I first wrote about the Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon in a post June 3, 2018. At that time I described the scene when I was 13 as the totally new shopping experience opened its doors. For the first time there was an alternative to the downtown retail scene where we had all purchased whatever couldn’t be ordered from the Sears or Wards catalogs. Downtown merchants feared the end of retail as they knew it.
This past month I found the newspaper article shown above on the right. The Lloyd Center has gone bankrupt, losing its major retail “anchors” over recent years and now losing out to on-line shopping, the new threat to all such malls. Possible uses include housing and offices, though even though the demand for office space is diminishing. Too many people are working from home apparently.
Lately I seem to be aware that I have lived through two ends of certain cycles. I had never heard of malls as a child, and now they are being abandoned right and left. You can even do an online tour of them. In a similar, but much less light hearted matter, I have lived through the national legalization of abortion and the likely return to abortion restrictions through out the country.
I always wondered about the phrase “what goes around, comes around.” I no longer wonder.
Saved By Words 
Me too. Sadly!
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We have a few abandoned in our state too. I think of all the resources that went into building these structures, and some of them are not that old!
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I also think of the immense waste.
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Yes, what goes around, comes around. I think you have to be over 60 to appreciate this. Your tale of malls is a case in point.
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I have seen the rise and fall myself. Many empty malls here too in So Cal.
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What a waste. Maybe they could accommodate the homeless somehow.
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There were rumors a couple of years ago that they were going to do just that. I don’t think it ever happened.
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Too simple a solution I suppose.
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They keep changing the rules so to speak. I do online shopping now since the pandemic. Even grocery items are ordered online. Jovy is back at their office this week. She doen’t have to drive, she is fetched and brought home by Grab cars c/o the bank.
Twice now she brought free dinners from JP Morgan. They are so generous with their employees.
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That is wonderful that she has those benefits from her job.
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Hopefully abortion restrictions will not happen. So much has changed in the past two years.
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Well they do appear to be on the way in half of the United States whether a majority wants them or not.
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That is sad.
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I have also lived through the rise of the malls, and now the closing down of many. Fortunately, our abortion laws remain very liberal.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I have no idea what is going on here. A large majority of people want the laws to stay the same.
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Having been born when computers were the stuff of sci-fi (in fact there wasn’t much in the way of sci-fi, come to think of it…) I’m sure there will be more changes before we shuffle off this mortal coil.
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I’m in agreement with you, Cathy
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For sure.
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I lived when young in a small town with a vibrant high street and didn’t know what a shopping mall was. You could buy almost anything you could think of. I now live near a large town which has a mall where you can’t buy anything out of the ordinary at all. I recently wanted a new guitar amplifier and ended up buying online (but not from A–). What seems to have happened is that shopping has drifted towards the wealthier cities each with several malls – to four cities in the whole of the north of England and two in Scotland. Leeds has at least 3 big musical instrument shops. You have more choice if unfortunate enough to have to put up with life in the wealthy south.
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The same is true in my working class town. No longer able to go to the store where everything from shoelaces to cement was available. I am amazed that I have to leave town or go on line to buy shoelaces. The mall actually has a shoelace kiosk! How stupid.
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All of our Malls, are closing or dying off. Maybe with the supply shortage, and other things, we will return once again to the small stores of our youth.
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There seems to be a big push to “shop small” around here, so you may be right.
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