Downtown Mall (Meadville, PA) - Raw & Real Retail

This is our walkthrough of the Downtown Mall in Meadville, PA from August 4, 2019. This is a small local mall that has been mostly taken over by mom & pop shops. While this may be confused with a dead mall, it appears as if most inline spaces are occupied, just with weekly hours. We visited on a Sunday and it appears as if everything is closed, but not vacant. It felt pretty surreal walking around this mall. Songs used in this video (in order): Steve Gray - First Time Jean-Luc Ponty - Cosmic Messenger Gerry Butler - First Flight Steve Gray - Wonder Groove Steve Gray - Reach Out Here is a portion of a 2017 article from the great SkyCity2 blog: http://skycity2.blogspot.com/2017/07/... A trend in retail that fortunately has proven to be mostly uncommon is the "downtown mall". An ill-conceived idea by desperate urban planners, the goal was to try to keep retailers from fleeing downtown for the malls and shopping centers. The way they were going to do so was sort of a reverse psychology where if the then-wildly popular malls were placed very close to or in place of downtown, the urban core would continue to thrive since downtown was also the mall. Thus, the location of the mall in or close to downtown would hinder the ability of suburban competitors from killing downtown businesses. The later version of this involved actually creating an enclosed mall downtown. This trend lasted from about 1970-1982 and was helped along by federal urban redevelopment grants that aided in the cost of building the new structures and demolishing what was already there. What was often lost were tons of irreplaceable historic old buildings and a sense of place. Even worse, these malls were smaller than your average suburban mall, had awkward layouts, difficult parking and were quite unsightly from the outside. Furthermore, these downtown malls were mostly colossal failures that ended up either demolished or repurposed for offices. Meadville also jumped on the bandwagon for this trend bringing its first mall to the city. Constructed in 1973, this mall fortunately proved to be less destructive in that it was built with an attractive exterior design, ample free parking and was worked into the edge of downtown instead of in place of it. While it barely retains its original function today, the mall itself is still a haven for many small local businesses and is not yet completely a dead mall like many of this type. It also provides a climate controlled easy starting point to reach and explore the rest of downtown. Furthermore, it outlasted its only other mall competitor in town: quite a feat for an enclosed downtown mall! When Downtown Mall opened, it had two anchors: Fisher's Big Wheel, a defunct discount chain that was based in New Castle and Weldon's department store. Fisher's Big Wheel is today occupied by Big Lots (with a mall entrance), and Weldon's is now Dollar General. Fishers Big Wheel went under in 1994, and this appears to have been when Big Lots took over. It is unclear when Weldon's departed, but it was most likely also during the 1990's. It is unclear what else was in the mall, but most likely a drug store took up a decent portion of the interior mall. Like most enclosed downtown malls, Meadville Mall has an awkward layout. The mall itself, never updated on the inside, features a large center court with one side abutting the Water Street entrance and four hallways extending away from the court. One goes to the back parking lot, one goes to the former Fisher's Big Wheel (Big Lots), one goes to Dollar General (former Weldon's) and one goes parallel to the Dollar General corridor to a back exit. It also appears that the Weldon's space was subdivided with no mall access considering that the space is much too big for Dollar General. It is a rather plain design for the era it was built as well with no fountains or planters although it is possible that one or two were covered up in center court. In all, the mall was basically outmoded 25 years ago. Despite being a competitor, it is not exactly clear that Downtown Mall ever truly caught on. In truth, it was always a poor competitor that primarily hindered the ability of the city to gain a better mall. While not totally dead, it is clear that the interior mall has long past outlived its usefulness. More popular chain stores are found down the road in Park Avenue Plaza, but not a lot of retail is thriving in Meadville. However, Meadville appears to overall be mostly lacking in retail options compared to many other cities. It is unclear why this is. The nearest major mall in Erie, is 35 miles away. This means Meadville should be able to sustain more stores in the market than just Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Tractor Supply. Perhaps this is the reason that Downtown Mall continues to defy the odds 45 years later.