Eric's Life: Good Bye City Center

I must say that I haven't been to City Center for many many years now, but today I had a meeting downtown and parked at the City Center garage. I took a shortcut through the old mall to get to the other side of it and was struck by nostalgia in seeing the familiar stores and layout.

In case you are not sure what City Center is, I'm providing a link to it's Wikipedia article. It was very informative, and will do it more justice than I could. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_City_Center.

I'll just state that at one time, it was the major shopping mall in the area. I frequented it plenty of times while I went to Ohio State.. sorry.. The Ohio State University. ;-) The mall was right on the bus line, and as underclassmen, our cars were parked miles and miles away. We actually would've had to take a bus to get to our cars, so instead we'd wait at the COTA bus line on a Saturday and take it downtown to hit the mall.

But as the Wikipedia article states, the construction of Tuttle Mall, Polaris and Easton Town Center have taken most of the shoppers away, and therefore, most of the businesses have closed shop and moved away. It didn't help when Lazarus and Jacobson’s closed.

It was eerie in the mall. All the stores have been been closed and a lot of stores have signs stating that the entire store is for sale.. I'm assuming this means that all of the store furniture, signs, glass, etc. Here are some pictures that I took while I was walking through the mall.

Here is a closed Victoria Secrets store.. Very sad to see. :-)

In truth, I mostly went to the Northland mall during my OSU days. Well, while I stayed on campus I went to City Center, but after I moved off campus I lived close to Northland (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northland_Mall). But again. this mall was closed for the same reason that City Center was. Tuttle, Polaris and then Easton were built. What surprises me is that City Center was opened in 1989. That was amazing. I mean, that is 19 years. 19! Crazy.. My first year there was 1993. I didn't realize that it was only 4 years open when I went there.

This reminds me of some other malls from my childhood. A trip down memory lane... In my youth, the mall I always hung out in was the Dayton Mall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton_Mall). I spent many quarters in the arcade. And I always loved Cinema 1. It was huge! Even when all of the fancy theaters were developed, with their fancy risers and such. Cinama 1 was always good. Here's a great site that I found that has great pictures and descriptions about the Dayton Mall, throughout the years. http://mall-hall-of-fame.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html. Just do a find, and search for Dayton Mall. Great site and pictures. I was really trying to find out more about Cinama One... Here's a site that references it: http://cinematreasures.org/theater/7139/. This mall has survived the time and has gone through many changes over the years. It now has an open air section, which is currently all the rage. That is the setup for many popular malls at this time, such as Partidge Creek, in Clinton Township, as well as Easton Mall, The Greene in Beavercreek and many others. I believe it is this ability to change and stay current is why the mall is still thriving. Campare this to another mall that was in the area: Towne Mall near Middletown, OH. http://www.shoptownemall.com/. This mall is pretty much a ghost town nowadays, but is still trying to hang on. Of course, there really was no way that City Center could have adapted to the "open air" style of the new popular malls, due to the fact that it is located downtown, surrounded by buildings, and roads, and doesn't allow for any expansion.