Christmas 2020 at Neshaminy Mall - Raw & Real Retail

This is our walkthrough of the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, PA from December 17, 2020. We have covered this mall a few times before, and will continue to keep close tabs, as it is one of our local malls and it is unfortunately starting to die. I grew up with this mall, along with Oxford Valley, and it really held its own for a long time. It was a modest, classic mall that came along during a boom era with other classic Rouse/Gruen inspired malls popping up left and right. Once acquired by GGP (now Brookfield Properties), the blandening wars began. Seemingly in competition with Simon Property Group for the dullest malls, GGP saw fit to remove nearly all of the earth tones and color from the mall, leaving a stark white landscape made ever more apparent if there early in the day. The big exception being the 1990s soft tile colorful floors, they never saw fit to replace those. Unfortunately the one-two punch of the Retail Apocalypse and the current health emergency has left this once great mall in bad shape, with the AMC wing dead except for an ice cream shop and a massage parlor and clusters of vacancies littering the main concourse. Round 1 was supposed to fill the empty Sears anchor. These plans have been scrapped, with a medical facility moving in instead. Despite all this, they had some of the better Christmas decorations up for the holidays, with some properties scaling down a little this year. Songs used in this video (in order): Mannheim Steamroller - Carol of the Bells Mannheim Steamroller - Los Peces en el Rio Mannheim Steamroller - Frosty the Snowman David Marriott, Jr. - On the Seventh Day Steve Gray - Wonder Groove Steve Gray - Reach Out Rather than the same Wiki article you've seen already or an outdated blog post from elsewhere, please do go and have a look at a quite thorough blog written by the other half of RRR, Heather K. A lot of time and research went into it and there is a ton more information than Youtube will allow me to write here: https://rawandrealreflections.blogspo... --------------------- I'd like to say a few words about being an ambassador to your local malls. We have been taking the time to visit all the malls within a reasonable driving distance to check up on them and see how they are doing. Also filming an updated video every year or so, regardless of the lack of many changes, just so there is a video record of the health over time. We think this is an important thing to keep tabs on, especially in these wildly turbulent times. The current health emergency has accelerated the impending Retail Apocalypse we've all been talking about these last several years. This was already a big problem, but the shutdowns and restrictions have made the issue 5x worse and likely hastened the death of the enclosed shopping mall. I know we've all been on pins and needles wondering how bad the fallout is going to be from all of this. There really is no way to know exactly unless we ALL go and do our small part to make it known how it turns out. I implore you, if you have the means to pick an area you would like to be an ambassador for, and go document your local malls. Whatever your medium, it doesn't matter, any and all documentation is necessary and vital in this day and age. Whether it be on Social Media, Flickr, Youtube, any platform gets it out there and preserves it for posterity. We can't paint this picture unless we all grab a brush... ---------------------------------- We utilize the value-for-value model here at RRR. Our product is free, and we're not asking you to pay for it. If you received value in any way from watching RRR, you can help us by donating, if you feel like it. Any little bit helps us to keep corporations and advertisers out of the decision making process. Your donation will keep us ad-free, and in turn, it will give us the opportunity to get to more far-flung locations to help tell this tale of retail instability. This is a non-profit project and every penny will go back into the gas tank for future trips!   / rawandrealretail   ITM