Metrocenter Mall -Jackson, MS | a dead mall, now abandoned | spectre of Christmas past | ExLog #34

[Music] hey what's up guys my name is Sal it's Christmas Eve and this is another expedition log in this episode I go exploring with my dad to a now abandoned mall in the heart of Jackson Mississippi when we arrived there it was getting dark and it was just days before Christmas the vacant buildings were ominous against the cloudy winter sky and the parking lots were barren we visited them all during my trip to the Gulf Coast which extended well into January of 2018 and this is part two of that trip my Megillah phobia was triggered when looking at the abandoned Dillard's and I genuinely felt uneasy in the massive parking lot staring at the empty concrete structures but then we went inside and I was completely amazed at what we saw management took great pride in decorating this for what would be its last Christmas before closing so come take a walk with me and my dad in the Metro Center Mall in Jackson Mississippi but first a word from our sponsor fun with Mickey and Friends gumball machine by Hasbro playschool from the mid-1970s this thing rewarded kids for diligently saving their pennies by giving them one gumball for one of their pennies [Music] check it out don't always get gumball refills and fill up Mickey Mouse top pipe or bozo see the gumballs go down watch the pen be soft throw your pennies Popeye gumball banks from Hasbro [Music] [Music] [Music] when we pulled up into the parking lot at Metrocenter I was completely floored the state of decay that the parking lot itself was in was mind-blowing there were giant craters filled with water everywhere and I was constantly steering the car around so I didn't hit them and then when I saw that buildings I was speechless they were just gigantic concrete structures that triggered my Megillah phobia just being in that super empty parking lot looking at these huge huge structures that obviously had nothing inside of them it just gave me this really uneasy feeling and my first experience here outside of the car was when we found the first entrance and when I walked up to it all of the doors were locked so I wasn't even sure that this mole is still open yet [Music] no way that so in a desperate attempt we drove around and looked for more doors to try and open to see if there was a way into the mall since we have no idea yet I even had my dad hop out of the car to see if he can open any of the doors but eventually we drove around to the other side of the mall and we saw a small contingent of cars and another entrance which I'm glad to report was open [Music] [Music] [Music] on March 1st 1978 a joint venture between home art development of Chicago and Jim Wilson & Associates of Montgomery Alabama formally dedicated the Metro Center Mall in Jackson Mississippi the mall had 1.25 million square feet of retail space 120 stores to choose from and three anchors McRae's gay furs and Sears then in May of 1979 d h homes would join the lineup as the 4th anchor [Music] in 1985 the Mississippi blue laws made it illegal to sell certain things in certain conditions on Sunday for example it was illegal for a woman to buy pantyhose on her way to church so if a place sold pantyhose they had to close that place on Sunday at the time merchants were able to sell beer on Sunday morning but not soup meanwhile the sale of furniture Heuser II and even pet supplies was banned all day long but it was legal to sell ammunition [Music] each city had slightly different laws and generally most businesses were closed on Sunday in Jackson the president of McRae's and clay Cooley who was another representative of the Metro Center Mall they spoke publicly and fought to get the law repealed then one year later in January of 1986 the law was repealed as a state law thereby giving the decision up to the municipality to enforce which most stopped doing this brought a ton more business to the mall and it gave a breath of new life to the shopping center [Music] in 1989 the mall was sold to a joint venture between equitable real estate investments management incorporated in the California Public Employees Retirement System or CalPERS Jim Wilson would stay on as the managing entity the same year d h homes was purchased by and rebranded as Dillard's in March for stock with an indicated value of about 40 million so Dillard's took over the D H homes nameplate and the store at Metrocenter was converted into a Diller's [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] in the early 90s it was announced that the mall would be receiving a complete overhaul and total redesign and on Wednesday November 10th 1993 the mall had its grand reopening there was a new center court with a gorgeous skylight new facades were installed at the mall entrances and the food court got a redesign and many many new tenants a full-page ad was taken out in the November 7th 1993 edition of the Clarion Ledger and the owners had this to say about the new makeover quote beneath towering glass canopies golden sunlight filters through cool jade palms projecting a show of silhouettes and shadows against the floor of the courtyard scrumptious smells from the food court pulled passers-by from their path stores upon stores invite shoppers to share in their treasures promising their guests will wear them well everything familiar is new again gleaming with restated radiance come witness a spectacle at Metrocenter their new slogan they adopted was quote you'll see shopping in a new light they were really milking that new skylight and for really good purpose while it was getting dark here you can still see all of the skylights that they installed to bring more natural light into this mall I think it's gorgeous I think this is what malls should have giant skylights a lot of rural malls out in the country they don't have sky lights which is a shame because I think it's a really amazing addition to the malls aesthetic [Music] in 1997 coyote management of Dallas Texas got a 62 million dollar loan from the Lehman Brothers and purchased three malls in Mississippi for 54 million bucks this included the Metro Center Mall which comprised 60% of the costs or about 30 2.4 million the thing is the county appraised them all at over 51 million but the owners argued that it was worth only 21 million the mall is 80 percent occupied at the time so it's doing pretty well and I'm not sure why the owners went back and argued that it was worth only 21 million but they got thirty two point four million for it one year later gay furs went defunct in 1998 after Dillard's bought the company and as a result the gay furs closed at the Metro Center Mall this closure would set off a chain of events which ultimately led to the malls demise and closure in 2003 the mall was sold to a joint venture of Jackson Metro Center Mall and Metro Center Atlanta whose parent company was west core then in 2004 the Dillard's which had two locations in Jackson decided to shutter the metro center location in November of 2004 in 2005 cannon management of Los Angeles assumed management of the mall and then McCray is shuttered in 2006 and was taken over by Belk and a 2007 Burlington Coat Factory assumed tenancy of the former gay furs space [Music] so do you hear that ad playing in the background right now I actually found the advertisement that aired on television for this small check this out [Music] learn fun ways to conserve the environment as Metro Center presents the musical The Jetsons cosmic cleanup this Saturday at 11 12 32 and 330 in center court so now we're going downstairs we're taking the escalator and you can see the extent to which mall management decorated this mall it's gorgeous all of the decorations are so tastefully done and the mall is so clean I get kind of sad thinking about this because they must have known that the mall was in its final stages of life and I think they were just giving it one last hurrah for the holiday season but now that we're on the bottom floor you'll see exactly how dead this mall is there's nothing happening here and it reminds me a lot of what I saw at the landmark ball in Virginia [Music] [Music] [Applause] something interesting happened in 2009 when the second story of the former gaffers was converted into it they called Metro Marketplace this was a mall with in a mall concept much like the Seoul Plaza and security square mall near Baltimore which I covered in a few different videos if you look back in my expedition log series playlist it seems that things were pretty bad at the mall even into 2010 when a reader wrote an article that they thought Metro Center was closed in the Clarion Sun newspaper and the paper had to confirm that the mall was actually open and some even more bad press happened in 2011 when the mall was sued an incident happened in August of 2009 when a woman who's being robbed in the parking garage she tried to thwart the attempt at robbery but instead was caught by the vehicle on the robber and she was dragged around the parking lot she got pretty badly injured so the mall was sued for negligence but the court ruled in favor of the mall not the injured woman this didn't look good the public didn't want to see that [Music] [Music] in what was probably the mall management's worst move in 2012 they attempted to relocate all of their lower-level stores up to the second floor with the goal of being able to close down the lower level most tenants demanded compensation for this move and when mall management inevitably refused most of those tenants closed their stores in retaliation to make matters even worse Sears shuddered in the same year and Burlington Coat Factory sealed off their mall entrance which dealt a devastating blow to business at the mall in the same year the mall management changed hands once again now being managed by Overby management at their recommendation the mall was put on sale in 2013 for 6.5 million dollars during this time the Metro marketplace was reconfigured as the latin-themed la plaza de metro center in an attempt to bring new life to the 60,000 square foot space mall within a mall and just one year later in 2014 the mall was sold to a joint venture of Jackson's own overbee company Kolbe capital of Overland Park Kansas and the Walter Morris companies of Wichita Kansas [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the mall suffered horribly over the next few years and declined rapidly tenants left at a quick pace and the mall just faded away and in January of 2018 the owners gave all remaining in-line tenants eviction notices to be effective February 28th 2018 and the mall closed its interior corridors in August of 2018 after the mall closed its interior access the Burlington was still open as the only anger however in September of 2018 the city of Jackson and the Hinds Community College assumed tenancy of the long vacant D H Holmes and later Dillard's space and that's actually still open to this day and I'm hoping that they find more use of spaces within the mall for city offices and stuff like this much like the Mountaineer Maw does or even the Marley station Mall which used some anchor space for professional non retail purposes for a while it's a wonderful use for an abandoned mall and I think more should take its lead as I was walking around this mall with my dad and looking at all the Christmas decorations and it being just a few days before Christmas I couldn't help but think of all the wonderful Christmases that I had as a kid my parents are amazing people and I owe a lot to them they instilled the spirit and magic of Christmas and me even to this day and as I'm recording this narration right now it's Christmas Eve of 2018 and I just can't stop thinking about the incredible poem the night before Christmas which was recited to me many many times as a kid and which I'm sure I'll recite many times throughout my life twas the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse the stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hopes that st. Nicholas soon would be there the children were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of sugarplums danced in their heads and mamma in her kerchief and I in my cap had just settled our brains for a long winters nap when out on the lawn there arose such a clatter I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter away to the window I flew like a flash tore open the shutters and threw up the sash the moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of midday to objects below when what to my wandering eyes did appear but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer with a little old driver so lively and quick I knew in a moment he must be st. Nick more rapid than Eagles his coursers they came and he whistled and shouted and called them by name now Dasher now dancer now Prancer and vixen on comet on Cupid on Donner and Blitzen to the top of the porch to the top of the wall now dash away dash away dash away all as leaves that before the wild Hurricane Fly when they meet with an obstacle mount to the sky so up to the housetop the coursers they flew with the sleigh full of toys and st. Nicholas too and then in a twinkling I heard on the roof the Prancing and pawing of each little hoof as I drew in my head and was turning around down the chimney st. Nicholas came with a bound he was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot a bundle of toys he had flung on his back and he looked like a peddler just opening his pack his eyes how they twinkled his dimples how merry his cheeks were like roses his nose like a cherry his droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow and the beard on his chin was as white as the snow the stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath he had a broad face and a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly he was chubby and plump a right jolly old elf and I laughed when I saw him in spite of myself a wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread he spoke not a word but went straight to work and filled all the stockings then turned with a jerk and laying his finger aside of his nose and giving a nod up the chimney he rose he sprang to his sleigh to the team he gave a whistle and away they all flew like the down of a thistle but I heard him exclaim ere he drove out of sight happy Christmas to all and to all a good night [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] as always thank you all so much for watching this video I wish you a happy holiday and warm season's greetings and I hope that you all have an amazing 2019 I also want to give a special thanks to the quite studios research team especially Kristen from Unicom productions who put in a lot of work trying to figure out the timeline for this mall so thanks a lot Kristen and if you haven't checked out unique on productions I'll post a link to their channel below and I really think that you all should check them out Ron and Kristen make some really great content over there and I suggest them very very highly so thank you to all my patrons subscribers viewers and everyone who supports the channel thanks again for watching everybody take care you you

Channel: Sal

Views: 206,557

Rating: 4.7810092 out of 5

Keywords: century iii, century 3 mall, dead mall, pittsburgh, mall, vaporwave, dan mason, urbex, mallsoft, schuylkill mall, metrocenter mall, simon property group, 80s, 90s, exploring a mall, mall walking, plaza, decay, expedition log series, abandoned, sears, pennsylvania, sears holdings, mountaineer mall, morgantown, sal, chungking mansions, exploration, Baltimore, schuylkill, docu vlog, investigative, documentary, film, jackson mississippi, metrocenter, jackson, mississippi, christmas, night before christmas

Id: jx5Q8sg8Zdc

Length: 28min 26sec (1706 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 26 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/SirRyno]

I actually stuck around for the full 28 minutes of the video. Got to give credit he covered the history of the shops, deals and ownership well. The video filters were chosen to make worse than it was at the beginning.

Most impressed he didn't get mugged.

Worth the watch.

[u/MartinMax53]

Diamond Jim’s for lyfe