A few miles west of me are the Lancaster Pa outlet malls, Rockvale being the biggest. I can remember when they were all farmland before being built in the 80’s and 90’s. Now most of Rockvale is being knocked down for condo’s. People used to come from all over the country to go to the outlets.
About 20 miles east of me is Exton Square Mall. Originally built in the 1970’s as Chester County’s first indoor mall, it was massively expanded in 1999. I can remember how impressed everyone was with it. Now it is mostly empty, with part of it converted to medical offices. The Boscov’s is still doing well, the rest of the mall looks perfect for filming a zombie movie. I spent a lot of time at the Boscov’s 20+ years ago, mostly because a cute girl from the office worked there as a second job. That relationship turned out even worse than the shopping malls did.
The mall in Morgantown is now an antique car dealership. Hundreds of old cars under one roof. They also host a gunshow a few times a year.
The previously mentioned Granite Run mall near Media, Pa was a busy place twenty years ago, now it’s gone (although the Boscov’s is still standing). When they were tearing it down in 2016 my old partner and I drove by. He was retiring, and remarked that as a new State Trooper he pulled stolen cars out of the quarry they built the mall on top of. After the mall opened he established the State Police sub station in the mall to deal with all the crime happening there (in the 80’s). Granite Run came and went in the space of his career.
All those abandoned malls leave me wondering how much they would want to let me reenact the mall car chase from the Blues Brothers in one of them. I need to go by a lottery ticket.
