Carbon Plaza Mall

 NOTE: This post comes from outside the blog's coverage area.

    The Carbon Plaza Mall opened in the early 1970s as a small mall with Laneco on one end and a Grant City on the other. Giant supermarket would in time replace the original Laneco space. Grant City, on the other end became a Bright's department store in 1976, which would later be sold to Laneco in 1983 for a second attempt in the area. Starting in the mid '90s, the now former second Laneco space would be subdivided into multiple storefronts. Mahoning Valley Cinema (now FunTime Cinemas) and Big Lots would occupy some of the space. In time, the mall would transition to also include medical uses, some of which operate in the former Grant City/Laneco space. 

The Mall with Three Different Eras All at the Same Time

     Just outside of the Pennsylvania city of Dubois, lies the Du Bois Mall that is honestly quite the unique mall. With anchors Montgomery Wards and Murphy's Mart, the Dubois Mall first opened in the 1970s. The layout was simple and small. Despite no official confirmation, the mall's architecture would seem to suggest that the mall would double its size at some point in the 80s and add a third anchor in JCPenney. Again the mall itself would suggest that a second expansion would occur in the 90s that added a smaller Sears store as a fourth anchor. The twist in all this is that the mall never saw any changes whatsoever for the longest time to the earlier portions of the mall. This essentially created a unique situation where one could literally walk through different eras. 

    Murphy's Mart would become an Ames store before being subdivided between Big Lots and Staples. Staples did not have mall access. Montgomery Ward would be subdivided for Ross Dress for Less, Old Navy and a smaller Dunham's Sports with only Ross having mall access. In 2021, Dunham's Sports would relocate to the much larger former Bon-Ton at the nearby Commons shopping plaza. Shoe Dept would relocate from within the mall to fill the void. 

    Unfortunately, as will be seen in later photos, the new owners of the property have replaced the flooring in the original portion and likely 80s expansion area of the mall with carpet. This does remove some of the uniqueness of the property, but in an odd twist of fate, the flooring in the likely 90s portion remains untouched for some reason. 

       

       It seems that the property has found some success in attracting local businesses to operate within the older portions of the property. The likely 90s section could use a few more tenants to liven up the place, but understandably it is more vacant due to the Sears being empty. I'm just going to say that this space would be a great candidate for a Kohl's.