LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
REDUCE,
REUSE, R E C Y C L E
I
f you’re of a certain age, watching the third season of Stranger Things brought back all your mall memories. To create the fictional mall set from the mid-1980s, when the series takes place, the production team built storefronts ranging from Orange Julius to Sam Goody – remember those? Yes, kids, you used to have to get in a car and drive somewhere to buy music. Workers built the ubiquitous mall in an actual, still-open one in the Atlanta suburbs. Today, however, Gwinnett Place Mall is an example of what’s happened to many of those Reagan-era shopping and hang-out destinations: a nearly empty shell with rows of vacant stores and anemic foot traffic. There are books, shows and websites dedicated to documenting closed malls featuring apocalyptic-like images of once-bustling food courts and escalators. But what determines whether these developments descend into dead mall status or not? Wilmington has seen the same shifts in shopping habits and retailer closures as the rest of the country. But Independence Mall, opened in 1979, has a reprieve for now with its redevelopment plan by Brookfield Properties, which bought the center about two years ago. Construction is underway in the area that once housed Sears – the struggling retailer closed the Independence Mall store in 2018. Plans are to incorporate lifestyle center elements such as exteriorfacing stores and a grocery store. Assuming the redevelopment takes place as planned, it won’t look like the mall of our youth, but it also won’t be 1 million square feet of dead space on one of Wilmington’s busiest corridors. (For more insight on these commercial retail space trends, turn to “Talking Shop” on page 22.) Reuse also is being discussed across town where
w i l m i n g t o n b i z m a g a z i n e . c o m
a one-time shopping center on South College Road could be on its third life. Market Place Mall was built in 1989. Its shelf life was extended when New Hanover County’s government bought and renovated it for its offices in 2002, reflecting a national trend around then of adaptive reuse for aging retail spaces that turned them into DMV offices, schools and more. Now, citing the building’s expensive maintenance and inefficient layout, county officials are working with an outside team to turn the 15 acres into a mixed-use development that includes government offices and private commercial and residential space. Wilmington still has its share of vacant buildings as markers of the retail industry’s struggles – think Toys “R” Us on Oleander Drive and Kmart on South College. But like any industry undergoing disruption, the key will be transforming and figuring out the next evolution. Even Orange Julius found a way to hang on; it’s now a fruit smoothie.
VICKY JANOWSKI, EDITOR vjanowski@wilmingtonbiz.com
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