Wednesday, June 13, 2007

The Daily Mall Reader: Big Town Mall Coming Down

A daily dose of mall-related reading...

"Mall was 'the place to be'"
Long past its prime, Big Town coming down in Mesquite

The Dallas Morning News - Friday, July 28, 2006

(Excerpt) MESQUITE – Big Town was big news.

The first enclosed and air-conditioned shopping mall in the Southwest, the 77 ½-acre "City of Shops," drew crowds too big to count when it opened on a Thursday in late February 1959.

The Mesquite icon boasted not only a shopping utopia, but a small amusement park and a cartoon theater for kids. The Dallas Morning News ran a 24-page section on the opening, making that day's edition the largest weekday publication of the newspaper to date.

But through the decades, the crowds that once formed human traffic jams thinned to clusters of bargain shoppers and strings of mall walkers. Eventually, it attracted more folks thrilled to sneak inside an abandoned mall for snapshots of its morgue-like corridors than consumers ready to open their wallets at the remaining stores. When demolition crews began knocking down the peripheral walls late last week, it was a formality for a destination long ago declared dead.

Read the full article here.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

'"Almost none of the shopping centers my dad built are still around in their original form," she said. "But I'm always sad to see them go away."'

Indeed it is quite sad.

Thu Jun 14, 05:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Why...von Frellick! The Cindy City guy! Shame both his malls went the way of the dinosaurs...

Tue Nov 20, 10:27:00 PM  

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