When urban renewal goes wrong: Inside a dead mall frozen in 1990.

Very interesting short film by Bright Sun Films. Along with the usual urban exploration bits, he gives a good history of how and why it failed.

The shopping centre was supposed to revitalise downtown Hamilton, Ontario.

But within six years, it had just a 40% occupancy rate.

A decade after opening, it sold for only CAN$3.6 million — just 5% of what it originally cost to build.

https://youtu.be/NV_c_c_RZdE?si=4fNO5BJAoWzcx_bw

#urbanism #UrbanPlanning #Canada #Ontario @urbanism #UrbanRenewal #malls #DeadMalls #UrbEx #UrbanExplaration

  • OldWoodFrameEnglish
    22·
    4 months ago

    Buffalo NY did this too. Paved over Shelton Square, “the Times Square of Buffalo” to build a mall that basically immediately emptied out and became a dead mall and then for like the last 20 years it has been a data center with a food court. The Main Place “Mall”

    • jed@aus.social
      1·
      4 months ago

      @OldWoodFrame @ajsadauskas

      Learning about Buffalo’s downtown revitalisation efforts in the 70s helped me piece together something i hadn’t quiet figured out about US cities. I never realised that many city’s had dumped millions into ‘fixing’ their downtowns to include multitudes of parking and remove the relics of a more glorious age. I had always kind of assumed those buildings just burned down and were adhoc replaced with parking, rather than that it was an extremely expensive and concerted effort to attract people downtown by replicating the experience of suburban shopping malls.

  • Richard@mstdn.ca
    2·
    4 months ago

    @ajsadauskas @urbanism I lived in Hamilton at that time. That mall really wasn’t on anyone’s radar for shopping mostly because of parking issues and the hassle of downtown traffic. We had several other malls in the city with acres of free parking to choose from.

  • Steak@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    Damn I grew up in Hamilton. Spent a lot of time at and around that mall.

  • jadero@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    4 months ago

    Vice had series called Abandoned that followed a skateboarder as he explored abandoned places, including malls.

    I don’t know how it holds up, but I really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. As I recall, the skateboarding was pretty far down the list of why they were doing it.

    • Jackie's Fridge@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 months ago

      That was a good show! Yeah, I didn’t care about the skateboarding but he interviewed a lot of fascinating people and explored some wild places.