Notorious ABANDONED Mall Closed For 2 Years

[Music] I'd like to build the world a home and furnish it with love grow up old trees [Music] I Like to Teach the World to Sing [Music] and keep it company I'd like to see the world for once [Music] go to the highest better in an auction set for the end of this month it's part of a foreclosure deal with any electric company that sued them all over an unpaid Bill empty stores and a lot longer in use stores moved out their inventory and others put out signs after the mall's owner Judy vu attendance this letter last week blaming covid-19 for the malls closure though she gave us a different story earlier you were blaming covid for shutting down they don't find me at all for just three years this mall in America's South has sat abandoned the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin but years of mismanagement and overall Regional decline had sealed this Mall's fate today we're going to look inside what an American shopping mall looks like shortly after it closes with basically no graffiti and reminders of the past Left Behind everywhere so let's begin in the vacant space of the world's largest retailer Walmart looks like the entrance to the mall over there probably the only identifiable thing is the thin blue Walmart color stripe as an opening anchor with the mall this Walmart was a pretty small one at just 85 000 square feet my best guess is that this location closed in around 2004. considering it had been shuttered for so long the space is in remarkably good condition [Music] thank you oh my God it's Shrek [Music] so this wall was built in 1986 and for the first few years business was pretty good initially the structure was planned to have an additional anchor space this never materialized though and instead a Holiday Inn was built on the site in 2005. while it's not connected with any indoor walkway it is possibly the worst place for a hotel considering the current and future state for this building so this Legend with all these dots on this schematic of the thing it's got a legend armed robbery assault attempted burglary burglary crime all property motor theft slip and fall so people have been slipping and falling in these areas and there's a bunch of dots around where there's been theft and then you have a an actual oh wow Darren look at this there's actually a slot for where a future oh a future anchor was supposed to be but it was never built Sears Dillards oh yeah look at this you got the Sears logo right here man that's so cool after just a few minutes inside the structure we quickly discovered that we would not be alone we began to hear noises across the building and eventually voices calling out to us which seemed to like they were right behind us yeah they were behind us ultimately we discovered that they were Scrappers that meant no harm to us but they are going to be ever prevalent throughout our time inside here today laughs as we cautiously moved further into the structure we found ourselves in a wing of the mall which had been partitioned off this section of the mall had no operating stores for quite some time and the hallway was being used for storage oh so they're laser pointers oh these are all full of wooden sticks God what a waste these are literally all just wooden sticks right here the pallets of them and then these are probably all the Five Nights at Freddy's things and these are all books these are all books too oh my God is this all books in here yeah all these palettes are books you gotta be kidding me dude if this caught on fire it would be it would be the end of this now these are straight up just novels 18 Canadian oh yeah book Town USA all books are free you may take 10 or more everyone must sign in we do not we do take donations holy crap crap look at all this these are literally all on you unused oh my God these are all full of unopened medical stuff look at that expiry 2017. [Music] such a waste it's a wrapping paper it's like a party gift card no these are uh napkins for parties it looks like there's a little party station this art is actually pretty good that's really nice actually look at the cobwebs in here it looks like the drugstore scene from The Mist my God [Music] see this stuff on nightmares here [Music] looks still on their shelves [Music] dude this is honestly really sad like I understand that this is probably a non-profit and they wouldn't have the resources to move all this stuff when they they when they closed but this is such a waste in a few years when water gets into here this place is going to be toxic it already is but can you imagine all of these starting to get water damaged and growing mold on them this was the part of the mall that was used up until the end the 400 000 square foot building had capacity for well over 50 stores and four different anchor tenants those being Dillard's Walmart Sears and this JCPenney which closed in 2019. there's JCPenney holy [ __ ] listen to that [Music] wow this is better so check out desk it looks like they tried to catch all the water but uh obviously got pretty out of hand look at the jewelry counter over here literally all the glass on the counter is like caked and mildew I think this was the men's area over here moisture in here is just insane you always wonder how places get so screwed up with mold but look at the condensation gathering on the top of these that's how humid it is in here it's like hard to believe there was once a time where this was full of clothes and people came here to shop I mean it looks like a different world foreign [Music] dispenser you could actually see the internals of how this thing works all these components actually look pretty new oh yeah insert bills so I can crack this open trying to get the money out of it this is yep Bath and Body Works up there well we've been inside an abandoned Bath and Body Works before but this is a newer one I think they still have the Christmas uh Christmas thing on looks like people have been here for the copper as well yeah look they even they went for the the hand wash station after the closure of Sears in 2016 the mall had just one operating anchor store left and the smaller shops within had begun leaving in droves the city itself began a sharp decline seeing a rapid population decrease and grew a reputation for crime in fact it ranked as one of the highest cities in crime per capita in the U.S [Music] by 2019 the mall got behind on payments owing more than eighteen thousand dollars in electricity bills the electricity company foreclosed on the property and expected to bring it to auction with a ridiculous starting bid of 15 million dollars however the mall's owner Judy Vu ended up paying the outstanding bill at the last minute and retained ownership this was a Mini Putt and I guess a laser tag place too foreign [Music] every 10 seconds someone will see this ad I'm not sure if that's true anymore here's a rainbow store oh it does have a lock in the I see evidence of smoke damage on the roof this is Dress for Less whoa what in the hell they must have stored all of the games in here whoa oh my God there's still stuff hanging up yeah this is like a almost like a Goodwill or something there I cannot believe this there's literally clothes hanging on the rack still this is unbelievable literally with their tags still on wow look at the cards that font I know that font I think that's the Nickelodeon studiosphere this is blowing my mind stuff still on the hangers still on the rack still with their tags machine sealed non-compliance of miscellaneous tax this machine is prohibited from further operation what the hell failure to pay taxes for a claw machine so They seized it there's a few of these crane games oh look at this it's a full straight up Terminator machine foreign good Lord look at all the stuff in here in here yeah they have beds bed frames furniture all types of stuff this was an everything store kids clothes Game Machines glassware here good thing too it's all on sale completely shot glasses and it's it's been bending this looks like for years they're all glass yeah look at the imprints of this this thing's caked in a little bit of dust these sealed family vhs's quick and healthy family meals my God oh my God well in 2019 the mall's owner was actually arrested and charged with criminal contempt for failing to respond to a lawsuit filed by a person who slipped and fell due to a leak within the mall Judy Vu the owner had a pretty negative reputation up to this point with claims she would ask inappropriate Financial questions to tenants playing a literal bootleg movies in the cinema and according to rumors slept in one of the back offices this may explain why we found a small cot and Mattress earlier in the video ultimately Judy Vu had decided to close the property in June 2020 citing the pandemic as the primary driver in writing but then telling a local news crew that tenants failed to pay her whatever the case may be once the mall was closed and subsequently left to rot a fire broke out curiously in Judy vu's former office oh oh my God oh my God look at this this might be all their stuff oh my God these guys are nuts just as we thought the men inside the building with us had left we quickly figured out that the brilliant strategy they had implemented here was to gut the HVAC units on the melted and likely unstable roof and just throw all of it in the big hole created by the fire yes [Music] that's the pizza place I'm really sure the pizza looked like that in the picture [Music] [Music] a bunch of mild doing it too foreign [Music] smells like a movie theater in here Gemini man not a great movie all the candy is still here look at that we're even starting to mold oh geez that's crazy what the hell are those pickles in a jar this is insanely disgusting all the popcorn buckets are still there these are still beeping look at these guys [Music] thank you oh even the screen is starting to come undone all the speakers of mildew on them these balloons have been inflated for like years I'm just starting to come come down man oh God those gumballs have either been here for 25 years or I think they're just like plastic and it's made to look like there's a bottom to the gumballs how could you legally sell those as edible food so they did take all the projectors you can see some remnants you can see it's just a whole panel glass and then they put like a trash bag over it and that would feed down into the the theater these are actual films this is what you get I forget uh I forget what the actual term is called but this is the uh the final exports of a movie and this is what you'd send to a movie theater or uh a film festival this is how the theaters get their uh get their film this is Sonic the Hedgehog this is a fast and furious Hobbs and Shaw and it literally it's just a copy of the film on a hard drive that they send to the theaters how cool is that [Music] as the sun began to set we figured it was time to leave being inside this building for the entire day was really quite a surreal and rather depressing experience seeing the pictures of what the building was once like compared to what it is now is almost unfathomable for the last years of the property's life many locals and staff had fought hard to keep it open encouraging members of the community to bring their business to them all but with a slowing local economy and aspects of the structure being neglected the property much like many local malls was doomed after calls to the city it's still a bit unclear as to actually who owns the building right now but regardless of who is actually in charge here the building is being ransacked and gutted by Scrappers and the condition of the structure is only going to get worse from here if you would like to see documentation of what the mall looks like in its open and dying State Dan Bell has made a video detailing just that from 2000 16. a link will be in the description below but from this point forward only time will tell what the fate of this astonishing abandoned Mall actually holds my name is Jake and thank you so much for watching [Music] [Music] the world

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 740,894

Keywords: abandoned mall, dead mall, creepy abandoned, documentary, pines mall, pine bluff, creepy dead mall, liminal space, neon, american mall, abandoned, abandoned place, holiday inn, fire, fraud, criminal, scrappers, 4k, clean, Jake williams, bright sun films, dan bell, food court, abandoned subway, new video, 2023, 2024, 2020, exploring, exploring abandoned places, abandoned places, abandoned walmart, abandoned sears, jcpenney, forgotten place, retail

Id: 49DYfa-DPyA

Length: 27min 41sec (1661 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 10 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/paytheperabo]

Amazing how much stuff was still in the building. Stunning.