Truly dead malls, as the name implies, are actually closed buildings that are usually off limits to the public. All the stores have been emptied and the building just sits either awaiting sale or some other form of retooling or, frequently, just outright demolition. But the name kind of identifies malls that have certainly seen better days and are probably destined for true death before the end of this decade for sure. As a prime example of this, I give you my local mall here in Sebring, Lakeshore Mall. I mentioned this mall before here. Other than visiting here for the two Covid vaccines I got in 2021, I hadn't been here before that since the summer of 2019 when I went to the AMC theater to watch a movie. I decided to go back to this AMC theater and see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes yesterday and set out early so I could do a little walkthrough of this mall to see how it's fared. I can emphatically state, it hasn't fared too well.
The picture I'm showing above is a capture from a Reddit post where somebody was bemoaning the demise of this once popular teen hang out mall of the 90s here in this sleepy town noted for having very little entertainment options for young people at all. The picture dates from the 2010s when most of the food court venues seen here had already indeed closed. As witnessed by me yesterday, it looks like there are only three food eateries in this food court left and, perhaps because it was a Sunday, all three were closed.
The mall has two anchors still open, a Bealls and a Belk, two department stores that I particularly find incredibly boring. Long gone are former anchors Sears, JCPenney, and Kmart. Even if Kmart we're still open, I might find it of interest as at least one competitor to the only big box in town, Walmart. Even the Bath & Body Works store seems to have vacated sometime after 2021. Usually in dying malls, that's the one store that remains to the very end. Instead, the only businesses still around are a Planet Fitness, a gun shop, a Miracle Ear store, a shoe store, a GameStop, a tuxedo rental shop, and a couple of ladies stores like Rainbow and another small shop that seemed to cater to the hoochie mama look.
I literally got a little depressed walking around this mall for about 10 to 15 minutes. They had little seating areas with some cushioned chairs but on closer inspection I feared sitting in them since they looked a little bit ratty and I didn't need any bed bugs, thank you. They had a couple of kiddie play areas, one active with two kids and their mom sitting nearby, of course paying more attention to her phone than her kids. The other, seen in the picture above, had this very sad pre-recorded audio loop of car sounds mixed with kids laughing. An empty mall, last having been decorated in the time of a toddler's parents' childhood, having unused children's toys emitting an eerie recording of children's laughter that would never come to the toys in real life ever again. Well except for maybe that mom flipping through her Tinder looking for a new baby daddy.