With so much lame election excitement it was nice to get a look at the real world last night and see that the long downward spiral of the American Dream didn’t start with The Black President and won’t be fixed by Angry Teabagging Seniors.
The fail of consumer culture became evident to me last night as I walked through Metro Mall a little bit after 7 in the PM with very few souls or stores accompanying my visit.
It’s a nice little microcosm of corporate futility but a few things became clear to me during my brisk walk in this shopping sarcophagus.
There really just isn’t anything that will save this place.
I hear there’s a plan to develop ANOTHER local condo development and maybe turn it into a Zona Rosa part II. But it was suburban over-development that killed the place from the get-go. The logic that would fix this sad testament to corporate greed with development is analogous to curing a crack addiction problem with more crack.
There’s always that good old fashioned hope that "the economy will turn around" but I’m guessing that Jesus Christ could open up a carpentry store in this place and nobody would bother to show.
Folks with good memories might recollect that the demise of former American Retail Giant Montgomery Ward facilitated the last few coffin nails at Metro North.
I’m sure there might be folks out there with some ideas to restore the place to its former glory but there just isn’t any kind of entertainment option that’s viable for the place. This old school pony was kinda cool but obviously doesn’t work when it comes to drawing any consumers other than maybe the ghosts of dead toddlers.
Seriously, this place was more depressing than an abandoned Drive-In Movie theater. The only big store left in the place is Macy’s. The old school retailer was already well-prepared for the X-mas Season.
Yeah, the most wonderful time of the year is gonna suck despite so much hope for the failure of The Black President.
Metro North has been dead for 5 years or more
That place has been in the shits since 2002. I’ve lived in the Northland/Gladstone are for most of the last 16 years. Malls in general have died or are dying. Few thrive. Great Mall of the Great Plains? More like Great Faceplant of the Great Plains. Blue Ridge Mall? Long gone? Bannister Mall? Gangs of thugs took it over, whites quit going there and it died. The only real malls worth a shit left in the KC metro are Oak Park and Independence Center. The problem with malls is that lease space is so expensive, the merchandise is as well.
On the other hand….
On the other hand, this deserted mall looks like a great place to hold a tea party.
Overdevelopment didn’t kill Metro North
"it was suburban over-development that killed the place…"
Wow, this post suggests you must have limited knowledge of the background regarding why Metro North is in the state it is in today. The owners of Metro North drove that mall it into the ground and the process started long before Zona Rosa and other competing retail developments were in the works. Alberta Development Partners, an out-of-state company, made bad business decisions when long ago it didn’t care about the impact its demand for above-market rental values from tenants had on the occupancy rates at Metro. Ask any one of the businesses that used to operate at Metro and you’ll get the real story. As an absentee owner, Alberta was also never concerned about the impact a declining Metro North would have on the community. Alberta didn’t want to put up the money to invest in and expand Metro to make it into the Oak Park Mall of the Northland – which it could have done at one time (now it’s too late). Instead Alberta was perfectly fine investing ZERO money into this commercial property and just sucking rentals from current tenants while progressively raising rents to above-market levels which eventually drove tenants elsewhere. Now, of course, Alberta wants public dollars to revitalize the area even though Alberta fiddled while Metro North burned.
Gold Buffet
Maybe they could resurrect the Gold Buffet and put right in the middle. See Bannister,Metcalf South , Blue Ridge,Indian Springs. Hot money flows where its well…hot. Prepare for the Mother of all Wal-Mark Supercenters.
…..www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23Nt5XumaU……….www.youtube.com/watch?v=StbxgDD9Fts