By Edward Master
I suppose the downturn of the shopping mall was inevitable. The cry of “Let’s go to the mall” just doesn’t have that ring anymore.
We had to have a mall in Cranberry. We had to have a mall in Clarion.
I recall the first Cranberry Mall was an old school building on route 322 west of where the old Sky-Hi Drive-In sat. The Clarion Mall was located in a field at the Clarion Exit on Interstate 80.
My father told me how Bracken Construction moved the dirt at the Cranberry site and later he detailed to me about the ‘ring road’ after Bracken paved the mall with blacktop.
Sears closed on Oil City’s North Side and moved to the mall. JC Penney did the same in Clarion. For years the “talk” centered on dying downtowns in communities. Clarion seems to have survived (more or less). Oil City (and Franklin) maybe not so much. Murphy’s and Western Auto vacated the county seat. Likewise in OC as Quaker State flew the coop for Texas.
Both malls have suffered changes in anchor stores. Sears is history at Cranberry. K-Mart went the way of the dodo, too, in Clarion.
I understand that much of the blame lies with on-line shopping, but let me remind you that the populus used to do quite a bit of ‘mail order.’ My mother often bought clothes from a catalogue and we never seemed to have a problem with fitting. Loretta Lynn sang of getting shoes in the fall from mail order as the Coal Miner’s daughter.
Remember the Montgomery Wards catalogues center on 5th Avenue in Clarion? The nickname was Monkey Wards. Sears Roebuck was a popular source of mail order. I believe Penneys also had that option. For the mechanic (aka grease monkey), the mail order belonged to JC Whitney.
I’ve seen and read of malls across the country going belly-up. Harrisburg, PA, had its problems as did the Pittsburgh area (Century III bottomed out though Ross Park still seems to be going strong). I don’t know the situation of the Northway Mall.
I guess at the time years ago, the shopping mall was the ‘thing’ to do. I watched shopping centers go up everywhere I lived. The Berkshire Mall popped up outside of Reading, Lehigh Valley north of Allentown, Echelon east of Glassboro (and Philly), and Deptford just south and east of Philly. I’ve often wondered how those establishments faired in the on-line business, but I have no regrets about living in the East. That phase of my life has come and gone.
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