Two weeks after demolition started on the Muncie Mall Sears, crews are making quick work of the cavernous old store. It’s weird to watch a fifty-year institution get reduced to rubble in a matter of weeks, but that’s exactly what’s happening as Hull Property Group clears the way for whatever it insists will make the property viable again.
Continue reading “Making quick work of the Muncie Mall Sears”
My niece came down for Labor Day. Taking her home meant heading through Defiance, Ohio, and I’d heard Reddit rumors of an irresistible dead mall there. Naturally, there was no way I was driving through town without stopping to investigate! What I found, though, wasn’t the retail graveyard I’d expected. Reddit was wrong.
Continue reading “Northtowne Mall in Defiance: Reddit was wrong”
The interior of Marion’s Five Points Mall has been closed since 20191, but yesterday, city officials declared Planet Fitness -the mall’s last remaining tenant, which featured an exterior entrance- permanently shuttered due to hazardous structural conditions2. The building had deteriorated to the point that closing the gym was necessary for public safety3! With Planet Fitness gone, Five Points Mall is now completely vacant for the first time since the complex burst onto the scene as North Park Plaza in 19614.
Continue reading “Planet Fitness has closed. Five Points Mall is empty.”
A little over six months after new owners announced plans to demolish Muncie Mall, the wrecking crew has finally reached one of its most important pieces. Sears, an original anchor that stood at the mall for more than half a century, is coming down. After months of waiting, wondering, and watching work creep around the edges, the demolition of Muncie Mall is suddenly very real.
Continue reading “Down goes Sears: Muncie Mall’s original anchor is being demolished”
East-Central Indiana got walloped by a hundred-year flood a few weeks ago. Anderson got the brunt of it: neighborhoods were placed under evacuation orders1 as the White River crested at a staggering 24.93 feet2! I don’t know if any commercial property took the floodwaters harder hit than River Ridge Plaza, just across Scatterfield Road from the abandoned Mounds Mall. Now, news reports suggest that all of its stores -including Roses- may never reopen3. If so, the news comes awfully soon after another Indiana Roses, the one in Marion, closed for good.
Continue reading “A second Indiana Roses may soon be shutting its doors”
A friend tipped me off that crews were working inside Sears and J.C. Penney, construction fencing was spreading across the parking lot, holes were being dug outside, and -most ominously- Muncie Mall’s water had supposedly been shut off. That sounded like the beginning of the end I’d been waiting to document! Naturally, I decided to investigate the water situation by drinking a Monster Energy, a quart of water, and half a gallon of Kroger Zero Sugar Raspberry Tea before the mall opened Saturday morning. Then my brother and I headed over to see what was left. Is demolition finally imminent?
Continue reading “Nine stores and a demo crew at Muncie Mall”
I stopped by the shuttered Lafayette Square Mall in Indianapolis recently to take some photos and explore its last remaining store, Shoppers World. Then, as I was digging through the dusty directories of a fifteen-year-old laptop, I remembered that I’d been there when the mall was still sort of alive! Here are some before-and-after shots from 2018 and 2026.
Continue reading “Then and now: Indy’s Lafayette Square Mall”
For more than a century, movies in Marion, Indiana, were a shared ritual. The recent closure of the city’s AMC Classic 12 didn’t just mark the loss of another business; it ended a long local tradition that once made filmgoing easy, communal, and close to home. I’m not from Marion, but I still mourn its loss.
Continue reading “A shuttered Showplace in Marion”
If you’re not familiar with Meijer, it’s a Midwestern chain of superstores that are basically a much better Walmart. Be it said that I love Meijer! I’d probably get a Meijer tattoo across my bicep if it had the necessary real estate. I’ve written about the chain before, but today’s subject is a thirty-two-year-old VHS tape titled A Video Tour of Your New Meijer Stores!
Continue reading “Meijer on VHS: a nineties time capsule”
I’d imagine that driving from New Castle to Muncie on State Road 3 isn’t generous if you’re behind the wheel of a big rig. Only precious few places exist where a trucker can safely pull off for supplies! You’re doing pretty well if you can shoehorn a semi into the postage-stamp parking lot at the Shell on County Road 200, but you’re a downright wizard if you can hold out another fourteen miles to Muncie’s Murphy Oi!. Decades earlier, drivers had another option: just off the highway near Cowan, the Idle Hour truck stop existed for one simple reason: it understood the problem and answered it.
Continue reading “Cowan’s Idle Hour truck stop”