Trash To Treasure - The Abandoned Walmart

[Music] [Music] from trash to treasure that was the belief of this plan destination big-box retail center perched on the hill in Garfield Heights Ohio with a view of downtown Cleveland the city view center encompassed 50 acres of land and back in 2006 was planned to be the area's new retail and commercial Mecca the only problem was it was built on a garbage landfill holy [ __ ] a whole my god this is a insane it's not too often that you see an abandoned Walmart but this is a physical representation of the very moment things began to go wrong here the imprints on the ground of where the cash registers would have been so Walmart has like those octagon kind of things where you get your bags this is were one of them right in front of the restrooms back in the day several developers had invested into building a shopping center comprised of big-box stores and small strip mall tenants after approval from the EPA to build this one billion-dollar concept the project move forward in 2003 to build on top of a closed dump the first phase of their project opened in 2006 with Walmart being the main anchor along with Dick's Sporting Goods and Giant Eagle many other tenants including Home Depot and JCPenney planned to open in the coming years along with a multitude of other bagans small box tenants however serious issues began to arise quite literally this looks like it was a subway and this building is creaking like you wouldn't believe I don't know if it's structurally unsound or it's just the wind but it's not a good not a good sound of here lots of bird feathers everywhere the wood flooring usually the clothing section of Walmart then the concrete path is it's kind of crazy to see a Walmart without all the aisles it really shows the true immense skill of this building and this isn't even a super Walmart this is just for standard one I think so it is pretty crazy Oh musty near bulletin boards the electrical holy man look at this it's still on this is still onna listen there's a hum oh look at this well this is what they did with all the the shelving backers this stuff that they couldn't use in other stores I guess wonder if Walmart still owns this or not deadly and explosive methane gas had begun seeping through the newly formed cracks in the concrete and began causing problems with safety and with this reason cited after only three years of operation Walmart had abruptly closed their location at the city view center in 2008 at the time of their closure the developers had been hard at work on building new structures to aggressively fill in their available land however as the recession began and more big-box tenants followed in Walmart's suit development had abruptly been abandoned as the EPA took a second look at the sites they found extremely high levels of dangerous toxins in the water the developers had been fined for the mismanagement of the land and had agreed to regulate the methane with Wells across the property however soon after another major problem began to form with the shifting of the land since the shopping center was constructed upon a former landfill the soil had been much less stable which caused the entire site to slowly shift downwards towards the bottom of the hill this is behind Walmart look at the amount of displacement there has been from the ground sinking my god this is the foundation of the structure right here and you can look it's literally you can see under the foundation this is unbelievable the loading dock area behind the structure has sunk so much that it's it's cracked the retaining wall behind look the entire wall has actually come off the main structure this pavement have sunk so far look at the travel from where it used to be the top line right here is where it would where it was originally tarred in when the structure was built and look where it is now it's probably about a foot you know when this was built that was probably level with the pavement but how much this is sunk take a look at these this is the cement that is in place and the rest of the asphalt has just sloped down and right next to the building here because this was obviously built on a landfill they got methane relief valves so there's literally one it's not even functioning now the fan has been removed but it looks like the methane would have come up through here gone through this contraption and then and sent up to the to the roof and and let to vent man what a mess so to fix their problem of the sloping asphalt they just poured a bunch of new stone or asphalt here to make the staircase less treacherous to walk down and you can see they extended the legs here to a quick fix to a serious problem it looks like where I'm standing right now is the worst part of the sinking the land sinking look how the land is just sinking this way and it's the same for this it's all sinking it looks like this is the lowest point of the land and the buildings are just staying put so that the land around it is sinking in the staircase is just essentially floating you can see where it put it would have been underground probably at that point for right at the ground level and where that tar this level right here is where the ground used to be and it is just sunk so far down looks like rapey right here in between what was Circuit City and Walmart there was supposed to be another big-box store in between types doesn't look like it was ever built you could see right here there is a methane relief valve in the grass it's meant to relieve the methane in the ground usually you find those in dumps but this one is in a shopping complex surface of this sidewalk has steep down so low that it's starting to come off where it was originally cord down here is Marshalls what used to be Marshalls the windows the property is currently listed as an active NPL Superfund site which means while it doesn't currently pose an imminent threat to humans it has in the past through the years tenants had continued to closer stores at City View which only leaves Giant Eagle operating out of the main structure just outside next to the former Radio Shack and the other buildings there was a structure that was being built it looks like further down but never was completed so there is a half-finished building here that's also sinking in that's just left to the elements and there is all types of foliage it's a it's basically an unfinished storefront in a forest at this point more development could have came but never did' I'm sure at one point the master plan for all of this was to extend the shopping complex even further out than this but of course problems emerged when you build a shopping complex on a landfill and then everything starts to slide and methane starts pouring out you can see one of the methane relief valves in the parking lot of Petsmart right there what a disaster okay this is pretty crazy it's so quiet in here actual merchandise oh I got the snow in here oh my god man the water is really starting to I'd get very second I wouldn't know what that a respirator so I guess this was uh I guess this was pet grooming spider webs on my camera look at this door it's literally rotted through the outside it's rusted straight through the future remains unclear as of right now with the city hoping to build a jail and corresponding legal facilities on the property but at the end of the day the same problem seemed like they would likely persist unless the proper funds were invested and the city view center is an example of what happens when they're not with greed and ambition lost in the realm of practical sense which potentially put lies in danger and lost tens of millions of dollars what's left of this enormous mess is the telling tale of that exact story that's the idea shopping the Walmart way not only saves you money but time trouble and by

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 2,631,413

Rating: 4.6734185 out of 5

Keywords: CITYVIEW SHOPPING CENTER, dan bell, urbex dane, cleveland ohio, ohio, abandoned walmart, abandoned petsmart, creepy, scary, horror, abandoned store, mall, shopping center, garfield heights, bright sun films, new, 4k, HD, walmart urbex, urban exploration, abandoned mall, inside, circuit city, radio shack, with power, jake williams, dump, landfill, 2018, 2019, methane, unfinished mall, unfinished building, explore, city view shopping center, family friendly, clean, PG

Id: Mr1CWRc174o

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ndpool]

From a Cleveland.com news article written 2009, there were thousands of piles driven to bedrock to support the structures, so they probably are perfectly stable. But the surrounding areas are only supported by a 2 foot clay cap and some gravel bedding. Not sure what the developers expected. Traffic and organic degradation of the trash would cause massive compaction and sinking over time, not much that could be done.

[u/actuallyanengineer]

Watch the intro, and then skip ahead to 8:10, unless you’re really into very boring, non-narrated abandoned building porn of an old Walmart. Spoiler, it’s big and people vandalized it. This guy needs to leave a lot more on the editing room floor.

Otherwise, an interesting story that I’m going to research more. I’m from the area and somehow hadn’t heard of this.

TL;DW City View Center, just outside of Cleveland was built on a landfill in the mid-aughts, just before the crash. The ground is settling massively and methane gas is leaking, resulting in most tenants abandoning their spaces and costing the developers tens of millions of dollars.

[u/[deleted]]

I assumed that I misread the title. What idiot builds on a landfill. That's just asking for trouble.

And what was the plan to deal with: ch4 (and worse h2s) leakage into the structure. Settlement. Piles piercing the engineered liner. Cap maintenance. And probably a thousand other things...