Nothing to do in downtown anymore but plenty of parking to not be able to do anything.
I was waiting for this place too! When you started the Buffalo series I knew you would go here. I went to Niagara in the late 90"s on a family vacation. We stayed at hotel across from the convention center. It was a Holiday Inn then. The convention center was looking a little rough but it was so cool. Lots of interesting planters and plaza space in front of it. There was some diner or pancake restaurant near there. I had some Belgian waffles there. It looks like that restaurant is gone now. And the convention center is a casino. The cool plaza is a parking lot.
We could walk to the falls from the hotel and we went through the Wintergarden. I was obsessed with it. Every time we went to the falls or back to the hotel we had to walk through it. The plants were not too lush and the glass was a little dirty. But it was really cool. I don't remember if it was the mall or the Wintergarden but I remember being a walkway (similar to 11:40) and being a little scared.
Great work Sal -- love it. Great memories of this place (and the Wintergarden) including being in there during a 1980s Festival of Lights in absolutely brutal cold as a young child. I remember it being bright, warm and incredibly busy inside. The walkway did indeed extend over to the Oxy (former Hooker) building. As an aside the Festival of Lights continues to operate on the Canadian side of the Falls (approximately November to February - ish).
This was a very nice place back in the day. This and all the dead, abandoned malls are just sad. I worked at two " gone" malls in my area....Randall Park Mall and Euclid Square Mall. 😢 Thank you for all your videos❣❣❣
Thank you so much for watching!
I see it all as such a waste. Have you thought of the controversial closing and insuing mess of Conneaut Lake Park in Pennsylvania?
Thanks for the Enchanted Forest Commercial! Loved going there as a kid, as it was the closest "theme park" to us in Rome, NY.
(Speaking of abandoned malls around Buffalo/Niagara Falls, NY) You know there is ALSO another old abandoned mall located in Niagara Falls somewhere else, I believe it's just a few blocks away from that Prime Outlet Mall; I think it was called Summit Mall or something like that. I was wondering if you could do a video on that place as well whenever you are back in the greater-Buffalo metro area.
It’s called summit mall and it’s owner is currently trying to make it a sports center…
You're talking about the Summit Park Mall on the east side of Williams Rd. south of NF Blvd. in Wheatfield, just beyond the airport if you're headed east toward North Tonawanda. The fact that Summit Park was built when it was and opened about 1972 only slowed down the redevelopment of the downtown urban renewal "tourist" zone that in hindsight was a total failure, considering what it was supposed to be when it was planned in the late 1960s. Summit Park was actually built on land that is VERY close to the actual Love Canal chemical dumpsite too. I really think Summit Park also contributed to the decline of all of Main St. from the Rainbow Bridge all the way to the north end of Main St. where it crosses Ontario Ave. near the Whirlpool Bridge.
I used to love going there as a kid.
That love canal story is crazy. Awsome video
Loved the footage from the 90s! Crazy how it’s a lot like modern dead mall videos, just 30 years ago!
Just found this video. I remember as a kid, Mom and I would go to Rainbow Center and meet Dad on paydays. He worked in OxyTower (which they called the Ice Cube) at the time. I recall the food court always being packed in those days.. I was around 6 years old, so this would have been 1986 - 1989(ish). I use to love going there. I could sit at the waterfall for hours and never got tired of watching it. I loved that place, even when we moved back later on and I went there as a teenager in the late 90s. I have very fond memories of that place, and of the Festival of Lights. It makes me sad neither exist anymore.
Sal, you probably won't see this. Your videos are a cure for the blues, when you do not know what to watch or to help get over a rough day. I appreciate your skill and craft!
I remember going to the Rainbow mall a few times, mainly for the indoor garden they had. The last time I went they were officially closing it, and that’s when I fell in love with abandoned buildings.
My dad and I used to go there almost weekly from the early 90s until around 2000. So many memories. The part in the beginning of the video wasn't originally part of the mall. It was an indoor amusement park in the early 90s.
The Wintergarden was a marvelous place ... I have many pictures (somewhere), if I find them I can pass along. That parking ramp was ALWAYS scary, parked there a few times after things closed just because it was free parking near the Falls. I don't think the mall ever came close to being fully occupied.
Lived in Buffalo from ‘99 to ‘01. Got to see things before they closed down. Thank you for sharing the history and current state.
I am a local and I can keep you updated if I see something done with this mall but it will likely be in local papers so I suggest following the Niagara Gazette and other Niagara Falls social media sites. For years they were saying an Indoor water park was coming to Niagara Falls NY side, but that project was cancelled and the indoor water park never materialized, it was supposed to be run by the same person that runs the Fallsview indoor water park on the other side in Canada. But they strung us along on that for at least 5 years which was aggravating. The bikes you see are used for Reddy bikeshare around the city, I guess we know where they keep them now. The trash cans you see are the trash cans that the city gives to residents to put their trash in. I guess we all know where they store those now! I wonder if those Christmas props you saw were originally from the festival of lights. My first memory would be I was taken to the mall shortly after I was born, as the mall was the hot new thing and my parents wanted me to go, well that didn't work out so well because it was basically the first place I ever went out of the house and I cried and screamed the whole time and we all had to leave because of it. In the old footage where they say there was a restaurant, I think that was a Haagan daz ice cream parlor but the Haagan daz would have been a lot smaller than that place but it was near there. The best place was the Candy Barrel store, I don't know its exact name, but they had a bunch of bulk type candy in wooden barrels, and it was a crazy store to visit as a kid cause they had sooo much candy in there and you got to pick the candy out of the wooden barrels. If you wanted to be a kid in a candy store, this is where you had to go, there's nothing that exists like this in the world today, nothing. Between that and the toy store and the arcade, the mall was heaven for kids. The Time Out arcade, he is right, you couldn't get near the place, it was so packed at times. The games you see across from the OTB, I believe at least some of those games were original to the Time Out arcade or another local area arcade. The mall was super weird because the OTB was open way past when the mall actually closed, so you could go in there and walk around and it was super creepy to see only the OTB and those arcade games that were across from it. The games would make noise and it would fill the mall like a hollow echo of the past. I think shortly after Burlington left they did remove the games so it was just the OTB. The parking ramp was always creepy, even in the 1980's, it was the type of place you feel like you would get stabbed in if someone came out from behind you and you always had to park there, then you had to walk to one of those creepy elevator rooms, where you would go into the elevator. The walkway you showed at the end I don't think that lasted very long as a usable walkway where people could actually walk ,but it was definitely there. There was a part of the mall where you went into the elevator and then you would see that walkway, but from what I remember, you could never use the walkway because it was always shut down, this made the whole thing even more creepy, again I am guessing it didn't last very long as something that was actually usable.
The 2nd floor atrium in the school is actually where the food court was. Where the bake shop is now was a KB toys, where the restaurant is, that was Burger King. I graduated from the culinary institute in 2020 and when I was a kid I spent a lot of time in the winter garden and the mall before it was closed. So many great memories in that place
The way I miss the 80s and 90s... I wish I could travel back to this safer and simpler time.
Thank you for posting this.
My grandmother was a manager at Beirs Department Store and when I was a child I was a model for the store's ad campaigns and in store demonstrations. The Rainbow Mall and the Wintergarden mean the world to me as I spend most of my childhood and early adulthood working and roaming the mall and garden. I still have many items from the mall, wintergarden and festival of lights in my possession and hold them dearly as much as my memories of that time in my life.
It used to be so beautiful! The winter gardens and walking the festival of lights were the best.
i just have to say your sponsor brought me back. i love water safari 🙏
My girlfriend (now wife) and I rented a house in North Tonawanda in 2002-2003. We rarely made it up to the Niagara Falls area, other than to head back to the Detroit area on the weekends. The whole area was pretty much a ghost town. I wish I could have seen it during better times. Thanks for the great content.
It was wonderful. I'm 63 now (as of early 2024) but still remember going to see movies at the Strand and Cataract on Falls St. in the 1960s when I was little. Both of the theaters were gorgeous inside. So was the Rapids Theater further "downtown" on Main Street that was well outside of the immediate "uptown" tourist zone by the falls. The Rapids actually outlived the other two as a movie theater and was a single-big screen movie house well into the 1970s. The Strand (just over 2,050 seats) was much bigger than the Cataract (just over 1,450 seats) and it had a very classic "movie palace" elaborate interior, ... lots of over-the-top gold-gilt, thick carpets, etc. something like Shea's in Buffalo if you were ever there. The Cararact had all the sleek internal lines and design of classic Art Deco architecture from about 1910 but with a very Asian / Japanese look to it in the murals that were all up and down the side walls panels / alcoves in the auditorium. In summertime on Mondays the NF Gazette would publish the tourist totals and numbers of people guesstimated to be on Falls St. and downtown on the previous Friday and Saturday evenings. It was front page tourist trivia next to or just under the on/off schedule for when the falls would be illuminated by the white and colored floodlights in Canada after dark ... The number was always around 10,000 to 15,000 people out playing and partying on and around Falls St. on any given Friday or Saturday night from Memorial Day until Labor Day...
It was a shame while nothing special it was a great example of 90s design and had a lot of cool stores. I had just started dating my girlfriend from college (Now my wife) and we did the whole Wintergarden and the festival of lights. We did the mall several times, I recall a music store on the second floor which was very much overpriced but the food court was decent.
This place was great in its day with the wintergarden and very nice looking. I remember going there when I was a kid for the Festival of Lights probably early 90s. Like anything NY they didn’t know how to capitalize on the region, most of the tourism went to the Canadian side. The currently popular outlet mall is better located in terms of traffic.
Really great video. I'm not too familiar with the NY side but I've spent some time in some abandoned spots on the Ontario side of the falls over the years (mainly the old power stations). This was incredibly interesting to me, I've never really thought about how many old and forgotten retail establishments there has probably been on both sides over the last few decades. I think I can understand why this mall was around for so little time, it seems like a very odd design for a mall... very warehouse like. I hope the space can be repurposed some day, Niagara Falls NY seems like it has a lot of unrealized potential!
Great job Sal! Enjoyed the video and all of the historical info you provide
Sal, I'm a NF native--just a few corrections to your narrative. In the late 1960's the Mayor (E. Dent Lackey) got this brilliant idea that NF needed to go through urban renewal. I was a kid but it seemed like the downtown area was thriving--there was an old-time department store (Beir's), movies theaters, Sears, and other businesses. Literally, nearly the whole downtown area from where the casino sits to the falls was razed and the "Convention Center" (the casino, it was actually designed as a sugar warehouse but the architect was able to pawn it off on NF by peddling it as a rainbow) and the Wintergarden were built. Originally a hotel was to adjoin but that didn't happen. What did come was the Mall. I believe the Oxy Building came in at the same time along with the Carborundum Building (Hooker and Carborundum were two big chemical plants with HQ's in NF). Maybe you are correct RE: why the Oxy building was built but I always thought it was part of Urban Renewal.
Why was nothing else built and downtown left is a miserable array of junk? I believe it had to do with economics and the reality of the rust belt.
Yet another pleasurable experience watching one of your videos Sal, thank you ;)
Truly a stellar video, Sal. Your work in this field really is the top of the game. Superb.
Remember being there in its early days. Parking garage staircases always smell like bodily fluids and solids. Mall Closed sign...that is the tape you want to buy.
Was a big part of my life in the early 80s when it opened. I worked at the Niagara Hilton. Always went to the food court. Can't remember the name of the pizza shop. Killer pizza.A known name back then was Rainbow security. Also at times called Rent A Cop😅.Great memories for me in my early 20s....
I actually been to this exact mall over 20 years ago. It was probably my most FAVORITE MALL EVER. Shame though that it is nothing but a empty hull of it's former self.
Well done video, I loved the editing and the copious amounts of content and history. Thanks for a fun live debut also. 😁
Thank you Sal for a fun adventure.
I practically LIVED at the Rainbow Centre when it first opened. I was 16 in 1982 and my friends and I would ride our bikes downtown (we'd lock our bikes up inside an exit hallway....using the many railings for security.) We would spendchours and hours at the Time Out arcade located off the food court, which had one of the handful of Haagen-Dasz ice cream outlets in the US. I knew every square inch of that building and the adjacent Wintergarden.
Your narrative does a great job describing the environs of the immediate downtown NF area. There are some inaccuracies as far as the connections to Love Canal and the original purpose of the mall structure itself that I will point out after I view the OxyChem video. Im also looking forward to seeing the other Western New York mall videos, as Im familiar with all three sites.
I remember going in there as a child. We live in Ohio It was nice in it's day. My teen year memories were of the Love Canal and the fiasco that it became. Sadly, most of my adult memories were of a dying mall and the Oxy Tower are the huge screaming "MADE IN AMERICA STORE." Now that my daughter lives in Buffalo, we get up to the Outlet mall fairly often. (I miss David's Tea) The mall and Oxy stand as eyesores to the blighted City of Niagara Falls. Until the drug problem is eradicated, it will never be the beautiful area it once was.
If you want to visit The Falls, get your passport and go to Ontario. Although, Goat Island State Park does have some great views and vantage points.
I love your videos. I binged watched all of them when i discovered you. Absolutely love your content.
Great video and history of this Mal Sal
Another banger! Thanks for the solid content :)
My aunt and I both were married at the Wintergardens over the water (in the 80s and then 2000). The mall looked weird, makes sense because it was a parking garage
The red tiles remind me of circuit city
I remember going there with my grandma in the early 80's :)
Thanks for another great video Sal!! Was hoping to see my name at the end like last video but you must have so many patrons and EE that you ran you of room AWESOMENESS No worries!! 😊💚😁 xoxo
Wow! This was awesome to see.
i’ve been waiting for someone to do a video on this mall ever since i came across it when i was 14 and went on vacation to niagara falls!
Thanks to you and Ace. Great video. Hope this mall comes back to life even if it’s repurposed.
Another great video, you make the best sleezy salesman! that was awesome, Love it!
Lololol thanks.
Awesome video. Thank you buddy. I wish you could have went to magnum pi estate in Hawaii before it was demolished. That would have been interesting.
I totally remember the Winter Garden as a kid. It was so magical to me and I absolutely loved being there. I remember eating at that Burger King and sitting in there for a while. I remember looking out into the mall and thinking it was so cool! Thanks for the video...great work!
Wowwww that enchanted forest commercial just brought me back!! Holy moly. Definitely went there a few times as a youngin, don’t remember much about it though. Love that you’ve been featuring so many western/upstate NY locations… it’s so awesome to see my stomping grounds getting some attention. Thank you!!!
That commercial at the end is some of your best work. I haven't visited your channel for quite awhile but I see that you're still making good RUclips content; and it's free; well, besides what I pay for my internet connection and my supporting equipment. What a deal!
Late, but the ending was great. Watching from the beginning, can’t wait. 😀
Thanks so much :)
I graduated from high school in May of 1986, none of us us would ever have thought that the "MALL CULTURE" would die. The mall was THE PLACE to go, plain and simple. Arcades, food courts, Sam Goodeys, man just everything.
EXCELLENT timing and content of this video .....we are going to niagra falls in the middle of June and staying at the Hyatt place hotel right there ....and I believe they use that parking garage.....keep up the great work 👍
I love the videos u do ... stay safe 🤘👍
I used to love going to the Rainbow Center and the Winter Garden whenever we crossed the border as a kid. I particularly remember loving the water fountain there. The American side of the Falls has fallen hard and it’s really sad.
Enjoy your videos. Just a suggestion but I think you doing true crime, or mysteries would be super interesting to add to the videos you make. Your voice imo is very fitting for those types of videos. Like mr. nightmare or chilling scares. :)
Noted!!
Thank you.. I remember this mall in it's hay day use to travel from UB on the bus to there.also remember the area way befor the develope the are the original stores on the streets where the garden was and the old store one with the Marilyn Niagara falls museum. again thank you..
Thanks for watching!
@@sal thank you but the timing is wrong the winter garden project was before love canal resident broke (80).. the NF tourism project early 70s (winter garden opened 1977) started just before govern Mario C. Project to bring and promise gambling to NF they clear out all the old stores and built the convention center and the walk way from the prospect point park to winter garden and the center and the mall primed for gambling.. I use to go there every year had relatives lived in N Toniwanda... Oh btw the hooker building across the road was added later after winter garden project.. hooker chem office were over on grand island next to the NF grand island bridge when LC broke..
Love canal news started coming out in 1977..I just find it a huge coincidence….
@@sal the malls origal plan was direct competion for tourist $$ to maple leaf village park mall (at the time was huge thing even with lazer show and movie theather)right across the bridge. But by the time it open was a fail..
Loved the video
I know you wouldn't, but isn't it tempting just to give those rideshare bikes a little "nudge"?
Whoopsie!😜
Yeppp coming to Little America, good work, man, looking good video, you're closer to home here in Toronto Canada.
Ahhhhhh fuckin sweet, a new ExLog!!!!
Fuck yes. I have so much more, too.
@@sal can't wait!!
I miss that place! Remember it well back in the day. Festival of Lights and the old Convention Center at Christmastime! Anyway we can bring this back? Wouldn’t that be great? Just sayin. Nice job Sal..
Incredible Spud forever!
so glad you did this one- my parents are from Tonawanda and we made many trips to Rainbow Centre. I'm so sad to see the downturn of Buffalo in general, the most stable short years of my life were spent in this area.
Never been here, but oh yeah….definitely Harborplaces sister mall! Sad state for the sisters these days
Sweet vid! But did I see Ace with that sign he was admiring in his hands? 😮😂
I am surprised this mall failed so heavily as the ones in large touristy areas are usually full of novelty and gift shops and usually do pretty well.
The Riverfront Center in Amsterdam would also be helped by an OTB location. I get in there for an event once a year.
RPS was taken over by FedEx to become FedEx Ground.
You mention mall ruins in the commercial, you could have hit I think it was Seneca Mall? Long demolished but the footprint of one end of it and a lot of outbuildings and access roads are still there. In a small irony the K-mart built there I read was itself to be demolished for something else, instead of re-used.
One of my friends was a manager for RPS and was absorbed into FedEx. He hated FedEx and left.
Excellent video! Thanks.
Hey Nancy! Long time no see. Hope you’re well!
@@sal I have been watching and enjoying your videos all along. I guess I just failed to put anything in the comment section. Thats cool that you noticed!
I notice every time you comment! I also notice you on my colleagues videos! Thanks again for being such a loyal and awesome fan. You rock :)
@@sal I will have to do better at commenting on your videos! I watch the same ones many times they are so good. Should join your patreon.
I really appreciate that, Nancy! I consider your comments to be positive affirmation that I’ve done a good job!
I went here back in 1998 when I was 9 years old. I definitely remember going to that arcade "closet" and playing Vs. Super Mario Bros. then going to a restaurant with my mom. I can't remember how dead the mall was at that point
RCM’s fate was burdened by the legacy of NF NY, which had been a shabby, grim and failed place despite its adjacency to one of the ‘World’s 7 Wonders. Compared to the paradise offered by the (pre-casino) Canadian side, NF NY offered little than a quick transit to Canada over the Rainbow Bridge. A plausible rationale for the disparity between the US and Canadian sides is that the Canadians see their side as their ‘front door’ while the US considers it as their ‘back door,’ leaving the glory and accolades for NY Harbor and the Statue of Liberty.
I have lived in NC my entire life and remember when the collage was donated the property. There would never be another mall there so that’s the best outcome for it. The Hyatt place you caught in the vid opened up not long before you where there. The United States side has the better park but the Canadian hands down wins for tourism the way it has always been.
Hooker Headquarters.... Love canal... I think I like this part of town.
20:22 I went on those elevators when I was in Niagara Falls last year, and I just thought they went from the ground level up to the parking garage. Little did I know... But anyway I think the old mall floors are locked from the inside of the elevator, so probably a good thing you didn't get on. I had no idea that there was a whole mall contained inside this garage!
Niagara Falls on the American side, Upstate NY boomed mostly from the 1950’s-1980’s. Like Detroit, it mostly declined in the 90’s. Those cities up around the Great Lakes declined because jobs left and ppl flees away from them. My old city Syracuse,NY lost a lot of population as well. It still is losing ppl. Syracuse use to have 3 malls, now down to 1 and it’s failing as well. It’s sad, but nothing is made to last forever. It’s just life.
When IBM pulled out in the 80s New York went into decline.
With ur investigations I wonder if the ppg winter garden was built to emulate the winter garden in ny! As u explained it its a direct representation of the ppg one!! But new York was definitely before the one here!! I'm gonna look it up and see where they got idea from
I grew up in that mall. We were skaters and got chased all over the falls during our exploits. The mall is where we would go play vid games at the game room that was in the food court. The rest is classified
I use to ride my bike to this mall when I was a kid before I moved to Los Angeles , the Burger King and kb toys was legendary, my father would be betting horses at the Otb that was in there and I would b at kb or buying at the time the original rap tees oh my what a time , mid 90s the best
Sal: passing the dead mall savings on to yoooouuuuu!
I had to laugh when you were crossing the Grand Island bridge! Who's stalking who LOL you keep doing videos of places I used to visit when I was a kid 1st the Crystal City mall now this. I remember my parents talking to me about love Canal that would be an interesting video. You should try to doing a video on Fantasy Island amusement park It's in the general area where this video was filmed.
Does anyone remember the Rainbow Center having a Summer laser or light show? This would have been the late 80s or early 90s.
I'm not familiar with dead malls The closest mall to me is The Toronto Eaton Centre. In 2015, it was the busiest mall in North America. In 2015, we had 49 million visitors. That more than 18% more than The Mall of America!'
great episode! What was the background piano music? loved what I heard.
Shout out to that security!
I'm pretty sure you have a hard time to explain what is your day to day job as I have to tell why I loooove your deal malls and stories alongside them too. That and the fact that I start 1 minute your videos and then pause them following your orders to get a snack and some drink (like a true follower I guess). Tone and visuals are also well designed and intertwine perfectly well with the content.👌
Thank you so much for the kind words!! I have a ton more content on the way :)
@@sal looking forward to your upcoming content for sure, the backstories given are gold, that requires an in-dept look into each one of those places, no click-bait whatsoever or suh-mashing some buttons either hehe
Glad you're back at it! Loved the 90s version of a dead mall video 😂
& Also call me crazy but there is definitely an orb at 25:33...anyone else see it?!
My ex-husband was night security while the Rainbow Centre was being built in the summer of 1982.
Awesome!!! I watched Aces video on this mall. Absolutely amazing! And is it just me or is this urbex community just getting better and better? It’s like the community is really growing especially during these tough times. By tough times I mean the end of American retail as we know it….
We’re totally growing! Stoked to see all the engagement!
@@sal I added a bit onto my comment lmao. I love this community so much. It literally shows the skeletons and ruins of a past life now forgotten by 80-90% of America. Thanks for everything you do man.
My pleasure!!! As long as y’all keep interested and engaged, I’ll keep plundering gross abandoned masterpieces.
@@sal im a loyal fan trust me. I will always stay engaged in this community. You guys really are a creative inspiration for me as well as just freaking entertaining. Someday I wish to do what you all do.
Join my discord! I’ve helped a bunch of people get started creatively!
discord.gg/dmod
I know it's not him but that voice from the old footage sounds like Jon Rev.
Filming after hours.. There was a time when you could get into a lot of trouble for filming in a mall.. I was caught filming with my friends when malls were malls nearly avoiding a life time ban.
To be fair, the Hooker Chemical Company did exactly what you’re supposed to do, which is line it with impervious clay and then cap it with more impervious clay to seal everything up tight. And they straight up told the school board that it was a toxic waste dump and not to put anything on it or dig into it. The school board went ahead and did it anyway. And they only sold it to them because the board was so dead-set on putting a school on top of a toxic waste dump that they had already seized other properties around it and the company wanted to sell it so they could get the board to say, in writing, that it was their responsibility now.