The Dead Warren Mall (Part One)

NOTE: The following pictures are some of my earliest pictures I had ever taken of retail. This mall is what got me interested in retail outside of Kmart. At the time, I was only taking pictures of Kmart locations, and I was still relatively new to Flickr. But it was the emptiness of the mall caught my attention to the point where I had to take some pictures. I apologize if the quality of some of the photos aren't the greatest. I think I'm going to try to re-visit here once again in the future and if I do, I'll be sure to take some photos of its current state and perhaps do another blog post.

Welcome to a dead mall. Literally. This is perhaps the deadest (if that is even a word) mall in my area. There is one other dead mall in Bradford, but lately it has seen a resurgence in activity with some retail making it more of a plaza and with health services behind the stores. (I'll do a post at a later date.) But the other fact about that mall is that it doesn't have any public access or it didn't, where as the one I'm about to show you does. 

Before I begin I have two maps to show you. One is made by my Flickr contact Bobby P, and the newer is from myself with the permission of Bobby. 

Photo credit to Bobby P.

Mall outline via Bobby P.'s photo.

As you can see, things really went down hill. Exactly why? Well, the blame falls on this Walmart. Around 2006 or so, Walmart built a location in Warren and a plaza followed soon afterwards literally a 1/4 mile south of the Warren Mall. A lot of the stores that were previously in the mall moved to the plaza or just closed. The mall hung on for a couple years with a few stores still, but one by one, they started to close. In 2012, the mall was still in pretty decent shape because it had all of its anchors. The following pictures are from 2012.

Most of the parking here would be for the then open Kmart.

Kmart's entrances.

First Sights upon Entering.

Goodwill (Previously Fashion Bug) & a former Foot Locker

Center court

A look down the Big Lots wing.

Label Shopper (Previously CVS/Dollar General)

The following pictures are newer:

Looking down the mall at the Kmart entrance.

Now for some exterior pictures. These are mixed from all of my trips.

JCPenney, then Big Lots. Currently vacant.

Now only a total of four stores inside the actual mall remain and some more service-like establishments have started to open. The year 2014 was when the mall suffered major blows, losing two of its three anchors, those being Big Lots and Kmart. Only Bon-Ton remains as an anchor, but you have to wonder for how long.

Anchor History:
JCPenney to Big Lots, now empty
Kmart (opened with the mall), soon to be empty space
Bon Ton (opened with the mall)

There are rumors that Durham's Sports is interested in opening a store at the mall. The second part of this post will focus on the closing of the Kmart at this mall.

That's it for now, see you in the next post! I think that I will take a couple of days off to possibly a week though. I don't want to post too much too fast.