The Medley Centre Doesn't Have Any Melody

The Medley Centre, located in the Rochester, NY suburb of Irondeqouit, was built in 1990 with the idea in mind as being Rochester's major shopping mall. It was previously known simply as Irondeqouit Mall. Being the newest mall in the area and located only 2 miles from downtown Rochester, you'd expect it to be healthy right? Well, you're DEAD wrong, literally. This mall is dead. 

Former main mall entrance. Wilmorite, the Rochester-based developer of all Rochester malls was known for this style of architecture. The food court entrance for Shoppingtown Mall, which is a dying mall over near Syracuse, was also designed as part of an expansion to that mall by Wilmorite. That is also another post for another time.

Former Ruby Tuesday.

Plant life is overtaking the black top.

Other secondary mall entrances.

Former Sibley's and Bon Ton

Former JCPenney and Steve & Barry's.

The population shift from downtown city living to suburban life spelled the doom of this mall. As a result, 99% of its stores closed and/or relocated to the newly expanded, more convenient to the suburbs, Eastview Mall. I'll probably end up doing a series of posts for that mall in the future as it is quite large. I say 99% of the stores closed because one lone store still remains at the Medley Centre and that is none other than Sears: 

Notice the "WE ARE OPEN" sign here.

I mentioned in a REIT post that this was one of the properties in the Twin Tiers coverage area included as a part of the Strategic Growth company package. Sears did own this store until then, which is probably the reason it hasn't closed yet. If I would had more time when I visited here, I probably would of went inside Sears to see what I could find.

UPDATE: Apparently Sears did not include this store as a part of REIT deal. The Rochester store included instead was the Sears at Greece Ridge Mall.

Surprisingly, Macy's actually operated here for about four years with no mall access before ultimately closing in 2014 itself:

2013 photo showing Macy's, formerly Kaufman's, still in operation. For reference, mall access closed to the public in 2009.

2015 photo showing Macy's closed.

Despite the decline, Target did open a location in the mall's parking lot closest to the former Macy's anchor. The two did coexist for a time though.

Because the interior is blocked of public access, I do not have any interior photos. Though if you really want to see what the inside looks like from a January 2014 look click here. You can also get some historical photos and a historical timeline of the mall's decline over time from that link. Labelscar also did a post on this mall. I hope those two additional links will provide for even more information on this particular dead mall.

Another Visit to the Dead Warren Mall

Since I was in Jamestown earlier this month and I had some time, I thought I go the extra 14 miles to revisit something I've been wanting to get to ever since Kmart here closed its doors a year ago: the dead Warren Mall. As mentioned in an older post, I've covered this mall before with some of my very first retail pictures I ever took outside of Kmart. 

Because most of those pictures, didn't turn out the greatest I thought I would try to recapture some of the more interesting elements with better pictures. And that is exactly what I did, although some still came out blurry....

When I had visited here in the past, I would enter at the Kmart entrance. I had my mind set that I wouldn't be able to go in those doors, so I went in the main Bon Ton entrance. Although I didn't try to use those doors, Napoli Pizza is still over in that wing so they probably were unlocked. Oh well.

Something did some damage here. Let's cover it with cardboard!

A slight Kay Jewelers labelscar is visible here when looking at this from the right angle.

Being some of the first ever mall pictures I ever took, I wasn't really thinking about taking pictures of the things below before:

The two pictures below are from the mall's center court area just in front of a surprisingly still open Bon Ton.

While taking a quick a walk to get some pictures of the former Kmart, I also took these:

I played around with some photo editing for this picture if you couldn't tell.

Radioshack here had closed and relocated to the Walmart Plaza 1/4 miles to the south before its bankruptcy. Whether or not the Radioshack in the plaza or not is still open I do not know.

This was a former Ponderosa and yes it was at a mall.

Now for some former Kmart pictures:

Now we move back to the center court area and end up going in the former Big Lots wing.

At least one store moved in since my last visit bumping the total store count to seven:

There's nowhere to buy food or drink at this mall, unless you count the Arby's outside.

Former Big Lots:

I took a look around in Bon Ton and found this old style of flooring:

So as this return visit pointed out to me, nothing has changed really other than the fact that one new store filled a vacancy. It seems to me that mall itself is probably only 10% occupied, and that's counting the Bon Ton anchor space. Who knows what 2016 will bring for this long dead mall.

Smallest Tops Market?

The county that has been getting all the attention lately....

After visiting a rather large supermarket last week, let's peek into a supermarket that is the exact opposite. A Tops, (which would be the main competitor of Wegmans around here), that may very well be the smallest Tops in the chain. Seriously, its six aisles and it is smaller than a Dollar General. 

Why? I can only guess that Tops took over a local supermarket that was once here, though to be honest, it has more of a general store or hardware shop than a supermarket vibe to it. Either way, it is extremely odd! Though I didn't take a picture of them (heavy traffic area), this store has three checkout lanes under the drop ceiling you'll see below. You also enter the store from that area as well having to walk in front of the checkout lanes to access the rest of the store.

Aisle One

Aisle Two

Back wall of the store.

This picture is also from aisle one.

Aisle Three

Aisle Four

Aisle Five

Aisle Six

Limited Produce selection in front of Aisles Five and Six

Limited Produce selection in front of Aisles Five and Six

As for the decor of this store, I've visited a much larger location that uses the same style which will be seen in a future post. Its just interesting to see that Tops still manages to operate a store with only six aisles worth of merchandise. It does seem though that a lot of places are trying to go small to expand their presence. Tops usually operate stores at least four times the size of this dinky location. I guess the small nature of the store is also likely due to the fact that it is in a rather small town.