Almost a decade ago as a reporter in California I came across a great and original Web site, Deadmalls.com,, and later wrote a story about Dead Malls in America being redeveloped for new uses.
Now I live in a California suburb with a different kind of mall: The Ghost Mall.
This is Promenade, a mall planned for 20 years, started during the housing boom, redesigned as an outdoor "power center," and then left for dead when the economy crashed. Owner General Growth Properties fell into bankruptcy with too much debt to fnish this thing. It's an awful disappointment in a city of almost 150,000 where the major shopping districts are Kohl's, Target and Burlington Coat Factory.
What's going to happen is anyone's guess. General Growth is coming out of BK. There's been some talk about making it an outlet mall. Maybe it has some value as an eternal monument to excesses of the early 2000s. I went out at sunrise on a Saturday morning. This is what you see out there on another failed strip of the American Dream.
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