Abandoned Jamestown Mall and More: Black Jack & Spanish Lake, Missouri 4K.

well it doesn't look like we're approaching a large shopping mall it more so looks like we're in the outskirts of a large populated area which technically we are but nonetheless here we are at the jamestown mall oh and by the way if you haven't seen this already there's a link down below that shows you an interactive map on all of the places that i've made videos on it's really easy to use all you have to do is click on the link to the map and then click on a pin that will take you to a link of said place [Music] without question the most interesting thing about this part of north county is the abandoned jamestown mall in which i'll get to towards the middle part of this video along with that i drive in mad circles around the city of blackjack along with spanish lake well let's get to it shall we i do start the video in the far northeastern part of ferguson before heading through blackjack and no i'm not looking for no meetup to play some blackjack it's a pandemic yo if you're unfamiliar with my videos i do speed up my videos in order to show more and a less amount of time if you enjoyed this video i'd appreciate it if you gave it a quick like and dropped a comment as putting these videos together does take a good amount of time and effort doing so allows these videos a better chance to be seen by others as the monster that is the youtube algorithm has proven over time to be defeated by having interaction on said videos with that said if you haven't done so already make sure that you subscribe to this channel and hit that notification bell so that you can be notified every time that i upload a new video of an area near you and if you enjoy this video you might enjoy checking out some of the featured playlists on this channel videos on other places like blackjack and spanish lake can be found in my missouri playlist or in my st louis suburbs playlist last but not least if you can't get enough of me on here you can always go follow me on my other social media accounts and those links are below currently we are in an unincorporated area of st louis county if you're not from here basically st louis county is home to just under 1 million people which is spread between 88 different municipalities not included in that number of 88 is quite a few other uncounted four census designated places a few examples of cdps that we'll go through in this video are jamestown and spanish lake even though some of these places are far away from the city limits of st louis a lot of the places within these census-designated places have st louis addresses attempts or at least discussions have been made in the past to annex several clusters of suburbs together to lower the number of municipalities within the county but who knows if that will ever happen greater st louis currently is the 20th largest metropolitan area in the u.s however baltimore is only 3 000 people behind and it's growing at a 5 rate whereas greater st louis is growing at only a 0.5 percent rate other metro areas on pace to pass st louis and population include charlotte orlando san antonio and portland oregon we are now within blackjack which is home to six thousand and nine hundred people the median household income is fifty eight thousand dollars per year twenty one percent of adults 25 and older hold a bachelor's degree or higher and the median value of owner occupied housing units is 128 000 the crime rates are slightly above the national average and niche.com gives the public schools here a c parts of the city lie within the ferguson fluorescent school district while the other parts lie within the hazelwood school district blackjack gets its name from three large blackjack oak trees that once stood at the intersection of old hall's ferry road and parker road which is where we are right here supposedly it was a landmark in the city's early days as it sounds like there weren't many trees around either it was all farmland or it was a grass prairie in 1970 blackjack incorporated as a city [Music] currently we're on the eastern side of the small city of blackjack as i turn through some of the residential neighborhoods [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] now we make our way west towards another unincorporated area of saint louis before reaching fluorescent [Music] [Music] [Music] just like that we are within the city of fluorescent which is the largest municipality within st louis county it's home to 50 000 residents which is down from a peak population of 66 000 back in 1970. if you want to see more of fluorescent make sure to check out my last video [Music] [Music] [Music] since the city of florescent and the surrounding north county communities have continued to lose population over time school enrollment was recorded to be at half of its peak in 2018 for the ferguson fluorescent school district in my last video i drove by a large abandoned building that once served as the offices for the school district once again check out that video if you want to see more [Music] [Music] [Music] now we start heading towards the gold mine of this video which is the large and abandoned jamestown mall [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] really quick as i'm going to take you away from the driving portion of this video before we get there i wanted to illustrate that this mall was built in a very bad location if you were to draw a line due north and due east of the mall you'll see that there's a giant flood plain due to the confluence of the missouri and mississippi rivers nearby if you were to draw lines in the opposite direction and draw a several mile radius around this mall you'll see that it's in a very sparsely populated part of north county not only is it isolated from all other commercial zones there's really not that many subdivisions around it either it kind of makes you scratch your head and wonder what they were thinking and building a mall all the way out here [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] well it doesn't look like we're approaching a large shopping mall it more so looks like we're in the outskirts of a large populated area which technically we are but nonetheless here we are at the jamestown mall [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] the jamestown mall was built right outside of the city limits of blackjack as ground broke in 1972. the blackjack city website is proud to clearly let you know that it's not a part of the city as it says so on its home page technically it's in the census-designated place known as old jamestown even though wikipedia and other sites say that it's in fluorescent i say it's in old jamestown i know that the municipalities of st louis county are oddly laid out as i've said in just about every suburb video that i've done of greater st louis so you guys can argue whether it's in blackjack old jamestown or fluorescent in the comments section below if you care that much nonetheless the mall was opened in 1973 as it was the fifth mega mall built in the greater st louis area it was a giant single story mall that had over 600 thousand square feet a company called jacob's group owned the mall until 2003 when it was sold to the carlisle development group by that time the mall had clearly continued to empty with a 30 vacancy rate at the time of sale in 2008 carlisle announced some redevelopment plans in 2009 st louis county hired researchers from the urban land institute to analyze the viability as a retail center in 2013 the mall's closure was made public with only a single store open and in july of 2014 macy's was the last store to close today the jamestown mall is owned by the st louis port authority which is a group with a goal of supporting the economic development in areas of the city along the mississippi river i guess owning this apocalyptic place is an exception to their rule the port authority has been trying to redevelop this mall since it closed back in 2014 in 2018 a deal was almost in place with a kansas city company to develop the site into warehouses but that deal fell through it's hard to imagine it staying like this forever and seeing nothing get done something will get done eventually but to know what the future holds for this massive abandoned mall we'll just have to wait and see [Music] [Music] we are now in the census designated place that is spanish lake the population of spanish lake in 2010 was 19 000 estimates in between census counts aren't done for cdps like spanish lake the 2010 population however was an 8 decline from the 2000 census count of 21 000 so it wouldn't surprise me if the population comes out in the 2020 census count to be around eighteen thousand the median household income here is a very low thirty seven thousand dollars per year and twenty two percent of the residents live in poverty only fifteen percent of adults 25 and older hold a bachelor's degree or higher and the median value of owner-occupied housing units is 99 thousand dollars per year the crime rates here are above average and the public schools are rated as a sea residents within the boundaries of spanish lake are within the hazelwood school district [Music] so [Music] originally this place was called spanish pond spanish troops occupied this area as there was a post here for spain in 1768. as you can imagine way back when it was a farming village suburban development started to sprawl out this way in the 1950s as white flight came into effect for the area in the 1990s white flight then took place within spanish lake as more african americans moved to the suburbs to escape the conditions of inner city st louis as goes the people with the money so goes the community i think that right there perfectly explains the generational effect of racism and shows that even though the attitude is rarely displayed anymore today it's still probably going to take longer than a lifetime before we see things play out evenly between all races [Music] [Music] [Music] for those who are familiar with my videos you're probably used to seeing me drive continuously without pieces of the video broken up here and there in order to make the video less lengthy and in order to not drive on the same roads repeatedly i had to do that for this video in order to make it a better video this was the first video of that day that i started to drive around and film so maybe i should have stopped by a walmart to buy a 12 pack of mountain dew redneck style maybe that would have woken me up a little bit [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] well with that said that's about it for this video if you enjoyed this video make sure to drop a like comment and subscribe as doing all of those things helps these videos out with the youtube algorithm if you enjoyed this video you might enjoy checking out some of the featured playlists on this channel videos on other places like spanish lake and blackjack can be found in my missouri playlist or in my st louis suburbs playlist last but not least if you can't get enough of me on here you can always go follow me on my other social media accounts and those links are below we'll see you next time peace [Music] you

Channel: Chris Harden

Views: 11,953

Keywords: Nostalgia Tours, Florissant, North County, St. Louis, St. Louis County, Black Jack Missouri, Florissant Missouri, St. Louis Missouri, Black Jack, Spanish Lake, Spanish Lake Missouri, Greater St. Louis, St. Louis Arch, Jamestown Mall, Jamestown Mall Missouri, St. Louis Mills, St. Louis Outlet Mall, Powerplex, St. Louis Blues, St. Louis Rams, LA Rams, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Bulls, NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Midwest, USA, United States, Driving, Dash Cam

Id: re1Oc0gw3Ok

Length: 28min 36sec (1716 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021